Editing Balfour Declaration (section)

=== Scope of the national home "in Palestine" ===

The statement that such a homeland would be found "in Palestine" rather than "of Palestine" was also deliberate.{{efn|name=Gelvin82|group=lower-roman|Gelvin wrote: "The words of the Balfour Declaration were carefully chosen. It was no accident that the declaration contains the phrase "in Palestine" rather than "of Palestine", nor was it an accident that the foreign office would use the words "national home" rather than the more precise "state"&nbsp;– in spite of the fact that "national home" has no precedent or standing in international law. And what exactly do "view with favour" and "use their best endeavours" mean? The seeming ambiguities of the declaration reflect debates not only within the British government but within the British Zionist and Jewish communities as well."{{sfn|Gelvin|2014|p=82''ff''}}}} The proposed draft of the declaration contained in Rothschild's 12 July letter to Balfour referred to the principle "that Palestine should be reconstituted as the National Home of the Jewish people."{{sfn|Stein|1961|p=470}} In the final text, following Lord Milner's amendment, the word "reconstituted" was removed and the word "that" was replaced with "in".{{sfn|Friedman|1973|p=257}}{{sfn|Renton|2016|p=21}}

This text thereby avoided committing the entirety of Palestine as the National Home of the Jewish people, resulting in controversy in future years over the intended scope, especially the [[Revisionist Zionism]] sector, which claimed entirety of [[Mandatory Palestine]] and [[Emirate of Transjordan]] as [[Jewish Homeland]]{{sfn|Halpern|1987|p=163}}{{sfn|Friedman|1973|p=257}} This was clarified by the 1922 Churchill White Paper, which wrote that "the terms of the declaration referred to do not contemplate that Palestine as a whole should be converted into a Jewish National Home, but that such a Home should be founded 'in Palestine.{{' "}}{{sfn|Caplan|2011|p=74}}

The declaration did not include any geographical boundaries for Palestine.{{sfn|Biger|2004|p=49}} Following the end of the war, three documents – the declaration, the McMahon–Hussein correspondence and the Sykes–Picot Agreement – became the basis for the negotiations to set the boundaries of Palestine.{{sfn|Biger|2004|p=51}}