My Dad, bless his soul, with no school education, a survivor of the two Great Wars, the Nakba (creation of the state of Israel in Palestine) in May 1948, Suez tripartite aggression against Egypt in 1956 and The Great Arab Defeat of 1967, always maintained till his death in late 1970s that imperial Britain was behind Arab plight in the region. Whenever there was a political discussion, he would specifically refer to what was commonly known in Arabic as Wa’id Belfour Al Mash’oum (Balfour’s pessimistic promise), or simply ‘Balfour Declaration’, as the “bombshell that disintegrated the Arab world ever since”.
Soon after the First World War ended with the almost total collapse of the Ottoman Empire, a new misery began when the then Britain’s foreign secretary in the coalition government of David Lloyd George, Lord Arthur James Balfour, sent a letter on November 2, 1917, to a leading British Zionist leader, Lord Walter Rothschild, promising “a Jewish home in Palestine”. The letter was sent for transmission to the “Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland”.
The president of the Zionist Federation was at the time none other than Chaim Weizmann. The content of that letter became widely known as the ‘Balfour Declaration’, which specifically committed imperial Britain to establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The declaration immediately caused an upheaval in the newly-born Arab states after more than 460 years of Ottoman rule, particularly when it was included in the so-called British Mandate over Palestine in 1920. My late old man and his generation rightly believed that Balfour Declaration paved the way for the Nakba of 1948 and they simply called it “Ightisab Felasteen” (the rape of Palestine).
The second huge blow the Arabs received just 22 days after the revelation of Balfour Declaration was the unveiling of a secret agreement that was signed a year earlier, in 1916, between the victorious imperial powers, Britain and France. The agreement, commonly known as Sykes-Picot Agreement, was signed by two senior diplomats, Britain’s Mark Sykes and France’s Francois Georges-Picot. The agreement defined what they described as “their mutually agreed sphere of influence and control in South Western Asia”, i.e. the Levants and neighbouring areas.
The Russian Tsarist Empire agreed to the agreement when it was signed and was handsomely rewarded. But when the Russian Tsar was toppled by the Bolshevik Revolution, the deal was immediately exposed to the public in Soviet newspapers Izvestia and Pravda on November 24, 1917, and in Britain’s Guardian three days later.
Both historic developments deeply devastated the young Arab Nations and heavily shattered the Arabs’ dream and hope of independence after many centuries of Ottoman dominance. But it was the Balfour intervention that eventually led to the creation of Israel in the heart of Arab land, creating lasting havoc that Palestinians and Arabs at large are painfully suffering from till this very moment.
SPECIAL COVERAGE ON BALFOUR DECLARATION:
Ramzy Baroud writes: How Britain became an obstacle to peace
Fawaz Turki writes: Dear Mr Balfour, your Zionist wrongs will be corrected
Jumana Al Tamimi writes: 67 words that changed course of Arab history
Mahmoud Abbas writes: Why Britain must say sorry for a century of injustice
Diana Buttu writes: We live a life of fear in an open-air prison
Fadi Esber writes: How Truman paved the way for Jewish occupation
What did Balfour’s letter say?
“Dear Lord Rothschild,
I have much pleasure in conveying to you on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.
A legacy of misery and pain
His Majesty’s Government views 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 non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
Palestinians scoff at Balfour celebrations
I should be grateful if you bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.”
It is clear, that what imperial Britain had deliberately done in Palestine, where Arabs were the clear majority, was practically carving away two-thirds of a land that it does not own and filled it, in collaboration with the powerful Zionist organisations in Europe, with Jewish immigrants.
This process gradually began in 1920 and was unlawfully authorised by the League of Nations in 1922, and culminated in 1940s, before the Nakba of May 1948. By then, according to United Nations records, an estimated 800,000 to a million Palestinians were forcibly removed from their homes and deported outside Palestine, only to be replaced by newly imported Jewish colonialists.
The 1922 League of Nations was effectively led by the British Empire and France. The US stayed out of it because the American administration of Woodrow Wilson opted to withdraw from foreign politics, following the great losses in the First World War. The new Soviet Union viewed the declaration as an Anglo-Franco “expansionist policy”, even though Moscow was among the first capitals to recognise the state of Israel when it was created in 1948.
Furthermore, coming hot on the heels of Balfour Declaration, Sykes-Picot agreement was the breaking point with colonial Europe as Arabs in general felt that there was an unforgivably act of betrayal committed by western powers, particularly, the British. The agreement had basically negated the UK’s promises to Arab leaders, made at the time through Colonel T.E. Lawrence (better known as Lawrence of Arabia), for a national Arab homeland in ‘Greater Syria’ that comprised Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Trans-Jordan, in exchange for supporting the British against the Ottoman Empire. The Arabs had become, ever since, or at least for the second half of last century, victims of betrayal and broken promises.
Mustapha Karkouti is a columnist and former president of the Foreign Press Association, London. You can follow him on Twitter @mustaphatache.
