With Israel’s Independence Day celebrations and the Nakba Day just over, the Palestinians rapidly approach a double anniversary – the 50th anniversary of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Golan Heights, and the centenary of the Balfour Declaration. It is long past time to weigh the fateful consequences of these crucial events for them.
The British Empire was solidifying its foothold in the Middle East in 1916 when it entered into the Sykes-Picot Agreement with its First World War allies, France and Russia, to divide the Ottoman Middle East into British and French spheres of influence: Syria and Lebanon for France, and areas to the south, including Palestine, for Britain. The outcomes are still visible today: the oddly shaped territories of Arab states and Gulf kingdoms crossing national, tribal and religious divides, unleashing historical conflicts between Sunni and Shia’ with horrific consequences, and reopening the question of the Kurds’ future.
If this meddling was not enough, the British published the Balfour Declaration a short time later, in November 1917, supporting “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”. Added almost as an afterthought was the qualification that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.” The declaration letter, addressed to Lord Rothschild, stood in direct contradiction to other commitments made by the British government to Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca who had been promised control of the same, largely-Arab lands.
