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In this article, Elias Zananiri,
Israeli Society, argues that the British government bears a moral responsibility for the impact of the Balfour Declaration on the Palestinian people and should now make recompense by recognising the State of Palestine and demanding Israel stop closing the window on the two-state solution.
Past History
I don’t know if the Balfour Declaration served Britain’s interests or whether it achieved tangible accomplishments for the British Empire. I am neither a historian nor a British tax payer who wants to know where his money goes. I am a Palestinian who is shattered with grief when I hear that the UK wants to celebrate ‘with pride’, in Prime Minister May’s words, the centennial anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, without even considering the implications of such a celebration for millions of Palestinians who lost their homeland because of that Declaration.
What pride can there be in a declaration that sought to create a homeland for the Jewish people while leaving another nation with nothing? Tough words? Maybe. But the Declaration was the opening shot of a protracted effort to create a new reality in the Middle East which left the Palestinians, my people, suffering ever since. The disaster that befell the Palestinians as a result of the Declaration requires remorse on the part of the British government. Countries that were ruled by the British Empire in the last century are already independent states. They don’t need Britain’s apology anymore. They licked their wounds of living under British rule and moved on. We, the Palestinians, continue until this very day to pay the price of that Declaration.
Britain, by the way, does know how to apologise, doing so for the 1845-1952 Famine in Ireland. But not for the Balfour Declaration? In our case, the British Mandate turned a deaf ear to the atrocities carried out against the Palestinians by Jewish armed groups, which had two future prime ministers in their ranks, Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir. These groups didn’t spare the British forces either. The bombing of the King David Hotel in 1946 was carried out by the Irgun, headed by Begin. Both men were placed on the ‘Wanted List’ by the British authorities. The British also suppressed Palestinian revolts against the Mandate and the increase of Jewish migration into Palestine.
Present Responsibilities
It seems the UK does not want to think about an apology and an admission of responsibility for the Balfour Declaration. The UK’s refusal to admit responsibility is not acceptable to Palestinians but, 100 years later, it is comprehensible. What is not is the decision to announce, a century later, that the British people should celebrate the anniversary with pride. Why should enlightened guardians of human rights and supporters of every people’s right to self-determination feel ‘pride’?
I grew up as a stateless Palestinian kid admiring Britain. But not for long. As I grew older and wiser it became obvious to me how detrimental the Balfour Declaration had been for the Palestinians. It imposed, by Great Power fiat, the ground for the creation of the State of Israel but it failed to honour the commitment 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’.
While viewing with favour ‘the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people’, the Declaration defined the indigenous population of Palestine as ‘non-Jewish communities’. For shame! Jews from all over the world were defined as the ‘Jewish people’ while the Palestinians living in the land of their ancestors for thousands of years were simply considered ‘non-Jewish communities’.
To add salt to the Palestinian wound, the Declaration offered an extra layer of protection of ‘the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country’. By securing a national homeland for the Jews in Palestine on one hand, and on the other ensuring rights and political status the Jews enjoyed in other countries, the Declaration was a double prize for the Jews and a knockout for the Palestinians. I know that many will not see it that way but that is exactly what it meant for an unborn nation that, in due time, lost its homeland and saw the majority of its people either kicked out of, or voluntarily leave Palestine in the aftermath of the 1948 proclamation of the State of Israel.
The British ruled over India for a little less than a hundred years and they never promised the subcontinent to a third nation. Instead they split India into two separate states: India and Pakistan. So why didn’t the UK follow suit in Palestine and endorse the 1947 Partition resolution?
Some will argue that Palestinians never accepted the 1947 partition of Palestine. But we had good reason to reject it: it lacked all fairness. It allocated for a future Jewish state 56.74 per cent of the total area of Palestine, gave a future Arab state 42.88 per cent and left Jerusalem and Bethlehem under a special international status. So, three years before the British Mandate ended, with Palestinian Muslims and Christians forming 68 per cent of the population and the Jews 31 per cent, the Jews were allocated more than half of the total area of Palestine.
Future Recompense
No one can undo this history. Nevertheless, a lot can be done to make the Declaration centennial a day for a dramatic move that is not meant to undo what took place a century ago but to begin to repair the damage it caused.
The UN General Assembly on 29 November 2012 adopted Resolution 67/19 which recognised the State of Palestine based on the 4 June 1967 lines as a non-member state, adding one more internationally-recognised term of reference for the two-state solution, i.e. Israel and Palestine living side by side in peace and security. The least the UK should consider is endorsing this resolution to safeguard the two-state solution at a time when the far-right government in Israel is doing everything it can to kill it.
Every expression of concern over the fate of the two-state solution remains meaningless when nothing is done in practice. It is hypocrisy in its worst form. Criticism, press releases, expressions of concern, even the condemnation issued in June by Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson about the Israeli announcement of 3000 more settlement units in the West Bank, do not stop the settlement expansion that endangers the two-state solution. Should the international community fail to exert pressure on Israel, then Israelis and Palestinians will be subjected to a permanent conflict, driving both sides along the path of mutual destruction.
The UK bears a moral responsibility for the consequences of the Declaration. A recognition of the State of Palestine would be a solid step in the right direction. But the clock is ticking. We are moving rapidly closer to the centennial anniversary. So why not make the anniversary a different day? Make it a day of atonement, a day of repairing the damage, a day for giving back to the Palestinians some of the rights the Declaration took away?
The Palestinians never disappeared as a result of the Declaration and what followed. On the contrary, we remained and we are today an inseparable part of the Middle East. Yes, our state is under occupation, but this is not unique. Populations have lived under occupation for as long as the occupiers could suppress them. Eventually those populations earn their freedom and build their states. Palestinians will be no exception.
The alternative will be bad for all parties. The denial of the Palestinian national rights to self-determination and statehood will continue to nourish conflict in the region and beyond. Various terror groups like ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and others will continue to use the question of Palestine as an excuse to incite, recruit new members and mobilise public support for the despicable crimes they commit. Solving the Arab-Israeli conflict would deny them this excuse.
The calls to sue the UK for Balfour can stop. In return, we need a courageous decision by the UK to undo part of the injustice that befell the Palestinians because of the Declaration. The British people should recognise the State of Palestine instead of dancing on the ruins this declaration caused to the Palestinian people.
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The Palestine National council welcomed the acceptance of the state of Palestine as a full member of the world’s largest international police organization (INTERPOL).
In a stinging diplomatic defeat of Israel, at Interpol’s annual General Assembly in Beijing, the Palestinians’ membership bid was accepted with 75 countries voting in favor of the State of Palestine.
After the vote of the Interpol’s Executive Committee, the PNC chairman, SaleemZa’anoon released a statement welcoming Interpol’s decision, hailing it as a victory for Palestine,particularly, after Israel’s fierce objection and continued failed attempts to foil the Palestinians joining Interpol. The US administration too, objected to Palestinian’s membership bid and helped Israel lobby against it. The State of Palestine considers this membership as a new testimony, a statement of the justice of the Palestinian cause and the Palestine people’s just rights, a belief and recognition of international community of the ability and readiness of the State of Palestine to shoulder its international obligations and responsibilities, advancement of global rule of law and consolidation of international legal personality of state of Palestine.
The PNC expressed its thanks and gratitude to the countries that upheld their principles in voting in favor of Palestine becoming a member of Interpol.
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Israel’s occupation government has created a new authority to provide municipal services to illegal Jewish settlers in Hebron, prompting accusations that Israel is trying to annex part of the occupied West Bank. Israel’s military gave an official settlement status to the Jewish settlers in the city of Hebron.
Hebron, in the southern West Bank, is home to around 200,000 Palestinians, with about 800 settlers living under Israeli army protections in the heart of the city.
The Palestine liberation Organization (PLO)has condemned the illegal Israeli apartheid policies against the indigenous Palestinian people. The new Israeli policies provide increased power for the illegal Israeli settlers to act with impunity against Palestinians.
According to Palestinian officials, the move breaks the 1997 Hebron treaty signed by the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Israeli government, the treaty split up Hebron city into two parts H1 and H2. The H1 area comprising 80 per cent of the city under full sovereignty and control of the PA, while H2 was to be administered under the Israeli military. However, according to the treaty, civil issues, such as infrastructure, construction and traffic arrangements in the settler’s section of H2 was to be under PA civil control.
The new military older signed by Israeli Head of the Central Command, Major General RoniNuma, will bilaterally do away with that caveat of the treaty, putting such civil issues under local settler administration, according to Wafa.
The settlements are located on lands which Israel seized during the 1967 Middle East war. The international community has repeatedly condemned the settlements as illegal, as a breach of international low and a hurdle to peace.
Governor of occupied Hebron Kamel Hamid condemned the Israeli army decision to expand municipal powers in Hebron to Israeli settlers that live illegally in the city, reportedly. describing the move as “the most dangerous since 1967. “The order jeopardizes any political settlement in the area, which stands in contradiction with the peace process and the establishment of a Palestinian state”Hamed said. Hamid warned that the decision will lead to “ a state of confusion and chaos and will threaten order and stability in the area”, calling for “ urgent political, diplomatic and legal action”.
PLO Secretary – General SaebErekat expressed anger over increased Israeli settlement activity, saying that “ the separate legal status for settlers has created an apartheid- like situation in Hebron where a tiny minority has preferential treatment over the majority”, adding “ This is a new Israeli violation of its obligation under international law and UN resolutions particularly UNSC 2334, which reiterated the international community’s rejection and condemnation of these illegal actions.
Erekat cautioned against the danger of continued Israeli settlement activities and their repercussions on the region, he called on the international community specially the UN Security Council, to shoulder its responsibilities in taking the necessary steps to enforce its decision and compel Israel, the occupying power, to stop all its settlement policies.
Spokesman of Fatah Revolutionary Council Osama Al-Qawasmi said the order was an attempt by Israel’s racist regime to Judaize the old city of Hebron. He demanded immediate and urgent action at official, popular, legal, and diplomatic levels against the order, and called on the international community to immediately prevent these racist destructive and discriminatory measures that violate international law and signed agreements.
The Israel settlement watchdog group,” Peace Now” denounced the move, saying in a statement that “ by granting an official status to the Hebron settlers, the Israeli government is formalizing the apartheid system in the city.
“Peace Now” added that the military decision de facto grants “official status” to Israeli settlers living in Hebron against international law. Due to the timing Peace Now called the new military order “another illustration of the policy of compensating the most extreme settlers for their illegal actions.”
Israeli settlers in Hebron are notoriously extreme in their beliefs and actions against the Palestinian population.
Three years before the Hebron Protocol was established, Israeli-American settler Baruch Goldstein carried out a massacre in the Ibrahimi Mosque, shooting and killing 29 Palestinians in the middle of prayer and injuring 125. On 18 March . 1994, the United Nation Security Council issued resolution 904 which strongly condemned the massacre and called for measures to be taken to guarantee the safety and protection of the Palestinian civilians.
While Israel maintained security control over the area under the 1997 agreement, municipal services to Palestinians and settlers were provided by the Palestine Authority. The West Bank has been under Israeli occupation since 1967 war, and all Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories are illegal under international law, and have been condemned repeatedly by the United Nations. The establishment of a separate municipal entity in Hebron is just the latest in a number of actions taken by Israel to reinforce the illegal settler presence in the city. Last week, Israeli defense minister Avigdor Lieberman upgraded the status of settlers in Hebron so that they will receive the same services provided to other West Bank settlements, and transferred jurisdiction over the area from the Palestinian Authority (PA) to the Israeli Interior Ministry.
Israel was angered following the UNESCO declaration of the Old City of Hebron as a Palestinian World Heritage Site endangered by Israel. UNESCO has voted to recognize Hebron’s Old City and the Ibrahimi Mosque as Palestinian heritage sites despite diplomatic pressures by the US and Israel to recruit the support of enough member states to vote against the move.This decision infuriated Israel and delighted the Palestinians. This time UNESCO determined that the Ibrahimi Mosque is a Palestinian heritage site, meaning that it is not a Jewish site and that it is in danger, emphasizing that it is a part of the State of Palestine. The Worldorganisation also approved the Palestinians’ right to register Hebron and the Ibrahimi Mosque under Palestinian sovereignty and as World Heritage sites and as an endangered site. This vote is considered a success in the diplomatic battle Palestine is fighting on all fronts.
As Palestinians living under colonial occupation are marking 100 years since the Balfour Declaration, 70 years since the UN partition plan and 50 years of the Israeli occupation, it is clear that the international community bears a legal, political and moral responsibility to fulfill the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people and hold Israel accountable.
Regretfully such actions and practices could not have taken place without the compliancy of the international community. That is why concrete steps should be taken by the international community to end the systematic Israeli violations of International Humanitarian Law. The time is overdue for real and urgent action in order to save the prospects of a political solution, the two-state solution on the 1967 borders and the chances for a just and lasting peace in Palestine and in the rest of the region.
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According to a report published by Human rights Center (AL-Mizan) stated the Israeli occupation had been holding 249 Palestinian martyrs’ bodies since the 60s. The report further stated that the occupation refuses to hand over the martyrs’ bodies to their families and refrain from giving them necessary death certificates. In addition, the occupation refuses to announce the names of the martyrs whose bodies it holds, the place at which they are being held, and reason for holding the bodies.
The report highlights that the Israeli occupation systematically holds the bodies of Palestinian martyrs as part of mass punitive measures. The report also refers to keeping Palestinian martyrs’ bodies in morgue refrigerators or military cemeteries called “cemeteries of numbers,” in which the Israeli occupation buries the body of the martyr and gives each grave a number with no name. All relevant information is kept in special file with the responsible security body.
The Jerusalem Centre for legal aid petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court earlier this year, demanding the Israeli military disclose the number of secret cemeteries it has, where they are, the condition they are in, and the names and the total number of bodies held with them. It also demanded that a DNA bank be set up, so that bodies can still be identified in the future if close relative die.
The Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association (Addameer) and the legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel (Adalah) condemned Israel’s practices of withholding bodies as “ a severe violation of international humanitarian law as well as international human rights law, including violations of the right to dignity, law including violations of the right to dignity, freedom of religion, and the right to practice culture.
The Palestine National council calls upon regional and international parliamentary unions, first and foremost, the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) to suspend Israel’s Knesset membership holding it accountable for passing these discriminatory laws which violate all international laws and conventions, international legitimacy resolutions and a gross violation to the charter of the United Nations.
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The Palestinian National Council, PNC warned of attempts by the Israeli occupation to impose new facts inside the holy shrine after the three Palestinians resisting the occupation were killed inside the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque. The PNC said in a press statement Friday that the closure of the Al-Aqsa Mosque today and the banning of Friday prayers for the first time since 1969, is a serious crime and aggression, a blatant attack on holy sites and an attack on the rights and freedom of Palestinian Muslims and Christians to practice their religious rituals.
The PNC stressed that all that is happening is the result of the continued Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, including the city of Jerusalem, the capital of the Palestinian state, and that the solution is to end the occupation and stop all its attacks on our people and holy sites and grant the Palestinian people their full rights on their land.
The PNC called on the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the League of Arab States and the people of the Arab and Islamic nations to protect the Al-Aqsa Mosque from the aggression of the occupation and to thwart all attempts to control it.
The PNC called on the United Nations and its institutions to protect the Islamic and Christian sanctities in Jerusalem and to condemn and reject all Judaization measures carried out by the occupation over the Holy City being a part of the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967.
The PNC saluted the steadfastness of our people in the city of Jerusalem and their response to the aggression and aggression of the occupation, praising their defense and protection of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and condemned at the same time the arrest of the General Mufti of the Holy Diwan Sheikh Mohammed Hussein in front of the Alasbat Gate.
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The PNC calls on Great Britain to bear its legal and moral responsibility for the consequences of its infamous declaration, and for the catastrophes, misery, tragedy, injustice and mass displacement, this declaration created after its promise of a national home for the Zionists gangs in Palestine at the expense of its indigenous people.
In a statement issued on Tuesday by the PNC emphasizing the importance of uniting Palestinian, Arab and conscientious people’s efforts all over the world to exert pressure on the British government obliging it to do justice to the Palestinian people and expiate for its crime and historic sin towards our land and sons of our people whose ancestors have lived for millennia in Palestine.
The PNC calls upon the House of Commons to open up the Balfour declaration file and reconsider it with the aim of putting pressure on the British government and unequivocally recognize the State of Palestine, bearing the consequences of its promise, in the framework of achieving justice which our people have been denied almost through one hundred year, whereas the British position still doesn’t recognize the state of Palestine.
The PNC demands the Palestinian, Arab institution, Arab league, the IslamicCooperation Organization, Non-aligned Countries and all people who are united in solidarity with our people, support, back President Mahmoud Abbas’s plan to sue Britain over its Balfour Declaration for being a direct cause of the Palestinian catastrophe and for its unadherence to its obligations as a mandatory power to assist and convey the Palestinian people to independence and establishment of the state.
The PNC emphasizes that our people, future generations will never pardon or have mercy upon conspirators and those who cause our people displacement, denying them to live in their homeland freely and respectfully. This unprecedented declaration led to mass emigration of hundreds of thousands of Jews to Palestine and establishment of colonial settlements in it, exposing our people to massacres and displacements at the hands of the Zionist gangs under the patronage, support of the mandatory government of Britain.
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The Palestinian National Council, PNC strongly condemn and denounce the Israeli occupation authorities' arrest of Khaleda Jarar, a member of the Palestinian National Council and the Palestinian Legislative Council on Sunday. The PNC, in a press release on Monday, said that the arrest is a crime that violates the rights of Palestinian legislators, and is a flagrant violation of international law practiced by Israel against legislators and the Palestinian People. This crime comes in a string of political and on the ground escalation against the Palestinian people, their leaders, their institutions, and rights.
The PNC demanded that the Inter-Parliamentary Union, in particular, and all other regional and international parliamentary unions, to condemn the arrest of MP Khaleda Jarrar and condemn and denounce the continued detention of the remaining 11 members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, 9 of them under administrative detention, by the Israeli occupation authorities.
The PNC called upon the Inter-Parliamentary Union to voice their concerns over these crimes and Israeli violations. The PNC also demanded the release of the detained MP members and to take immediate punitive measures against the Israeli Knesset, which is a partner to the Israeli government in all its crimes and violations against the Palestinian people.
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- OCHA report: Gaza situation on the down trend, West Bank not doing much better
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- The World Heritage Committee meeting in Krakow has inscribed Hebron
