Palestinian officials are planning to sue Britain over the 1917 Balfour Declaration which saw Arabs removed from their land to make way for the state of Israel. A senior Palestinian diplomat has said that Britain is responsible for all Israeli war crimes since 1948 because it created the 1917 mandate which saw Arabs removed from their land to make way for the state of Israel. Riyad al-Malki, the Palestinian Authority’s chief foreign minister, told the Arab League that Britain will be held to account for its part in what Palestinians still see as a cataclysmic event. Originally signed by Arthur Balfour, the UK’s then Foreign Secretary, the agreement officially sanctioned the Zionist movement’s aims, leading to its later colonization of what was then the Ottoman-held territory of Palestine. Britain has not yet publicly commented on the issue. Haaretz reports: The Balfour Declaration voiced Britain’s support for establishing “a national home for the Jewish people”; after World War I, the League of Nations, the predecessor to the UN, incorporated this goal into the British Mandate for Palestine. Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki announced the intention on Wednesday at the opening of the Arab League summit in the Mauritanian capital of Nouakchott. He [...]
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