November
2nd, 1917
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.
"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, 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."
I should
be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist
Federation.
Yours
sincerely,
Arthur
James Balfour
The anger and the sense of injustice surrounding this declaration has only grown the longer the Palestinians have suffered under Occupation and as refugees from their homeland. The catastrophes that have befallen the Palestinian people in the last century were already brewing by 1917 and the Balfour Declaration is one of the most bald-faced moves that ultimately contributed to the 1948 Nakba which resulted in 914,221 UN registered refugees by 1950. The Balfour Declaration is often seen as the act of one foreign power, promising the land to another people neither of whom had the right to the land, either to give it away or receive it. Despite the many conflicting statements that the British government put out in the years following 1917 trying to renege on Balfour's promise or lessen it's impact (for instance the 1922 British White Paper), the fact is that the legacy of Balfour has endured and it has cost the Palestinian people everything.
The women's group at Dar Assadaqa were discussing the events of Balfour Day and the Balfour Declaration in Sunday's session and it is clear the wounds are still as painful as ever.
Some of the women recalled the way Balfour Day used to be remembered in Abu Dis, how all the children were let out of school to join the protests in the streets, to demonstrate their determination not to forget the injustice which led to their land being stolen and occupied. However this has not happened since 1995 following the Oslo Accords and the establishment of the Palestinian Authority as a governmental body in the West Bank.
This year on Balfour Day, the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, gave a television interview in which he expressed his desire to see and visit his home town of Safed, in pre-1948 Palestine, but declared he had no wish to return there to live. There have been many articles online and in the press denouncing this statement and the women in our group on Sunday were also extremely angry. The women talked of the many poor Palestinian refugees who have over the years been offered millions of dollars to give up their right to return and hand in their refugee cards but who have always resisted the chance for monetary gain at the cost of letting go of their homeland. The women compared their position with the millions of Jewish people the world over who have the "right to return" to Israel despite never having lived on the land previously. In contrast, Palestinians whose families have lived and worked on the land continuously for hundreds of years have been forcibly removed from those lands and are now locked out by a massive concrete wall that reaches up to 9 metres high and electric fences that stretch over 400 miles through the West Bank.
One of the women from the group who was born in 1972, talked about never knowing any life outside of Occupation. All her life she has been waiting and hoping and working for an end to the Occupation, for the chance to see Palestine be free. It is now 95 years since the Balfour Declaration callously promised the land away from the Palestinian people but they are still here and just as determined to assert their rights to the land they have lived on for thousands of years no matter what Balfour wrote in 1917 and no matter what Abbas declared in 2012.
The anger and the sense of injustice surrounding this declaration has only grown the longer the Palestinians have suffered under Occupation and as refugees from their homeland. The catastrophes that have befallen the Palestinian people in the last century were already brewing by 1917 and the Balfour Declaration is one of the most bald-faced moves that ultimately contributed to the 1948 Nakba which resulted in 914,221 UN registered refugees by 1950. The Balfour Declaration is often seen as the act of one foreign power, promising the land to another people neither of whom had the right to the land, either to give it away or receive it. Despite the many conflicting statements that the British government put out in the years following 1917 trying to renege on Balfour's promise or lessen it's impact (for instance the 1922 British White Paper), the fact is that the legacy of Balfour has endured and it has cost the Palestinian people everything.
The women's group at Dar Assadaqa were discussing the events of Balfour Day and the Balfour Declaration in Sunday's session and it is clear the wounds are still as painful as ever.
Some of the women recalled the way Balfour Day used to be remembered in Abu Dis, how all the children were let out of school to join the protests in the streets, to demonstrate their determination not to forget the injustice which led to their land being stolen and occupied. However this has not happened since 1995 following the Oslo Accords and the establishment of the Palestinian Authority as a governmental body in the West Bank.
This year on Balfour Day, the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, gave a television interview in which he expressed his desire to see and visit his home town of Safed, in pre-1948 Palestine, but declared he had no wish to return there to live. There have been many articles online and in the press denouncing this statement and the women in our group on Sunday were also extremely angry. The women talked of the many poor Palestinian refugees who have over the years been offered millions of dollars to give up their right to return and hand in their refugee cards but who have always resisted the chance for monetary gain at the cost of letting go of their homeland. The women compared their position with the millions of Jewish people the world over who have the "right to return" to Israel despite never having lived on the land previously. In contrast, Palestinians whose families have lived and worked on the land continuously for hundreds of years have been forcibly removed from those lands and are now locked out by a massive concrete wall that reaches up to 9 metres high and electric fences that stretch over 400 miles through the West Bank.
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| The Apartheid Wall surrounding Qalqiliya. |
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