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The Balfour Declaration raised tensions in Palestine and many local Christians and Muslims resented the Jews. Almost immediately there was a series of outbreaks of sectarian violence. There were anti-Jewish riots in several Palestinian towns and cities. This did not stop the Jews from settling in Palestine. The British, under the terms of the Balfour Declaration, were committed to the creation of a Jewish homeland. This meant that the London government ordered that the military and the colonial authorities do everything in their power to protect the Jews from Arab attacks.
The Balfour Declaration meant that the British army were the de-facto protectors of the Jewish settlement and without this support the survival of the emigrants would have been doubtful. This inflamed the Palestinians even more and after riots in Jerusalem in the mid-1930s, there erupted a full-scale Arab Revolt (1936-1939). The Balfour Declaration meant that the Arabs came to see the Jews as a favored group who were stealing their lands with the assistance of the British. This led to a complete breakdown in the relationship between the Jews and the Palestinians. The Balfour Declaration was in many ways to result in a rupture between Palestinians and Hebrews which has not been healed to this day. It could be argued that the Declaration of 1917 was to lead to a century of Jewish-Arab conflict that has destabilized not only the Middle East but the world.<ref>Ben-Ami, p. 134</ref>
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