THIS day marks the centenary of the Balfour Declaration, a brief document signalling imperial Britain’s intent to carve out a Jewish state in Palestine. While the Israelis may be celebrating the event, for the native Arab population of Palestine, this infamous document was perhaps the first step in a nightmarish journey that would culminate in the Nakba or ‘catastrophe’ of 1948, with the founding of the state of Israel. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were, in the years after this declaration, expelled from their homeland, doomed to wander the earth in indefinite exile, or forced to live under the brutal rule of Israel. In the document, Lord Arthur James Balfour, British foreign secretary at the time, wrote to Lord Walter Rothschild, a prominent British Zionist, stating that “His Majesty’s Government” viewed with favour “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people. ...” British Prime Minister Theresa May has said she will mark the date with “pride”. However, the brutalised Palestinians living under oppressive Israeli rule in Gaza, Ramallah and the rest of the occupied territories hardly share Ms May’s enthusiasm.

With one stroke of the imperial pen, Britain made a promise to give away land that did not belong to it. In the final years of the First World War, from the crumbling remnants of the Ottoman Empire, the British promised Palestine to the Zionists without taking on board the native Arabs’ aspirations. The opposition to the Balfour Declaration and the subsequent founding of Israel should not be seen through the crude binary of Muslim versus Jew; the founding of Israel was unjust because it created a colonialist settler state in the heart of Arab territory, which treated the native Arabs with contempt. While Lord Balfour promised that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine. ...”, the fact is that the land itself belonged to “non-Jewish communities in Palestine” and was expropriated. The violence unleashed by Zionist gangs to drive the Arabs from Palestine is part of history. While Jews had lived in Arab societies for centuries, the Zionist entity now sought to ethnically eliminate the Palestinians from their homeland. Moreover, Israel has expanded considerably since its founding in 1948, devouring Arab land with an insatiable appetite.

A major outcome of the Balfour Declaration and the founding of Israel has been the sense of rage felt across the Muslim world at the treatment of the Palestinians. This grave injustice has also played a role in radicalising many across the Muslim world. A century after their nightmare began, there is no sign the Palestinians will get a homeland — as envisioned in the two-state solution that was agreed upon by the Arabs and Israelis in 1993 — anytime soon. Today, there may be celebrations in Tel Aviv and London, but in Palestine, there are only tears.

Published in Dawn, November 2nd, 2017