SOME 95 years ago, the Balfour Declaration was issued granting the Jews the right to create a national home in Palestine. The declaration came in the form of a letter sent by the British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to Baron Walter Rothschild, the leader of the British Jewish Community on November 2, 1917. The letter reads: "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. This letter or declaration has always been seen by the Arabs as the promise of one that gives away something he does not own to someone who doesn't deserve it. This is because the government of Britain decided to offer the world Jews a national home in a land, which happened to come under its mandate following World War I. The Ottoman Empire, which sided with Germany, lost the war and so its possessions in the Arab world were given to the winning European countries including Britain. The significant point in this letter is the part referring to the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, the words that refute the Israeli claim of inhabiting a land empty of people. However, the letter or the declaration still did not offer enough protection to the rights of the Palestinian people, the original inhabitants of this land to which tens of thousands of Jews emigrated since that date before the UN announced the creation of the state of Israel in May 1947. That is why this declaration is continued to be seen as a terrible fault or even sin committed by the then government of Britain against the Palestinian people, a matter that not only Arabs but some European and American liberals see as worthy of apology. Last month, an international campaign was launched to force Britain to apologise for its historic mistake. Under the title of ‘Britain, it's time to apologise' the campaign was launched by the Palestinian Return Centre (PRC) targeting the collection of one million signatures asking Britain to apologise to the Palestinian people. "It's nearly 100 years since the UK Foreign Secretary, Arthur James Balfour, pronounced the Balfour Declaration, on 2nd November 1917, promising a homeland for the Jews in Palestine. Ever since, the Palestinians have suffered tremendously under the shadow of Britain's colonial past," reads the London-based PRC statement. The Palestinian Return Centre, with other partners around the world, is preparing to launch a global campaign to mark the centenary of the Balfour Declaration. The campaign, which will be launched in the UK, seeks to gather a million signatures from those seeking justice in Palestine, in condemnation of British colonial policy between 1917 and 1948. It is true that if such an apology were made, it would not correct this historic fault or enable the Palestinians to restore their homeland or even create their independent state on the territories occupied in 1967. However, it would still be a start for forcing Britain and the other Western powers to turn their backs on Israel and offer the deserved support to the Palestinians. Strangely, many Arabs have forgotten the British contribution to their crisis of having the Israeli state planted at the heart of their world and merely talk about the American blind bias towards Israel that prevents a just solution to this conflict from being reached. Even those realising the British role in the crisis believe that this Balfour promise made by the then British Foreign Secretary is the only crime the UK committed against the Palestinians. In fact, it was the then British rulers that enabled the Jews to conduct a systematic ethnic cleansing and evacuation of the Palestinian people from the land to pave the way for the creation of the Israeli state some three decades after the making of this promise. Many people, including Arabs, think that the sufferings of the Palestinians started after the creation of the state of Israel and that the cruellest massacre and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians were that conducted against the inhabitants of the small Palestinian village of Deir Yassin on April 9, 1948. This massacre, which claimed more than 250 lives, was intended to create terror in hearts of other Palestinians to encourage them to pick up their bags and leave. At the time, Jewish soldiers entered the village that lay on a hill to the west of Jerusalem and began indiscriminately shooting at villagers, randomly killing many. The remaining villagers were then gathered together and shot dead. With this same terrible mentality and brutality, the immigrant Jews, under protection of the British mandate to Palestine, managed to entirely clear Palestinian towns and cities of their Arab inhabitants to become fully occupied by the newcomers. The Palestinian port city of Haifa is just one example. The Palestinian inhabitants, numbering up to 75,000 citizens, who had been living in this city since the mid-eighteenth century were engulfed by Jewish emigrants for some three decades from 1917 until the UN adopted a Resolution for the Partition of Palestine. Haifa was supposed to be the last exit point of the British troops to leave Palestine in August 1948. However, the date was brought forward to mid-May 1948, but even before that date, the Palestinians, who were supposed to live under protection of the British forces, had been subjected to systematic ethnic cleansing and killing by the Jews. In April of the same year, the British officers advised the Palestinian populations that it was best for them to leave Haifa. They even ordered the people through loudspeakers to evacuate the city and to head towards the port where they could gather to await further instructions. However, they received nothing but being fired on from large guns that were placed on the hillside. The people who survived this massacre were shipped in boats out of their land. In one single day, the Arab population of Haifa was fully expelled under the nose of the British forces. The time is overdue to raise the case and force the British government to officially express apology to the Palestinian people not only for the said Balfour Declaration but for wickedly conspiring against them with the Zionist Jews.
