PA: We must "not only to expel Israel from the UN, but also to work seriously to dismantle it and restore the right to its original owners, the Palestinian people"
Excerpt of a column by Muwaffaq Matar, Fatah Revolutionary Council member and regular columnist for the official PA daily
Headline: “The Balfour Promise is the spark of the religious wars and bloody conflicts”
“The shameful act done by the representative of the Israeli racist settlement occupation system on the stage of the UN General Assembly is not surprising or strange (refers to Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan tearing apart the UN Human Rights Council’s annual report that attacks Israel -Ed.). This representative, who tore apart the UN Supreme Human Rights Council convention (sic., report) in front of the representatives of the member states, only reflects the nature of the [occupation] system government, which was established by a UN resolution…
We think that the massacres against the Palestinian people in its cities and villages, which are documented in the UN archives, are enough not only to expel this system from the UN, but also to work seriously to dismantle it and restore the right to its original owners (the Palestinian people) [parentheses in source]. This is because [this system] is a ticking bomb that was planted in the center of the civilized world, which is holy to believers from all ends of the earth, and it will blow up with the first spark of religious war in the area…
One hundred and four years have passed since the historical and unprecedented crime against humanity, which was committed by the mandate and colonialism state (Great Britain) [parentheses in source], which is known in the court of history as ‘the Balfour Promise’ (i.e., Declaration) case. We can consider Nov. 2, 1917, as the date when the Palestinian people’s tragedy and Nakba (i.e., “the catastrophe,” the Palestinian term for the establishment of the State of Israel) began…
The colonialist states are continuing to use the Zionist system to achieve their goals and protect their interests, while the victim is the Palestinian people…
What made the most shocking crime in human history unique is that this British promise laid the basis for bloody periods and a series of massacres against innocent Palestinian civilians. [These massacres] were committed by the Jewish Zionist terror organizations… in order to empty the land of Palestine of its people who have cultural roots, and to replace them with Jews who were uprooted from their original societies worldwide and brought to our homeland of Palestine.
This was not done out of love for the Jews, but rather to use them as a pawn that would confront the Palestinian people and the neighboring Arab peoples. The results of the wars would serve the global colonialist system…
The time has come for Great Britain – the one who gave the promise that constituted a crime against humanity – to renounce its historical crime… and to take practical positions indicating a true desire to correct the historical path of its leaders and diplomats, who have caused bloodshed for the Palestinian people for more than 100 years. This is because the Palestinian people will not forgive as long as the British diplomats do not want to recognize its historical and natural rights to its homeland, Palestine, and the minimum is recognition of a Palestinian state in the June 4, 1967 borders.”
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.