The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, a new book by School of History, Technology, and Society Professor Jonathan Schneer, was released by Random House in August. An eminent American scholar of British history, Schneer reexamines Britain’s intentions in the Middle East during World War I. He shows that when Britain issued the Balfour Declaration she laid the foundation stone of modern Israel – but also of Arab dispossession – and thus the modern conflict in the Middle East.

From the August 22 New York Times Book Review article on Jonathan Schneer's book "The Balfour Declaration:  "In this comprehensive study, richly documented by diplomatic correspondence, Jonathan Schneer concludes that the famous declaration seems to have just missed the sidetrack of history: in contrast to a common myth, Britain’s support for Zionism was not the result of an inevitable process. In fact, as Schneer reveals, shortly after Balfour’s promise to the Jews, the British government offered the Ottoman Empire the opportunity to keep Palestine and to continue to fly the Turkish flag over it."