" Mapmaking was further complicated when in November 1917, Foreign Secretary Balfour sent Baron Lionel Rothschild a public letter declaring that Britain would “favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine. "

― Daniel Yergin , The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations