The Balfour Declaration was issued 103 years ago today; It.was the
one of key developments in the early stages of the twentieth Century
that influenced the Jewish communities of the world to believe that
Great Britain would support the creation of a jewish state in the Middle
East. The ramifications would be seen up until the present day and is
regarded as one of the most controversial and contested documents in
modern history.
It was named after Lord Arthur James
Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary during the Word War 1, who on an order by United Kingdom’s Prime Minister at that time, David Lloyd George,sent an official letter to Baron Walter Rothschild
(the 2nd Baron Rothschild), a leader of the British Zionist community, who accepted it on behalf of Great Britain and Ireland.
The document was quite short, consisting of only 67 words in three paragraphs. However, the impact was enormous: the declaration was the beginning of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict which has not ended.The immortal words of the letter said the following:
" His Majesty's Government view with favor 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."
The Original Letter of the Balfour Declaration
" His Majesty's Government view with favor 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."
The Original Letter of the Balfour Declaration
With the Balfour Declaration, London was seeking Jewish support for its war efforts, and the Zionist push for a homeland for Jews was an emerging political force. In 1917, Jews constituted 10% of the population, the rest were Arabs.
Yet Britain recognised the national rights of a tiny minority and denied
it to the majority This was a classic colonial document which totally disregarded the
rights and aspirations of the indigenous population. In the words of
Jewish writer Arthur Koestler: “One nation solemnly promised to a second
nation the country of a third.”
It was a shock to the Arab world, which had not been consulted and had received promises of independence of its own in the post-war break up of the defeated Ottoman Empire. The Palestinians have always condemned the declaration, which they refer to as the "Balfour promise" saying Britain was giving away land it did not own.
The Balfour Declaration constituted a dangerous historical precedent and a blatant breach of all international
laws and norms, and this act of the British Empire to “give” the land of another
people for colonial settlement
created the conditions for countless atrocities against the
Palestinian people. Balfour, in a 1919 confidential memo, wrote:
“Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age old traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far greater import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land”
The discriminatory language used by Sir Arthur Balfour and seen in the Balfour Declaration and the British Mandate reveal the prejudiced rational behind British foreign policy in Palestine. A month after the Balfour Declaration on 2 December 1917,
the British army occupied Jerusalem. In 1923, the British Mandate for
Palestine came into effect, and included the entire text of the Balfour
Declaration. Through the Mandate, Britain would go on to rule Palestine
for three decades.
The Mandate for Palestine constituted the
entire legal framework for how Britain should operate during its
occupation of Palestine. Despite this, the Mandate made no mention of
the Palestinians by name, nor did it specify the right of Palestinians
to nationhood. Instead, it was during its rule in Palestine that
Britain sought to lay the foundations for the creation of a ‘national
home for the Jewish people’.
By the end of the 1920s, it became clear that this ambition would have violent repercussions.Between 1936 and 1939, thousands of Palestinians were killed and imprisoned as they revolted in protest against British policy.
The
British response took a heavy toll on the livelihoods of Palestinian
villagers, who were subjected to punitive measures that included the
confiscation of livestock, the destruction of properties, detention and
collective fines. During this time, British forces’ are said to
have carried out beatings, extrajudicial killings and torture as they
attempted to quell the uprising. To this day, there are still the
‘Tegart Forts’ in Palestine built and named by Sir Charles Tegart who
had been stationed in India to punish those fighting against the British
Raj and then later stationed in Palestine to control any Arab dissent.
For
Palestinians, Britain’s three decades of occupation in Palestine was a
turning point in the country’s history, laying the foundations for what
would become decades of occupation, displacement and insecurity.
When
the UK eventually decided to withdraw from Mandatory Palestine in 1947,
it left decisions regarding the future of Palestine to the United
Nations. In May 1948 the Israeli state was established. This time
is known by Palestinians as the Nakba or ‘catastrophe’, during which
750,000 and 900,000 Palestinian men, women and children were driven out
of their homeland by Jewish militias, and an estimated 500 villages and
towns were depopulated and demolished.
To this day, there are more
than 5 million Palestinian refugees registered with the United Nations
Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in the occupied Palestinian territories,
Lebanon and Jordan as a result of the Nakba in 1948 and the
displacement that followed the Israeli occupation of Palestine in 1967.
Gaza,
the West Bank and East Jerusalem have now been under occupation for over 50
years, devastating the lives of millions of Palestinians.
The catastrophe of the Arab Palestinian people in 1948 continues today at the
hands of Israel, using the same old policies
and laws established by the British such as land confiscation laws,
home demolitions, ‘administrative’ detention, deportations, violent
repression, and the continuation of the expulsion of about 7.9 million
Palestinians who are denied their basic national and human rights,
especially their right to return and live normally in their homeland.
This catastrophe of the Palestinian people could not continue without
the support of Israel by the United States and Britain.
In the June 1967 war, Israel completed the conquest of Palestine by occupying the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. By signing the Oslo Accord
with Israel in 1993, the Palestine Liberation Organisation gave up its
claim to 78% of Palestine. In return they hoped to achieve an
independent Palestinian state on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with a
capital city in East Jerusalem. It was not to be.
The repercussions of the Balfour Declaration
are still coming in and they are represented today by the
Proclamation by
US President ,Donald Trump, which announced that Occupied Jerusalem is
the capital of the Israeli entity ,in addition to moving US Embassy to
it in the middle of 2018 in parallel with the 70th anniversary of the
Palestinian Nakba .All of these were also included within
the so called Deal of the Century that was announced at the beginning of
this year.
Having just formed a new coalition government following a third inconclusive election in one year, Benjamin
Netanyahu, the Likud leader, announced his plan to formally annex about 30% of the West Bank ,including the settlement blocs and the Jordan Valley. There is a
majority in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, for annexation. If
annexation takes place, it would leave the Palestinians with roughly 15%
of historic Palestine. It would also hammer the last nail in the coffin
of the two-state solution to which the international community still clings.
However, the
Palestinians stress their continuing steadfastness in the face of continued Israeli violations ,resisting the occupation schemes insisting on the Palestinian Right of Return home and
establishing their sovereign state with Jerusalem as its capital. And until measures are made by Israel to improve the standard of living, and
bring economic prosperity to the Palestinians living in Gaza, the West
Bank and East Jerusalem. Bringing some chord of social justice, and
recognition of the Palestinians identity, and stolen land given back to
them,and an end to their continuing use of apartheid practices., their
will be no peace. That is Balfours tragic legacy.
Yet at the same time, Britain has a unique responsibility to make amends for its past, by
ensuring the basic human rights of Palestinians are met, to help stop
Israel’s violations of international law in the occupied Palestinian
territories, and recognising a state of Palestine, make the declaration "right" by assuring Palestinian's rights at last, and to ensure that future generations of Palestinians can live
in dignity.
The Palestinian Return Centre (PRC) has called on Britain to apologise to the Palestinians for the 1917 Balfour Declaration , which led to the displacement of thousands of Palestinians from their homeland.
In a statement issued on the occasion of the 103rd anniversary of the pledge, PRC said that it is time for Britain to act with responsibility and extend an apology over the notorious Balfour Declaration. The PRC also called on Britain to acknowledge the political rights of the Palestinian people, which have been denied for more than a century.
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