LONDON: The UK government is to receive a petition calling on it to take responsibility for crimes committed from the time of the Balfour Declaration in 1917 to the end of the British Mandate for Palestine in 1948.
The declaration was a public statement made by the British government expressing support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine.
The petition, compiled by human rights lawyers on behalf of 14 Palestinians, accuses the state of “serial international law violations” and contains more than 400 pages of “incontrovertible evidence.”
Part of a broader campaign called Britain Owes Palestine, it says the UK bears unique responsibility for the situation in the region today.
The petition is a legal mechanism to prompt the government to engage with the campaign, which is calling for acknowledgment of crimes, a formal apology and reparations, following the precedent set by five previous apologies issued by the UK, most recently for the Batang Kali massacre in Malaya in 1948.
The Balfour Declaration is included in the petition as an example of wrongdoing, as well as numerous other examples of “systematic abuse” of the Palestinian people.
The petition also says Britain is responsible for the destruction of the unitary state of Palestine, for having failed to recognize an Arab Palestinian state despite promising to do so between 1915 and 1916, and for having repressed the local population during the revolt of 1936-1939 through the use of arbitrary detention, torture and murder, among other crimes.
Petitioner Saeed Husain Ahmad Haj gave testimony to the document that he witnessed Israeli Haganah paramilitaries enter his village of Tireh Dandan when he was 14, prior to his family’s expulsion to the Balata refugee camp in Nablus in 1948, where he still lives today.
Another petitioner, 91-year-old Munib Al-Masri, was shot in the leg by British soldiers aged 13 and witnessed troops rounding up civilians and keeping them bound in cages before they were executed. His testimony is also included in the petition.
Al-Masri, a friend of late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, said: “The current crisis in Palestine was ‘made in Britain’ through a catalogue of neglect and abuse of the Palestinian people. Together we have suffered more than a century of oppression.
“Britain can only play its part in building a just peace in the region today if it acknowledges its defining role in the horrors of the past. An apology would be a just start to what Palestinians expect from the British government.”
Ben Emmerson KC, a former UN special rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism who helped draft the petition, said it “demonstrates, by reference to a comprehensive analysis of contemporary evidence, the extent of British responsibility for the terrible suffering in Palestine, which can be traced back to Britain’s violations of international law during its occupation and subsequent withdrawal.
“These historic injustices continue to shape the realities on the ground today. Britain owes a debt to the Palestinian people. Today’s petition is based upon the international obligations of the UK to make amends.”
