Cambon letter

It was issued by the French government in June 1917 during the First World War, announcing support for the Zionist project in Palestine, then an Ottoman region with a small minority Jewish population.

The French Government, which entered this present war to defend a people wrongfully attacked, and which continues the struggle to assure the victory of right over might, can but feel sympathy for your cause, the triumph of which is bound up with that of the Allies.

On 11 March 1916, in a telegram to the Russian and French ambassadors, Edward Grey put forward a proposal that the Allies together issue a public declaration supporting Jewish aspirations in Palestine.

Verete, in his account of the developments leading up to this proposal, explains, "here is the root and source of the pro-Zionist policy of British governments until the Balfour Declaration" [2] Historian Martin Kramer argues that securing the assent of Britain's French and American Allies, and of the Vatican, which controlled many Christian Holy Sites in the Land of Israel, was a necessary precondition for the Balfour Declaration.

[3] The letter was apparently submitted to Ronald Graham by Sokolow; Picot was asked to come over to London by end of October to appear at a Cabinet meeting and explain the French position in relation to the Zionist movement.