Lord Arthur Balfour
On this day, 106 years ago, one of history's most unjust declarations was made, when on November 2, 1917 the British government issued the Balfour Declaration, which laid the foundation for the establishment of a Jewish state at the expense of the indigenous Palestinian population. 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. The genocide we are witnessing in Gaza today is a direct result of these colonial efforts.
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
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.”And in the words of the late Palestinian academic Edward Said, the declaration was “made by a European power … about a non-European territory … in a flat disregard of both the presence and wishes of the native majority resident in that territory.
The indigenous Palestinian population’s political and national rights were ignored in the Balfour Declaration, not to mention their ethnic and national identity. Instead, Great Britain promised not to “prejudice the[ir] civil and religious rights,” and referred to Palestinians as “non-Jewish communities in Palestine.” The percentage of Jews living in Palestine in 1917 did not exceed 7%, yet the British attempted to rewrite history in order to justify their colonial policy.
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”
For all those that celebrate the Balfour Declaration. Balfour was an antisemite and wanted to migrate Jews out of Britain to solve the "Jewish problem". Arthur Balfour wrote about the Zionist movement that it would “mitigate the age-long miseries created for Western civilization by the presence in its midst of a Body [Jews] which it too long regarded as alien and even hostile, but which it was equally unable to expel or to absorb.”
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 from Palestine in May 1948 when the Israeli state was established. By this point, the Zionist paramilitary army was ready with a plan to colonise Palestine and the newly established United Nations was ready to take over the role of legitimising the occupation.
This time is known by Palestinians as the Nakba or ‘catastrophe’, when large-scale ethnic cleansing, saw more than 700,000 Palestinians lose their ancestral homes. Hundreds of Arab villages razed to the ground and 15,000 Palestinians killed in several massacres. Much of these events took place whilst streets of Palestine were still being patrolled by tens of thousands of British soldiers.
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. Today, the State of Israel, backed by the military and diplomatic might of the United States, continues this century-long pattern of denying the Palestinian people their right to self-determination. In violation of international law, Israel refuses to allow Palestinian refugees their right of return to the homes from which they or their ancestors were forcibly displaced by Israel during the Nakba in 1948; denies Palestinian citizens of Israel their equal rights; and imposes upon Palestinians in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip a brutal military occupation and suffocating siege. that is currently facing what amounts to genocide. 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.
On May 7, The Guardian newspaper regretted its support in 1917 for the Balfour Declaration, describing it as its “worst errors of judgment”.
The Guardian of 1917 supported, celebrated, and could even be said to have helped facilitate the Balfour Declaration,” the British daily wrote, adding that the then editor, CP Scott, was “blinded” to Palestinian rights due to his support of Zionism.
The Balfour Declaration is not just history, it's actuality. The Palestinian people still experience this declaration's catastrophic consequences to this day, which bear witness to such a historic injustice due to the persecution, repression, killing, arrests and demolition of homes and properties. that perpetuated one of the longest-running settler-colonial occupations on a land that was and remains exclusively Palestinian.
This painful anniversary coincides with the ongoing crises in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, especially in the Gaza Strip, which is witnessing the escalation of killings, organized terrorism, displacement, and the deliberate destruction of residential buildings, schools, hospitals, places of worship, and infrastructure. The occupying army continues to commit one massacre after another without any accountability. Just today they destroyed an entire neighborhood in the Bureij camp over the heads of its residents!
These actions constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Israeli occupation. Unfortunately, it highlights the failure of the international community to carry out its duties and assume its responsibilities in putting an end to this Israeli military aggression, providing protection for the Palestinian people, and obliging Israel, the occupying power, to comply with the principles of international law and relevant United Nations resolutions
It is important to note that the UK is currently assisting and providing cover for a second Nakba in which thousands of palestinians killed with the whole world watching one of Balfour's most terrible results. And of all of the nations to stand by and watch, it shouldn't be ours. Britain has played a role in creating this cycle of killing and bloodshed in the middle east. Our country, the former colonial power is jointly responsible for the disaster of the Balfour declaration, and is fully accountable to the atrocities and dehumanizing of Palestinians. But even till this day, the UK has not shown any remorse for the historical sin it had made.
Britain bears a moral and historical responsibility over the displacement and dispossession of millions of Palestinians and should therefore make every possible effort to remedy the wounds inflicted upon the Palestinians as a result of the Balfour Declaration by apologizing to the Palestinian people, and recognizing the Palestinian state on the June 4, lines with East Jerusalem as its capital in support of achieving a just, lasting and comprehensive peace in accordance with the vision of a two-state solution to ensure that future generations of Palestinians can live in dignity.The Israeli occupation should be brought to an end and Israel should be held accountable for its war crimes and crimes against humanity. Short term we should demand an immediate ceasefire.The war must be stopped, and civilians protected.
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