Leonard Stein, in his book on the Balfour Declaration, refers to 1917 as 'the year of decision'. ' Indeed, it was in 1917 that Zionism was officially endorsed, not only by Great Britain but also by France. The Declaration of Jules Cambon came earlier than the Balfour Declaration, and in addition there was a further French endorsement of Zionism at the beginning of 1918. (See reprint of documents at the end of the article). However, thirty years of British Mandate over Palestine, have made people forget the role played previously by other powers in this area. Were the French declarations different in content? Should they be considered by the Zionists as less of an achievement than the obtainment of the Balfour Declaration? The present article will analyse the differences and similarities of the Balfour Declaration and the Cambon and Pichon Declarations. We shall see that it was more the determination of the British to possess Palestine rather than Zionist pressure on them which determined, in 1917, the future handling of this area. The Balfour Declaration has been thoroughly studied by Stein; and recently, Prof. Verete,2 in an attempt at a new intepretation, has also indicated the contribution that the earlier French official statement on Zionism must have played in furthering the cause of the British declaration. This article will attempt to deepen the analysis of the French declarations, basing itself on the documents of the French Foreign Ministry Archives (MAE) of those years, recently laid open to research. The legacy of Franco-British negotiations of 1916 as far as Palestine was concerned, was a mutilated area in which an international administration should be established. According to the Sykes-Picot Agreement, a part of Galilee, north of Lake Tiberias fell into the hands of France. The Gulf of Acre-Haifa, with the surrounding piece of territory,/was given to the British together with the territory East of the Jordan River, 'as well as the Negev, below a line drawn from Rafa to the North end of the Dead Sea. On the one hand, the achievements obtained by Sykes, the British negotiator, in the signing of the 1916 agreement with the French have sometimes been disregarded, and he has been criticised for his 'moderation' when facing the French demands.3 On the other hand moreover the French considered the outcome of the 1916 negotiations as a renunciation of a great number of their aspirations. With reference to Palestine, they were aware that, by agreeing to international protectorate over the Holy Land, they were implicitly giving up the claim for an exclusive Protectorate that they had been demanding up until then.4 In their former claims for hegemony the French based their arguments on many centuries of Patronate over the Catholics of the Levant, recognised implicitly by Constantinople and the European Powers. This concession, skilfully obtained by Mark Sykes, was