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Palestinian lawyers sue Britain for 1917 Balfour Declaration in Nablus court
”Pay attention to us!“ [IsraelTimes] Paleostinian lawyers file a complaint to sue the British government for the 1917 declaration setting out London’s support for a national home for the Jewish people in Paleostine.The lawyers file a complaint in the West Bank town of Nablus that claims "the suffering of the Paleostinians" stemmed from this document. The Balfour Declaration, signed by the then-British foreign secretary Arthur James Balfour, is seen as a precursor to Israel’s creation in 1948. "The British mandate is at the root of the suffering of the Paleostinian people and has paved the way for the violation of their rights and the plunder of their land," Munib al-Masri, head of the Federation of Independent and Democratic Trade Unions, tells a news conference in Ramallah. As well as the trade unions group, the complaint is filed on behalf of the International Commission to Support Paleostinian People’s Rights and the Paleostinian Journalists’ Syndicate. The Balfour Declaration was published on November 2, 1917, a year before the end of World War I. In one sentence it announced the British government’s backing for the establishment within Paleostine, then a region of the Ottoman Empire, of "a national home for the Jewish people." It was a shock to the Arab world, which had not been consulted and had received vague promises of independence of its own in the post-war break up of the defeated Ottoman Empire. The Paleostinians have continuously condemned the declaration, which they refer to as the "Balfour promise," claiming Britannia was giving away land it did not own. With the Balfour Declaration, London was seeking Jewish support for its war efforts, and the Zionist push for a homeland for Jews was an emerging political force. The British Mandate for Paleostine was later set up in the wake of World War I, and ran until Israel’s declaration of statehood in 1948. Posted by: trailing wife 2020-10-24 |
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