100 years on, Balfour declaration triggers celebration, mourning

LONDON/JERUSALEM: In a 67-word statement composed 100 years ago, Britain endorsed the establishment of a Jewish homeland in the Middle East, triggering a process that would culminate in the creation of Israel - and with it one of the world’s most intractable conflicts.

On Thursday British and Israeli leaders commemorated the centenary of that statement, known as the Balfour Declaration after the foreign minister who penned it, with a banquet in the gilded halls of London’s Lan- caster House mansion.

But as UK’S Prime Minister Theresa May and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu dined, protesters in London and the Palestinian Territories gathered to demand Britain acknowledge the suffering they say the declaration has caused to Palestinians, and recognise their claim to statehood.

While Israel reveres Arthur Balfour, naming streets and a Tel Aviv school after him, Palestinians decry his declaration as a promise by Britain to hand over land it did not own.

The contested declaration is at the root of the Israeli-palestinian territorial conflict which, after several wars and decades of international diplomacy, remains unsettled.

Britain held Palestine, which had previously been under Ottoman rule, from 1922 until after the end of World War 2.

Israel declared independence in 1948, at the end of British Mandatory rule and after the UN General Assembly voted in 1947 in favour of a plan, rejected by Palestinian representatives, to partition Palestine into an Arab state and a Jewish state.

Britain has refused previous Palestinian demands for an apology, and does not officially recognise Palestine as a state.