Geneva: The Balfour Declaration, which laid the foundation for the establishment of the State of Israel in Palestine, created a century-long series of injustice towards Palestinian rights, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said in a statement on the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration.
The Geneva-based Monitor went on to say that Britain is responsible for the violations that were linked to the fulfillment of the promise on the ground at a time when Palestine was under British Mandate.
The mandate position required Britain to manage its mandate nations in accordance with the interests of those nations’ residents, however, Great Britain was on the ground encouraging Jewish immigration to Palestine, bringing Jewish immigrants to the territories of indigenous people, as well as selling government’s large tracts of land and supplying immigrants with weapons.
British Foreign Secretary, Arthur James Balfour, "issued his famous promise in a letter written to a senior leader of the Jewish movement, Lord Rothschild, pledging that Britain is doing its utmost to establish a national homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine, without detracting the civil and religious rights of non-Jewish communities that were resident in Palestine.
On this occasion, the Euro-Med calls on Britain to stand by its responsibilities in recognizing the rights of the Palestinian people and to end the long-term Israeli military occupation of Palestinian territories.
Euro-Med stresses that the Balfour Declaration was a clear dismissal of the rights of the residents of Palestine at the time. Neither Palestinian opinion was taken into account nor their response to the promise details that would affect their lives and their right to self-determination.
The repercussions that followed the promise in terms of the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and the seizure of land, replaced with Israeli settlements instead stand as an ongoing issue as a result.
Britain became a Mandate State in Palestine on 25 April 1920, and was entrusted by the League of Nations, which was comprised of victorious countries after the end of the First World War, to enforce the Balfour Declaration.
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