Grudge of the Century: Palestinians Still Fuming Over 1917 Balfour Declaration

The Palestinian Authority referred to the Balfour Declaration granting the Jewish people a homeland in the Land of Israel as”the most despicable plot” and a “crime against humanity”

By Palestinian Media Watch

The Balfour Declaration of Nov. 2, 1917 was a letter from British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Zionist leader Baron Rothschild stating that “His Majesty’s government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”

Every year, Palestinian Authority (PA) officials condemn the Balfour Declaration and seem to compete in calling it names, denying its legitimacy, and refuting the validity of Jews’ right to a national home in “Palestine” as Palestinian Media Watch has reported. This year is no exception. Here are some examples of statements by PA officials and others about Balfour’s “ominous promise.”

PA Minister of Culture Atef Abu Saif stated that the Balfour Declaration is an “invalid promise” that Britain had no right to give, and that the Jews had no right to receive. He called it “a mark of disgrace in the history of humanity” and a “historic mistake,” and predicted that Israel/the Jews will disappear like previous “invaders.”

Meanwhile, the PLO factions issued a joint statement on the anniversary that named the Balfour Declaration “the most despicable plot in the history of the peoples.” The PLO claimed that the “ominous promise” was the result of the convergence of interests of the “colonialist states” Britain and the US and the Zionist movement. The PLO repeated the PA claim that the colonial powers used the Jewish people as a pawn in the Middle East to gain control in the region, steal its resources, and prevent the Arab countries from developing.

Blaming the Balfour Declaration for the current state of affairs in the entire Middle East, the PLO continued on Facebook, “To this day Palestine and the region in general are suffering from the catastrophic consequences of this promise, which constitutes a great crime against humanity.”

The PLO is headed by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. Its members include internationally designated terrorist groups, such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Between 2011 – 2018, the PA transferred more than 7 billion shekels to the PLO.

A regular columnist for the official PA daily repeated these claims in the official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida: “It must be emphasized again that the Balfour Promise (i.e., Declaration)… was given for colonialist imperialist reasons that were defined at the 1905-1907 Campbell-Bannerman Conference. This conference consolidated the ideological, colonialist, political, and economic background for establishing a foreign body in the middle of the people of the Arab nation in order to fragment its solidarity, steal its resources, and prevent its revival.”