Sixty seven words, jotted down by a senior member of the British political establishment exactly 100 years ago today, changed the course of the Middle East’s history forever. The Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917, had fateful consequences for the region and the world. It laid the foundations for the establishment of the state of Israel on land that belonged to someone else — the native Palestinian Arabs, who had lived there for millennia. The Palestinians, and indeed the broader Arab and Muslim world, continue to suffer the consequences of the then British foreign secretary Arthur James Balfour’s racist, colonial overreach to this day.
Even as the current British Prime Minister Theresa May sits down with her Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu for a festive dinner to “celebrate” the centenary of the event, it should be clear to all that the British establishment of the time bears the ultimate responsibility for decades of dispossession, occupation, wars, killings, and humiliation that the Palestinian people have suffered. The document is certainly not something to be celebrated, especially considering the fact that millions today continue to be impacted as a direct result of it.
In “ ... view[ing] with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”, Britain made millions of Palestinians homeless. The document also greatly lifted the morale of the Zionist movement, and was a shot in the arm for the infamous Zionist canard of “a land without people for a people without land”.
Balfour hailed from a wealthy, aristocratic family. He was a nephew of another infamous colonialist — three-time British prime minister and empire builder Robert Cecil. Balfour was himself prime minister from 1902 to 1905.
Towards the end of his declaration, almost as an afterthought, he said: “Nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”. There are two issues with this statement: (i) The “existing non-Jewish communities” were not minuscule minorities, they constituted 90 per cent of Palestine’s population; (ii) most certainly, the civil and religious rights of these communities have been “prejudiced”, in the form of a brutal occupation that has endured for decades. Among its consequences are regional wars, entire generations of stateless people growing up without hope in grim refugee camps, growth of political and religious extremism among the disenfranchised, and a general upending of normal life.
In 1948, Zionists militias — formed from among hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants who came to live in Palestine as a result of Balfour’s promise three decades earlier — engaged in major massacres and ethnic cleansing of the native Palestinian population, leading to the exodus of more than 800,000. It is on the blood and dispossession of these people that the state of Israel was built. More than six million Palestinians still live in exile, while roughly the same number eke out an existence under the brutal Israeli military occupation.
Britain callously broke its promises to the Arabs. In doing so, it made generations of Arabs and Muslims very suspicious about the machinations of former colonial powers, indeed of the western powers in general. Balfour’s document has engendered lasting enmity that has led to continued conflicts between Israel and its Arab neighbours. Not only have major wars been fought between the two sides from 1948 to 1973, but there has also been a continuous state of conflict — from invasions and air raids to assassinations and incarceration. To this day, the state that Balfour and his government “use[d] their best endeavours to facilitate” continues to prefer violence and war with the people under its occupation and its Arab neighbours over peace and coexistence. By refusing to take part in serious negotiations, carried out in good faith, which lead to the long-delayed establishment of an independent Palestinian state, the regime in Tel Aviv ensures that the seed sown a hundred years ago will continue to spread its poison for decades to come.
The Palestinians have already sacrificed a lot. All they now seek, under the banner of the two-state solution, is an independent state on only 22 per cent of their historical homeland. However, the western world’s fascination with, and celebration of, Israel doesn’t help in achieving this goal. It will only ensure that the regime will become more intransigent in its dealings with the Palestinians. If we are to close this dark chapter in modern world history, real steps must be taken by the international community towards ending the Israeli occupation, as per United Nations resolutions. As Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has noted, recognising the state of Palestine on the basis of the 1967 border, with East Jerusalem as its capital, will go some way towards fulfilling the political rights of the Palestinian people.
It is time to right the wrongs.
