Under the leadership of Josh Paul and Tariq Habash, a coalition of Americans is ushering in a new chapter for US politics and policy on Israel/Palestine.. A New Policy will work to align our foreign policy with American values of equality, justice, human rights and freedom for all Washington, DC , 16 Oct— Former U.S.…
Sun 27 Oct 2024 Jewish Voice for Labour introduction The UK may have left the European Union, but it remains an important international organisation with influence on the world stage. It seems, however, to be tying itself in knots over Israel and Palestine. In doing so it is failing to fulfil its legal duties –…
By Lara Bird-Leakey 25 October 2024 For 384 days the world has watched the horrors unleashed by a rogue state acting with complete impunity. For 384 days, the UK Government has used the shield of Western democracy to ignore the rule of law and turn a blind eye to the victimisation of the Palestinian people,…
In 25 minutes, this short sequel to GAZA A Story of Love and War, delivers three dramatic moments: The film is based on audience discussions following Ceredigion screenings of GAZA A Story of Love and War. Constituency MP Ben Lake reveals that no subject concerns his constituents more urgently than Gaza. He shares with the audience and…
4th December 2024 Click here to download slides. Thair Abu Ras is a PhD candidate at the department of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland. A Palestinian citizen of Israel, Thair has extensive experience in civil society in Israel. Thair worked for Mossawa – The advocacy centre for Arab citizens in Israel’, “Sikkuy-Aufoq:…
By Joseph Willits 16 Oct 2024 Joseph Willits is Head of Parliamentary Affairs at the Council for Arab British Understanding, and this article first appeared in Middle East Eye. Some hoped the new Government would chart a fresh course: but after 100 days in office, Keir Starmer continues to fail Palestinians One hundred days ago,…
As a result of the worsening situation in the Palestinian Territory, as well as the July ruling by the ICJ Advisory Opinion that the occupation in this territory by Israel is illegal, the Balfour Project wrote the letter below to Foreign Secretary David Lammy MP. A copy was also sent to Attorney General Lord Hermer,…
By Richard Burden While the news from the Middle East is understandably now focusing on the horrors unfolding in Lebanon and the real threat of tit for tat strikes between Israel and Iran escalating into a full-scale regional war, please do not forget the agony which people in Gaza and the West Bank continue to…
By Peter Oborne Middle East Eye, 4 Oct 2024 His deft diplomacy stands in sharp contrast to the likes of Netanyahu, Biden and Starmer Just over 30 years ago, Conservative politician Michael Ancram made a journey into the heart of Irish Republican Army territory in Roman Catholic Derry in Northern Ireland. Accompanied only by his…
By Jonathan Kuttab This question is important because of the prevailing political and media narratives. These narratives claim that what Hamas did on that day, apart from being unprovoked, was so heinous and evil that it excused everything that happened next. This is allowing politicians to claim that the evil of Israel’s genocidal attacks were…
‘Your name and your deeds were forgotten Before your bones were dry, And the lie that slew you is buried Under a deeper lie. ‘But the thing that I saw in your face No power can disinherit: No bomb that ever burst Shatters the crystal spirit.’ These words of George Orwell’s, written in an essay…
During the First World War, Britain promised the Arabs of the Ottoman-ruled Middle East an independent state in exchange for revolting against the Ottomans. The British changed course soon after, breaking their promise to the Arabs, and paving a way for the creation of a Jewish state on Palestinian lands. In this intervew with The…
14th November 2024 Jonathan Kuttab is a co-founder of the Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq and co-founder of Nonviolence International. A well-known international human rights lawyer, Jonathan practices in the US, Palestine and Israel. He serves on the Board of Bethlehem Bible College and is President of the Board of Holy Land Trust. Jonathan was…
On 18 September the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) voted to adopt a resolution which reaffirms the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) of 19 July 2024. The vote followed a debate concerning Israeli actions in occupied East Jerusalem and the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territory. There were 124 votes in favour,…
By Lara Bird-Leakey Three months ago, a small village in Area C called Um al-Khair suffered the worst demonstration of settler colonial violence and annexation in the West Bank since 7th October. Seemingly random settler violence ripped through the village and came to a head on the 26th June. Israeli settlers destroyed 25 houses, rendering…
Richard Burden and Dr Phyllis Starkey, both former Labour MPs and both Balfour Project Trustees, set out eight targets for Keir Starmer’s Government to restore balance to UK policy. This entails more effective measures with regards to Israel and affirmation of the Palestinian right to self-determination. Political parties across Europe and in the USA have failed…
24th October 2024 Helena Cobban is a writer and researcher on international affairs who lives in Washington DC. In 1984, Cambridge U.P. published her seminal study The Palestinian Liberation Organisation. Three of her six other sole-authored books dealt with political and strategic developments in the Arab-Israeli theatre, the rest with more global matters. For 17…
Watch film here Watch Q&A with director Kavitha Chekuru From air strikes to field executions, Fault Lines investigates the killings of civilians by the Israeli military in Gaza and the role of the United States in the war. As Israel’s bombing campaign continues in Gaza and the humanitarian crisis deepens to catastrophic levels, the Biden…
By Richard Burden 2 Sept 2024 In June 2023, I visited a hospital in Nablus, in the Israel-occupied West Bank, a few hours after it had been surrounded by Israeli troops. The attacks that have been launched on West Bank towns, villages and refugee camps this week are a big escalation but they are still…
2nd October 2024 Tamara El-Halawani is a research assistant at the SOAS ICOP project and a recent MSc graduate in International Politics from SOAS University, London. She is currently completing a dissertation on ‘The Erasure of Palestinians on social media.’ Prior to joining ICOP, she worked as a reporter for The Conduit in London and served…
On 6 April this year (2024), amid steadily increasing Israeli aggression and oppression in the occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank, Israeli security agents seized at gunpoint a 23-year-old Palestinian woman, Layan Nasir, taking her from her home in the town of Bir Zeit, near Ramallah There was no charge, no indication of trial,…
By Daniel Levy US policies strengthen Benjamin Netanyahu – whose political preference in the short term is an open-ended war, not a deal. Kamala Harris should not continue this (This article appeared in The Guardian on 27 Aug 2024) The Biden administration remains in an intense phase of Middle East diplomatic activity working to avoid a regional…
Click here to download this as a Word document. Preamble Labour Party election manifesto, 2024 “Palestinian statehood is the inalienable right of the Palestinian people. It is not in the gift of any neighbour and is also essential to the long-term security of Israel. We are committed to recognising a Palestinian state as a contribution…
By Diana Safieh This article first appeared in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs of August/September 2024, pp. 20-2 ON 6 JUNE this year, at a Balfour Project conference in London, Palestinian political analyst Nour Odeh discussed the unique survivor’s guilt felt by Palestinians in the West Bank during Israel’s current war in Gaza.…
By Richard Sewell 2 August 2024 People must not avert their eyes from the conflict in the Holy Land, writes Richard Sewell in a personal reflection from Jerusalem In 1955, the Anglican priest and monk (and later bishop) Trevor Huddleston was recalled to England by his Order, having served for 15 years as a priest in apartheid-era…
A historian of the Middle East recalls the passionate Zionists who opposed such an entity as a distraction from the goal of ‘true Zionism’, which was to create a land where Arabs and Jews would flourish together. By JOHN MCHUGO From the 27 July 2024 edition of THE TABLET “A STATE at any cost” is…
By Joseph Massad Wed 31 Jul 2024 Jewish Voice for Labour introduction Joseph Massad, professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University, in New York City, looks at the conscious effort that goes into framing the way in which the struggle for (and against!) Palestinian self-determination is understood. There is in effect…
By Menachem Klein 31/07/2024 The Palestinian reconciliation agreement signed in Beijing on 22 July[1] did not attract much attention. It is easy to understand why. Many agreements like it have been signed between Fatah and Hamas since the 1980s and have not been implemented. What is different about this agreement? The difference does not lie in…
Successes so far: Summary We asked the Government, through David Lammy, the new Foreign Secretary to change its predecessor’s policy now in several ways, consistent with the comprehensive Action Points produced after our annual conference in June. The results so far are: Details UNRWA Funding– Foreign Secretary David Lammy restored UK funding, allocating £21m towards UNRWA’s…
By Oren Ziv, July 8, 2024 Israeli soldiers describe the near-total absence of firing regulations in the Gaza war, with troops shooting as they please, setting homes ablaze and leaving corpses on the streets — all with their commanders’ permission In early June, al Jazeera aired a series of disturbing videos revealing what it described as…
Today, the ICJ has delivered its Opinion: the 1967 Israeli occupation is unlawful. The Balfour Project supports this Opinion and calls on the British Government to do so. In 2022 the UN General Assembly asked the ICJ two questions: The Court dismissed the Conservative Government’s contention that it should decline to deliver an opinion. The…
Menachem Klein explores how Israel’s rule over the Palestinians has created a new form of the religion Originally published in Logos. A fundamental question: “Are we, Israelis, still Jews?”, asked the philosopher Ernest Simon in 1953.[1] What looks like a provocative question, was indeed a descriptive statement. He concluded that the establishment of the Jewish…
30th July 2024 with Kristyan Benedict, Crisis Response Manager for Amnesty International UK Kristyan Benedict manages Amnesty International UK’s Crisis Response Programme, focusing on armed conflict, mass repression, and UK foreign policy. His work has involved working with and supporting activists and human rights defenders from a range of countries and regions, including Israel/Palestine, Syria, Lebanon,…
In answer to the Balfour Project’s request to the four main Westminster parties for their positions on the Gaza situation and the wider crisis in Israel/Palestine, in particular the list of demands that emerged from our annual conference in London on 6 June, we have received three statements: from the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats…
The Balfour Project’s Lara Bird-Leakey reports on the latest settler raids in the South Hebron Hills and the imminent erasure of a Palestinian community “The worst day ever in Umm Al-Khair. The Israeli occupation forces are destroying people’s homes. So far, they have destroyed four houses. They are still in the village and continuing destroying,…