The Balfour declaration contained two guarantees – a “national home” (not a state) for Jews in Palestine, and the protection of the rights of “non-Jews”, ie Arabs, who formed 90% of the population (A chance to make good on Britain’s broken promise, 13 October). Only one of these was ever carried out by successive British governments. We can see why in Balfour’s own subsequent statements in private: “Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.” He also said: “So far as Palestine is concerned, the Powers [at the first world war peace talks] have made no statement of fact which is not admittedly wrong, and no declaration of policy which, at least in the letter, they have not always intended to violate.”

If only Lord Curzon, who succeeded Balfour, had been foreign secretary in 1917 we might have had a very different outcome. He wrote in a private letter to Balfour at the time: “I do not myself recognise that the connection of the Jews with Palestine, which terminated 1,200 years ago, gives them any claims whatsoever. On this principle we have a stronger claim to France.”

I have drafted a new “Balfour declaration”, set out in a forthcoming documentary, Palestine: the Reality, which could perhaps rectify the situation. It calls for “the establishment in Israel/Palestine of a national home for the Palestinian people” and promises that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Arab communities in Israel/Palestine”.

Karl Sabbagh

Author, Britain in Palestine

• Donald Macintyre writes that the Balfour declaration’s centenary is a chance to “rethink attitudes that have left the Palestinians stateless”. Do the last 100 years not show that their statelessness was self-inflicted? The Palestinians rejected sovereignty in 1937 and 1947, and chose intransigence over independence in 1967, 2000, 2008 and 2014. Their leadership’s present obsession over Balfour’s support for a Jewish “national home” further underscores that they view the Jewish state, regardless of borders, as fundamentally illegitimate.

Mr Macintyre would do well to examine why the Palestinian leadership has continually allowed rejection of Israel to trump sovereignty for their people.

Mark Regev

Israel’s ambassador to the UK

• Donald Macintyre omits to mention that Hamas emerged as a military and political force after the first intifada, when it became the main Palestinian opponent of the Oslo peace accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). Their campaign of bombings was widely blamed for turning Israelis off the peace process and bringing Benjamin Netanyahu, who was an opponent of the Oslo accords, to power. Furthermore, the jihadism of Hamas is not limited to the Palestinian/ Israeli problem, but encompasses a war against the western countries in general, which is why it is designated a terrorist group by Israel, the US, EU, the UK and others. Macintyre’s assertion that the Balfour agreement was partly to allow Britain to keep control over Palestine feeds into this dangerous notion that the real problem is western imperialism, and it against this that war should be waged. Such simplistic ideas are part of the problem.

Fred Lowe

Dublin

• Donald Macintyre slightly misquotes the Balfour declaration. Balfour did not say that the rights of the Palestinians should not be prejudiced. He said that their “civil and religious rights” should not be prejudiced. Apparently the distinction is important. Recently, David Blair, Middle East adviser to Boris Johnson at the Foreign Office, gave a talk in which he said that in Balfour’s time the term civil rights did not equate to “political rights”. He also argued that British promises of independence to the Arabs (documented in the McMahon-Hussein correspondence) were so vague as to be almost meaningless. As the government prepares to mark with pride the anniversary of the Balfour declaration, it seems quite likely that they do not consider that any promise to the Palestinians has been broken.

Brendan O’Brien

London