Palestinians call on Britain to apologize for Balfour Declaration
Palestinians on Saturday marked the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration by calling on Britain to apologize for the 1917 pledge supporting the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people in Palestine.”
The PA government in Ramallah called on Britain to “quickly remove the injustices of the ominous Balfour Declaration by correcting its historic mistake and recognizing the independent Palestinian state on the borders of June 4, 1967, with Jerusalem as its capital.”
Ibrahim Milhem, spokesperson for the PA government, said that the Palestinians “fell victim to the greed of colonialism, expansion and ethnic cleansing” as a result of the Balfour Declaration.
The PA Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the Palestinian leadership “succeeded in thwarting all American and Israeli attempts to impose the new promise – the ‘Deal of the Century’ – on our people,” a reference to US President Donald Trump’s yet-to-be-announced Middle East peace plan.
In a statement marking the November 2 anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, the ministry called on Palestinians to rally behind PA President Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian leadership so they could continue confronting American and Israeli “schemes” against the Palestinians and their rights.
“These days, we are hearing about a new promise that is equally as dangerous as the Balfour Declaration – the Declaration of Trump, [US senior presidential adviser Jared] Kushner, [former US presidential Middle East envoy Jason] Greenblatt, and [US Ambassador to Israel David] Friedman,” the ministry said. “Theirs is a promise to end Palestinian hope, destroy their right to establish a state and leave them to live as a minority under the Jewish state.”
The ruling Fatah faction denounced the Balfour Declaration as a “historic crime and a crime against humanity and not only the Palestinian people, who are the direct victim of this colonial promise.” Fatah called on the British government to “comply with international laws and recognize the state of Palestine, with east Jerusalem as its capital.”
Fatah also said that Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, as well as his policies toward the issue of Palestinian refugees and Jewish settlements, are a “new historical crime and a new colonial promise that came to complete the colonial project initiated by the [British] mandate.”
PLO Secretary-General Saeb Erekat said in a statement on the 102nd anniversary of the Balfour Declaration that Britain has the “responsibility to make a qualitative shift toward realizing the political rights of Palestine.” The anniversary, he said, “should serve as a reminder for the United Kingdom of its historical, moral and legal responsibility to take substantive action and play a proactive role in the fulfillment of the national rights of the people of Palestine.”
Erekat also called on Britain to apologize for the “resulting injustice of a colonialist statement that denied the Palestinian people their political rights and to take proactive measures against Israel’s colonial-settlement enterprise, including its products, companies and funding sources.”
Hanan Ashrawi, member of the PLO Executive Committee, said that it is time for Britain “to right its historic wrongs” against the Palestinians.
“A hundred and two years ago, the British Foreign Secretary signed a pledge that changed the course of the Palestinian people’s history, unleashing a century of compounded injustices, dispossession and denial of basic national and human rights,” Ashrawi said in a statement. “The Balfour Declaration was a moral, political and historic outrage, wherein a foreign colonial power had the audacity to promise a people’s homeland to another while denying their national and historic roots and dismissing them as mere ‘communities.’” She, too, urged the British government to recognize the Palestinian state.
In the Gaza Strip, hundreds of Palestinians staged a protest marking the Balfour Declaration anniversary. The protest was organized by several Palestinian factions, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The protesters called on Britain to apologize to the Palestinians and compensate them by committing to the idea of establishing “a Jewish home in Palestine.”