At least 12 dead in furnace explosion
THE UK’S Balfour Declaration, celebrated by Israel and despised by Palestinians, is turning 100 and remains as divisive today as it was when first proposed.
Britain’s promise to Zionists to create a Jewish home in what is now Israel, turns 100 this week, with events in Israel, the Palestinian territories and Britain drawing attention to the now yellowing document tucked away in London’s British Library.
Historians still muse about Britain’s motivations, and its commitment to the declaration waned in the decades after it was issued.
Yet the 67 words penned by a British Cabinet minister still resonate 100 years later, with both the Israelis and Palestinians seizing the anniversary to reinforce their narratives.
Each side is marking the centenary in starkly different ways, shining a light on the chasm between Israel and the Palestinians that some say was cleaved on November 2 1917.
“It’s so divisive even today because Zionists think that the Balfour Declaration laid the foundation stone for modern Israel, and they’re right to think that, and by the same token non-Jewish Palestinians and Arabs see it as the foundation stone of their dispossession and misery,” said Jonathan Schneer, a historian who authored a book on the document.
The declaration was the result of discussions between British Zionists seeking political recognition of their goal of Jewish statehood and British politicians embroiled in the First World War.
Written by British foreign secretary Lord Arthur Balfour and addressed to Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild, a British financier and Zionist leader, the declara- tion promised British assistance to create a Jewish homeland.
“His Majesty’s government 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,” the declaration goes, continuing with a caveat: “It being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.”
The declaration served as the basis for the British Mandate of Palestine, which was approved in 1920 by the League of Nations.
The following decades saw a spike in the number of Jews immigrating to Palestine.
With that came increased friction with the Arab population.
Israel views the pledge as the first international recognition granted to the Jewish people’s desire to return to its historic homeland.
“The international impetus was, undoubtedly, the Balfour Declaration,” Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said this week. Mr Netanyahu will mark the anniversary in London tonight at a dinner hosted by the current Lords Balfour and Rothschild and attended by Prime Minister Theresa May.
The Palestinians see the declaration as the original sin, a harbinger of their “nakba”, or catastrophe, the mass displacement that resulted from the war surrounding Israel’s creation in 1948 and a refugee crisis that reverberates across the region to this day.
At least 12 people were killed and dozens more injured in an explosion yesterday at a thermal power plant in northern India.
A pipe carrying ash from the burning coal exploded in the newly installed boiler at the power plant in Unchahar in Uttar Pradesh state, Sanjay Khatri, the area’s top administrative officer, said.
The explosion spewed hot ash over workers at the plant.
Police said the death toll is likely to increase because many suffered severe burns.