Palestinian FM asks Arab League to help sue UK over Balfour Declaration
July 25, 2016 9:23 P.M. (Updated: July 25, 2016 9:23 P.M.)
http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=772377

BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) -- Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki urged the
Arab League to help the Palestinian Authority to sue the United Kingdom over
the Balfour Declaration of 1917 on Monday.

Speaking on behalf of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, al-Maliki
delivered a speech Thursday at the Arab League’s annual summit, which is
being held this year in the Mauritanian capital of Nouakchott.

Al-Maliki apologized on behalf of Abbas, who couldn’t attend the summit due
to his brother’s recent death, before urging Arab countries to “help us
bring a suit against the British government over the ominous Balfour
Declaration which resulted in the Nakba (catastrophe) for the Palestinian
people.”

Nearly a century ago, a letter sent from British Foreign Secretary Arthur
James Balfour to Baron 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 the expense of the land's original
inhabitants.

The declaration was made before the British had wrested control of Palestine
from the Ottoman Empire, and was not made public until several years after
the World War I, in 1920.

By that time, Britain had been formally granted a mandate over Palestine by
the League of Nations, and was struggling with its contradictory obligations
of "rewarding" Arabs for their support during the war, while also fulfilling
their pledge to create a Jewish state.

After World War II, British forces withdrew from Palestine, leaving it in
the hands of the newly created United Nations, which favored partition,
particularly as evidence slowly emerged of the vast scale of the Holocaust
in Europe.

The decision led to the 1948 war between Arab nations, including
Palestinians, and Jewish immigrants, ultimately resulting in the creation of
the state of Israel and the expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians from
their homes inside its borders, an event known as the Nakba among
Palestinians.

In February, the Palestine Liberation Organization said in a statement that
Great Britain bore "the primary responsibility" for "historical injustice in
Palestine."