“His Majesty's government view with 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, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

Whatever the intentions of British foreign secretary Arthur Balfour in issuing this declaration bearing his name, clarity was hardly the result. In the more than 90 years since those fateful 67 words appeared in Balfour’s November 1917 letter to British Zionist leader Walter Rothschild, historians have grappled with the meaning of “civil and religious rights,” the distinction between a “national home” and a state and many other questions.

With scores of books already written on the subject, Georgia Tech professor Jonathan Schneer initially wondered what he could add in writing another one. But that changed when he learned that behind the well-documented intrigue and deception surrounding the declaration, there lay even more.

“It’s absolutely true that if you’d asked historians five or six years ago, ‘Is there anything new to say about the Balfour Declaration?’ they’d have said ‘No,’” says Schneer, in town to speak about his new book, The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. “And I didn’t think I’d find anything. But I did find something new.”

Schneer’s main discovery was that the British government, which many historians believe simultaneously promised Palestine to the Jews, the Arabs and the French, had also offered it to Turkey, a country they were then fighting in the First World War. Hoping the offer would persuade the Turks to cease hostilities, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George made it in spite of opposition from much of his cabinet and his country’s past commitments to others.

While the significance of this revelation might seem limited after so many years, Schneer believes it’s as relevant today as it was then. In light of such past duplicity, he argues, it’s entirely possible that parties to the current Israeli-Palestinian negotiations are engaging in the same shenanigans now, a prospect he admits can seem discouraging.

“I don’t mean to be sounding hopeless,” says Schneer of the possibility that the double-dealing continues, “but put it this way: it’s necessary to go beyond and under whatever surface words are spoken in order to try and find out the truth and what’s really going on. And I’m not at all sure it’s possible to find it out.”

Aware of the many disputes over the events in question, Schneer makes no claim that The Balfour Declaration will put them to rest. Although spurred in part to write the book by a surprising discovery about his family’s history (his grandfather was a Zionist), he was determined from the beginning to stand out from what he sees as a largely pro-Zionist or pro-Arab pack. And while indignant about some of his findings, he feels he managed not to take sides.

“I have great sympathy and great respect for the Zionists of that period, and for the Arabs of that period, and I even have respect and sympathy for many of the British,” he says. “But the British I have the respect and sympathy for are the ones who were driven crazy by the lying of their superiors, and there were plenty of such people.”

Given the links he draws between past and present, it’s natural to wonder about Schneer’s views on current events in the Middle East. But he won’t divulge what impact his newfound knowledge has had on him.

“Has it affected me in how I read the newspapers?” he asks. “I don’t think so. I still have pretty much the same political opinions I had before I wrote the book, and I’m not going to tell you what they are.”