No peace until Israel destroyed! - The PA on the 104th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration
Fatah: “The Balfour Promise – a promise from one who has no ownership to one who has no right. Lest we forget!!”
In anticipation of today's 104th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, the Palestinian Authority is again confirming its most basic stance: There will be no peace until Israel is destroyed.
Describing the Balfour Declaration as “the most despicable global colonialist plan in history,” a regular columnist in the PA official daily added:
“Today, after 104 years, the world is still incapable of correcting this historical mistake and this severe injustice by putting an end to the colonialist Zionist project… After 104 years the conflict is still continuing, and it will not stop until this promise and its consequences are canceled.”
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Oct. 28, 2021]
In other words, until the “Zionist project” (i.e., Israel) is “cancelled,” the Palestinian conflict against Israel will continue.
Fatah echoed, this calling for the end of Israel:
Posted text: “104 years since #The_wretched_Balfour_Promise (i.e., Declaration)
The Balfour Promise will remain a living headline for our tragedy that will not end, except with the end of the occupation state – the racist apartheid state”
[Facebook page of the Fatah Movement – Nablus Branch, Nov. 1, 2021]
Fatah included the image above with the following text:
“The Balfour Promise – a promise from one who has no ownership to one who has no right. Lest we forget!!”
As Palestinian Media Watch has shown, every year the PA and its institutions mark November 2nd with a comprehensive diatribe against the declaration. This year, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas issued a new “presidential decree” in which he ordered that the “national flag” be flown at half-mast on all the PA governmental buildings, including embassies and representative offices abroad. According to the official PA news agency WAFA, the aim of lowering the flag is to remind “the world in general and the United Kingdom in particular of the suffering of the Palestinian people and their rights to achieve independence, statehood and self-determination.” [Oct. 10, 2021] Last year, the PA courts held a trial against the UK government demanding that it be held accountable for the declaration and its consequences.
Unsurprisingly, the PA never mentions that prior to 1917, much of the Middle East and other regions were part of the Ottoman/Turkish Empire for 400 years. They never mention that an independent “State of Palestine” never existed. They similarly do not mention that the Balfour Declaration was not merely a British whim, but rather a decision adopted and ratified by the international community at the San Remo Conference in 1920. The PA also never mentions that the Declaration was also adopted by the League of Nations in the 1922 Mandate for Palestine. At that time, “Palestine” included both Israel (including Judea and Samaria) and Jordan.
While pretending to the international community that Israel only has to withdraw from the areas it captured from Jordan in the 1967 Six Day War, and that this will be sufficient to achieve peace, the reality is that every day the PA further intensifies the anti-Israel propaganda and brainwashing of the Palestinian population. For the PA, only the cancellation of the Balfour Declaration and the undoing of its consequences – i.e. the destruction of Israel – will suffice.
To understand the central place of the Balfour Declaration in PA ideology read PMW’s op-ed: “Had there been no Balfour Declaration, the PA would have had to invent it.”
The following is a longer excerpt of the articles quoted above:
Headline: “104 years since the Balfour Promise – the thief has yet to be punished!”
“One hundred and four years ago the greatest theft and falsification in human history were committed. Palestine and the right to self-determination on its homeland were stolen from the Palestinian people. During World War I, and to be precise in the second half of 1917, the promise of theft (i.e., the Balfour Declaration) was drafted, which was given by British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to the Zionist movement on behalf of the government of the British kingdom. This promise gave it the right to establish ‘a national home for the Jewish people’ in Palestine…
The Balfour Promise was the most despicable global colonialist plan in history; Britain acted like the heir and owner of the Arab territories that had been controlled by the Ottoman Empire…
Today, after 104 years, the world is still incapable of correcting this historical mistake and this severe injustice by putting an end to the colonialist Zionist project…
After 104 years the conflict is still continuing, and it will not stop until this promise and its consequences are cancelled. The Palestinian people never was an enemy of the Jews as a religion, but it will not agree to the Zionist expansion project and will continue to fight it.”
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Oct. 28, 2021]
Headline: President orders flag to be flown at half-mast on Balfour Declaration anniversary
“President Mahmoud Abbas enacted today a presidential decree ordering the national flag to be flown at half-mast on November 2 of each year marking the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration.
The Balfour Declaration was a public statement issued by the British government in 1917 during the First World War announcing support for the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine, which later led to the suffering of the Palestinian people and their displacement from their land by the Zionist Movement.
The decree issued by President Abbas orders the flag of Palestine to be flown at half-mast in all of the government ministries and departments, and in all the Palestinian embassies and representative offices abroad.
The decree aims at reminding the world in general and the United Kingdom in particular of the suffering of the Palestinian people and their rights to achieve independence, statehood and self-determination. (In the Arabic version of the text this read “independence, freedom, and return” – Ed.)”
[WAFA, official PA news agency, English edition, Oct. 10, 2021]
The Balfour Declaration of Nov. 2, 1917 was a letter from British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Baron Rothschild stating that "His Majesty's government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." In 1922, the League of Nations adopted this and made the British Mandate "responsible for putting into effect the declaration," which led to the UN vote in favor of partitioning Mandatory Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state in 1947. In response, Britain ended its mandate on May 15, 1948, and the Palestinian Jews, who accepted the Partition Plan, declared the independent State of Israel. The Palestinian Arabs rejected the plan and together with 7 Arab states attacked Israel, in what is now known as Israel's War of Independence.
Fatah’s post further included the following images:
The image shows former British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour on the left with the original text of the Balfour Declaration to the left and an Arabic translation to the right. Further right is the PA map of “Palestine” that presents all of Israel together with the PA areas as “Palestine.”
Text below picture of Balfour: “A lethal promise – and a victim people
A century since the Balfour Promise
1917-2017”
Text on image: “The Balfour Promise – #The_wretched_promise
A promise from one who has no ownership to one who has no right.”[Facebook page of the Fatah Movement – Nablus Branch, Nov. 1, 2021]