In the eyes of the Palestinian Authority, one historical act is attributed with all future Palestinian suffering. That act is the Balfour Declaration, issued today, Nov. 2, in 1917. The declaration was the first contemporary, internationally recognized expression of the right of the Jewish people to establish a national homeland in the geographical area known as “Palestine”.
As exposed by
Palestinian Media Watch, the PA Ministry of Information
called the Balfour declaration: “The greatest crime in the history of mankind,” and the official PA daily called it “The crime of the century.”
PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ Advisor on Religious Affairs and Islamic Relations, Mahmoud Al-Habbash, who also serves as the PA’s Supreme Shari’ah Judge recently claimed that the Balfour declaration violated international law:
So how then, can one answer the PA’s claim?
While the Balfour Declaration was an important statement of policy on the part of the UK government, it certainly did not have the ability to bring about the creation of the Jewish state without wide international consensus.
Historically, the declaration was issued as part of a new regional order that was born out of World War I and the demise of the Ottoman Empire, which, inter alia, had controlled most of the Middle East for centuries. As part of the new order, new borders were drawn and countries were, for the first time, carved out.
In the Ottoman Empire, “Palestine” as the separate national country and identity, as the PA claims, never existed. Rather, the region was merely just another region of the empire with no specific definition.
The British agreement to reorganize the Middle East, did not occur within the vacuum but rather as part of international, and even Arab, consensus.
The Arab consensus was expressed in the 1919 between the Hashemite Faisal I bin Al-Hussein, on behalf of the Arabs and Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann, commonly referred to as the Faisal–Weizmann Agreement.
The Arab agreement then laid the foundations for both the Paris Peace Conference and the conference held in in San Remo, Italy, in April 1920. At the San Remo Conference, the international community then adopted the Balfour Declaration and made the preliminary designation that Britain, as a holder of the “Mandate” would implement the decision to create a national homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine:
The decisions taken in San Remo were then galvanized into international law on July 24, 1922, when the League of Nations – the UN predecessor – adopted the “Mandate for Palestine”.
The preamble to the Mandate reaffirmed the Balfour Declaration and once again confirmed the historical connection of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel by stating:
It is fundamental to understand, the when the Balfour Declaration was issued, there was no Arab “Palestinian” identity. As historian Abd Al-Ghani Salameh explained:
In other words, in making its claim, the PA focuses on just one event, taken out of the wider context, and which presents a reality that lacks a factual basis.
Israel’s legitimacy in international law, questioned by the PA and Al-Habbash, does not stem from the Balfour Declaration. Rather it is based on decisions made by the international community during and in the aftermath of WWI. The decisions taken at that time by the international community, are the basis for the existence of all the different countries in the Middle East.
Unfortunately, the PA does not allow real historical facts to cloud its judgment. Indeed, the PA attacks on and obsession with the Balfour Declaration, as exposed
here,
here,
here,
here, and
here, among others, by PMW, is probably the closest thing the PA has to a “national sport”.
The PA's monster under the bed: Taking historical events out of context and believing its own lies
palwatch.org
thecjn.ca
