that in Palestine shall be laid the foundation of a future Jewish commonwealth" and on April 16, 1919, corroborated the U.S. government's "expressed acquiescence" in the Balfour Declaration. Wilson's statements did not result in a change in policy of the U.S. State Department in favor of Zionist aims. However, the US Congress passed the Lodge-Fish resolution, the first joint resolution stating its support for "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people" on September 21, 1922. The same day, the Mandate of Palestine was approved by the Council of the League of Nations. During World War II, while US foreign policy decisions were often ad hoc moves and solutions dictated by the demands of the war, the Zionist movement made a fundamental departure from traditional Zionist policy and its stated goals, at the Biltmore Conference in May 1942. Previous stated policy towards establishing a Jewish "national home" in Palestine were gone; these were replaced with its new policy "that Palestine be established as a Jewish Commonwealth" like other nations, in cooperation with the United States, not Britain. Two attempts by Congress in 1944 to pass resolutions declaring US government support for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine were objected to by the Departments of War and State, because of wartime considerations and Arab opposition to the creation of a Jewish state. The resolutions were permanently dropped. Following the war, the "new postwar era witnessed an intensive involvement of the United States in the political and economic affairs of the Middle East, in contrast to the hands-off attitude characteristic of the prewar period. In Truman's administration the United States had to face and define its policy in all three sectors that provided the root causes of American interests in the region: the Soviet threat, the birth of Israel, and petroleum." Recognition of the State of Israel Previous American presidents, although encouraged by active support from members of the American and world Jewish communities, as well as domestic civic groups, labor unions, and political parties, supported the Jewish homeland concept, alluded to in Britain's 1917 Balfour Declaration, they officially continued to "acquiesce". Throughout the Roosevelt and Truman administrations, the Departments of War and State recognized the possibility of a Soviet-Arab connection and the potential Arab restriction on oil supplies to the US and advised against US intervention on behalf of the Jews. With continuing conflict in