PA daily op-ed: Balfour Declaration was given "for colonialist imperialist reasons"
Excerpt of op-ed by Omar Hilmi Al-Ghoul, regular columnist for the official PA daily
Headline: “Europe’s obligations regarding the promise”
“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 (apparently refers to the 1907 Imperial Conference led by former British Prime Minister Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, the minutes of which disprove claims of a conspiracy theory to undermine the Middle East –Ed.). 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…
The fact that 102 years have passed since the [issuing of] the ominous Balfour Promise has not made the Palestinian people forget its historical rights in its homeland… and it is still demanding its political rights to the land of its homeland. It has demanded from all of the European Union states, and especially Britain, as follows:
- An explicit and clear apology to the Palestinian people for giving the ominous promise.
- Immediate and direct recognition of the Palestinian state in the borders of June 4, 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital, and the guarantee of the Palestinian refugees’ right to return to their homeland on the basis of international [UN] Resolution 194.
- The imposition of economic, trade, and diplomatic sanctions on the Israeli colonialism state in order to force it to fulfill the demands for peace and the two-state solution.
- Compensating the Palestinians for their historical losses over the 71 years that have passed since the establishment of the State of Israel.
This is the minimum that the Palestinian leadership and people are prepared to accept.”