THE PLIGHT OF PALESTINIANS

Historian Jonathan Schneer is spot on when he stressed: ‘Everything stems from the Balfour Declaration’

IF Myanmar’s Rohingya are the most marginalised minority in the world, then the world’s 12 million or so Palestinians must be the world’s longest suffering nation on earth — a nation that once thrived in the holy lands of Palestine, sacred to the three great faiths — Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of World War I, thanks largely to the agitation of the Axis Powers — the United Kingdom, France and Russia — aided by the Greeks, Palestine became a British-administered Mandate under the League of Nations from 1920 to 1948. At the same time, the Zionist Federation led inter alia by Theodore Herzl and Lord Rothschild of the banking dynasty, was actively seeking to establish a Jewish homeland in the lands of their ancestors in the holy lands.

Several quirks of history conspired to ensure that the Palestinian nation comprising Muslims and Christians remain marginalised to this very day after a century of pursuing their dream of statehood — in reality a curious anomaly, a de jure sovereign state in the Middle East recognised by 136 United nation members but with nonmember observer status, and under Israeli occupation.

If 2017 started off with promise for the Palestinians following a reconciliation in April between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, the Palestinian splinter party, which hitherto ruled the enclave of Gaza, by December the year had turned out to be precisely because those quirks of history had come home to roost.

They included centuries of persecution of European Jewry by Christian Europe, many of whom were given sanctuary in Muslim lands in the Maghreb and the Ottoman Empire, but which brutally resurfaced with the Jewish Holocaust in Nazi Germany during World War II, with the resultant guilt complex especially of certain European political elites.

Perhaps the defining quirk of history was purely accidental. The Allies in the First World War were running out of ammunition. In 1915, in Manchester University’s Bio-Chemistry labs, Professor Chaim Weizmann discovered a more sustainable way of making acetone, essential for the manufacture of the explosive powder cordite. His work attracted the attention of the British government led by Liberal Prime Minister David Lloyd George and six distilleries were requisitioned for the mass production of cordite. As a result, shell production rose from 500,000 in the first five months of World War I to 16.4 million in 1915, demonstrating the significant impact Weizmann had on the war effort.

George in his memoirs eloquently remembered his encounters with Weizmann, a staunch Zionist and friend of Herzl and Rothschild, who went on to become the first president of the “independent”state of Israel in 1948. George promised Weizmann help to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine — payback for his help in the Allies’ war effort. It is this promise that culminated two years later on Nov 2, 1917, a year before the end of World War I, in the infamous Balfour Declaration by the then British foreign secretary Arthur James Balfour.

“His Majesty’s government,” wrote Balfour in a letter to Lord Rothschild on that fateful day, “view with favour 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 nonJewish communities in Palestine.”

The caveat was no consolation to Palestinian Arabs because it paved the way for the creation of the Jewish state on May 14, 1948, forcing half of the Palestinian population into exile in the diaspora or as refugees in Lebanon and Jordan, where they still live in appalling conditions under UN “protection” after seven decades. Needless to say violence erupted with loss of lives and brutality on both sides. Three Arab-Israeli wars later, a strident Israel supported by a chauvinistic ideology propounded by both Jewish and Christian evangelicals (albeit for opposing theological views) and thanks to massive military support from the US has and continues to expand its territorial ambitions in flagrant violation of UN Resolutions.

Some Christian Zionists (evangelicals such as US Vice President Mike Pence) believe that the gathering of the Jews in Israel is a prerequisite for the Second Coming of Jesus. The idea that Christians should actively support a Jewish return to the Land of Israel, along with the parallel idea that the Jews ought to be encouraged to become Christians as a means of fulfilling a Biblical prophecy, has been common in Protestant circles since the Reformation. The irony is that the “logical” eventual aim of Christian evangelicalism is the destruction of Judaism as a faith and with that presumably the state of Israel as a homeland for Jews.

Historian Jonathan Schneer is spot on when he stressed: “Everything stems from the Balfour Declaration.”

Calls for Premier Theresa May to right the wrongs of the Balfour Declaration by recognising Palestine as a sovereign state have fallen on deaf ears.

Hardly had the dust settled over the Balfour Declaration centenary, US President Donald Trump upped the ante by announcing this month to move the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and, in so doing, to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. US defiance was strongly rebuked in a non-binding resolution of the UN General Assembly last week calling on the US to withdraw its recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The resolution was approved by 128 states, including Britain and India (two strong allies of Israel), with 35 abstaining and nine others voting against it.

The Muslim world, led by Turkey and Malaysia, convened an emergency summit in Istanbul with several countries stressing that they would declare East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine and move their embassies there. As Israel controls most of Palestinian territory, most missions to the latter are officially termed Representative Offices due to Israel not recognising a Palestinian state. Some 40 countries and the European have one or the other form of representation in the Palestinian territories, albeit mostly in Ramallah.

But the strident reaction of Nikki Haley, the ambitious Indian-descent US ambassador to the UN, threatening that Washington will remember those who voted against the US and might cut financial aid to states who voted in favour of the resolution, is revealing. It begs the question: “Who is running US foreign policy?” Is it ineffectual Secretary of State Rex Tillerson whose days are numbered, or is it Haley?