During the recent Arab League meeting, the Palestinian Authority made clear it intends to sue Britain over the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which helped clear the way for the modern State of Israel to come into existence.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) has appealed to the Arab League for help in suing the United Kingdom for the Balfour Declaration, a milestone on the way for the establishment of the State of Israel, the Palestinian Ma’an news agency reported.
Speaking to a gathering of Arab League leaders in Mauritania on Thursday, PA Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki urged those in attendance to “bring a suit against the British government over the ominous Balfour Declaration which resulted in the Nakba (catastrophe) for the Palestinian people.”
The document, al-Malki said, “gave people who don’t belong there something that wasn’t theirs.”
The Balfour Declaration – authored by then UK Foreign Secretary Lord Arthur James Balfour – was signed in 1917, and pledged British support for the establishment of a Jewish national homeland in what was then Ottoman-ruled Palestine.
Nearly a century ago, a letter sent from British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to Baron Walter Rothschild, a British Jewish leader, declared British support for the “establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”
Palestinians have since viewed the declaration as paving the way for the creation of the State of Israel at their supposed expense.
The 100th anniversary of the historic declaration will be celebrated next year, sure to prompt international anti-Israel activity.
In February, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) said in a statement that Great Britain bore “the primary responsibility” for “historical injustice in Palestine.”
Palestinian organizations have previously attempted to sue Britain over the Balfour Declaration.
By: United with Israel Staff