US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo cannot rewrite international law. By John McHugo , Balfour Project Trustee and International Lawyer Following the comments by the US Secretary of State on Monday, we have felt it necessary to clarify the legal status of the Israeli civilian settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Existing British government policy is…
Aaron David Miller and Daniel Kurtzer, The Washington Post Published 6:19 am EST, Friday, November 22, 2019 By most accounts, the Trump administration’s decision to treat Israel’s settlement enterprise as a legal endeavor is a retreat by the United States from an almost universally accepted norm of international law. The United States and the current Israeli…
Bernard Regan shows us what Britain did (and what Britain thought it was doing) by issuing the Balfour Declaration, by incorporating it into the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, and by governing Palestine in a way intended to implement it.
An eloquent account of the disastrous course and consequences, still with us, of Britain’s 31 years’ ownership of and faltering rule in Palestine.
Claudia Beamish MSP (Labour) introduced a members’ business debate on motion S5M-16637, “Towards an independent Palestinian state: a Scottish proposal” calling for action leading to an independent Palestinian state and acknowledging Britain’s historical responsibilities in what was to become Israel and Palestine. Claudia argued that British engagement is needed now to help secure a better…
This article was first published on the Conservative Middle East Council website Analysis 23 September 2019 Sir Vincent Fean KCVO Sir Vincent Fean is Chair of Trustees of the Balfour Project. Between 2010-14, Sir Vincent was British Consul-General in Jerusalem. The election is over and the haggling has begun, as Israeli voter sensured for the…
115 British Parliamentarians demand British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson act robustly to any Israeli annexation of Occupied Palestinian Territory. In the letter, sent from the Britain-Palestine All-Party Parliamentary Group, the Parliamentarians insisted that the British Government and its partners in Europe should respond robustly to demonstrate that flouting international law will have serious consequences for…
Talk by Sir Vincent Fean at recent Meretz UK Event Meretz UK hosted an event on 7th July in London’s Jewish Community centre JW3, to discuss the prospects, advantages and likely outcomes of recognition of the state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel by the British Government. Sir Vincent Fean, former UK Consul General…
Speakers: Sir Tom Phillips and Sir Vincent Fean Chairing the debate: Prof. Yossi Mekelberg, Professor of International Relations at Regent’s University, London and senior consulting research fellow for the MENA programme, Chatham House. OneVoice Europe hosted an event on 26th June to discuss Britain’s role in Israel-Palestine with the prospect of Brexit, Trump’s ‘Deal of…
Dr. Tony Klug has written extensively on Israeli-Palestinian issues. He is a special advisor on the Middle East to the Oxford Research Group and a consultant to the Palestine Strategy Group and the Israel Strategic Forum. His Ph.D. thesis was on Israel’s policies in the West Bank from 1967 through 1973. He writes here…
During the Arab Revolt of 1936-39 the British carried out brutal military attacks on Palestinian civilians in rural areas, forerunners of what seems to be Israel’s latest policy of emptying the camps of the northern occupied West Bank of their refugee population.
John McHugo Edited text of speech for the Balfour Project event The Tragedy of Gaza in Edinburgh 17 March 2018 My role is to explain why Britain carries a historic responsibility to the people of Palestine generally, to the people of Gaza in particular, and also, I must stress, to the people of Israel. I…
Ian Black It’s time to get off the fence and resolve this most toxic of global conflicts in the only way possible Over the Bank Holiday weekend, coinciding with the start of the Ramadan fast for Muslims and the run-up to Israel’s Independence Day, it was touch and go whether the latest outbreak of violence…
William M. Mathew See also Part I and Part II A. GEORGE MARSHALL: ‘A NEAR-RUN THING’. Truman’s fundamental position was straightforward – at least retrospectively. As President, he was in charge. In ‘differences of opinion between the White House and the State Department on the business of Palestine’, he wrote in his memoirs, ‘there was…
William M. Mathew Part I: U.S. Recognition of Israel, 14 May 1948: Roosevelt, Truman, Marshall: A Sequence of Contingencies Part III: U.S. Recognition of Israel, 14 May 1948: ‘A Near-Run Thing’ The obvious question presents itself: given the near-universal presidential negativity, how was it possible for Truman to make the clear decision in mid-May 1948…
Part I: Uncertainties See also Part II: U.S. Recognition of Israel, 14 May 1948: Truman’s Belated Support Part III: U.S. Recognition of Israel, 14 May 1948: ‘A Near-Run Thing’ William M. Mathew Abstract Zionism`s two most notable international successes in the 20th century were the U.K. Balfour Declaration, 2 November 1917, and the U.S. recognition…
Letter to the Times 30 March 2019 Sir,A year on from the avoidable deaths of 60 people at the Gaza fence, rockets and reprisals are recurring. This dismal pattern of behaviour must be broken. Two million people are imprisoned in Gaza, an integral part of Palestine. The UN says that Gaza will not be “a…
Israel/Palestine: Equal Rights 17 March 2019 From Edinburgh, and the home university of Arthur Balfour,we acknowledge Britain’s historical responsibilities in the Holy Land, from before the Balfour Declaration through the British Mandate to today. Gaza was, is, and always will be, an integral part of Palestine. Past British responsibility for present injustice demands British engagement…
Dr Jacob Eriksson, University of York Sweden’s decision to recognise Palestine on 30 October, 2014, was a controversial one and this article explores two key aspects. First, it contextualises the decision in relation to doctrines about the recognition of states in the international system. Here, the Swedish decision provides further evidence of the growing trend…
Letter published in The Times newspaper, 13 September 2018 Oslo and Palestine Sir, How painful now to recall the hope we had in the Oslo Accords. 25 years on, cynicism and resignation rule. The Israeli occupation since 1967 is so entrenched, so hard to think beyond. We argue for a better way, not subordinating the…
By Tim Llewellyn This is a dispassionate book, written by someone who knows almost everything, about the tragic progress of Britain’s experiment with Zionism in Palestine to the present day’s existential horror. Black does not make judgments. His careful selection of sources and facts makes a neat footpath through the history. I was particularly interested…
Ilan Baruch, Jerusalem, 23.7.2018 In his ground-breaking speech at the Bar-Ilan University (June 2009), shortly after his second term as PM had begun, Benjamin Netanyahu accentuated the Jewish narrative as the bedrock of Israel: 3500 years of bonding between the Jewish people and the Promised Land. Then he added: “the truth is that in…
By Ian Portman Abstract Faced with increasing antisemitism in Europe towards the end of the 19th century, many Jews chose to join the great waves of European emigration to the United States. Since the high middle ages, most of the world’s Jews had settled in eastern Europe, under welcoming Polish and later repressive Russian rule.…
By Roger Spooner When talking about the Balfour Declaration with a pastor from Bethlehem, he commented, ‘the problems for the Palestinians didn’t start in 1917, they started in 1840’. Literal reading of the Bible which had developed in the 17th Century took off in the 19th and restorationism gained political power through Lord Shaftesbury. His…
John Richmond Ernest Richmond ETR was a an architect who spent many years in the Arab World and was invited in 1920 by Sir Herbert Samuel to join the Palestine administration. His son has written about some of his writings from that period under the title Prophet of Doom: and published in the Arab and…
Centenary Lecture to the History Group, The Norfolk Club, 14 September 2017 by William Mathew It is argued here that only a special conjuncture of chance and short-term circumstance made it possible for an effective pro-Zionist policy to be successfully pursued by the British government in 1917. Much of this was war-related, and the absence…
An Interview1 in Mr. Balfour’s Apartment, 23 Rue Nitot, Paris, on June 24th, 1919, at 4:45 p.m. Present: Mr. Balfour, Mr. Justice Brandeis, Lord Eustace Percy and Mr. Frankfurter 2 Mr. Balfour expressed great satisfaction that Justice Brandeis came to Europe3He said the Jewish problem (of which the Palestinian question is only a fragment but…
“The BBC Radio Four ‘Sunday’ programme on October 1st included this very fair and balanced report on the forthcoming centenary of the Balfour Declaration. Chris Rose from the Amos Trust, speaking about the unfulfilled promises to the Palestinian people, echoed the call for ‘Equal Rights for All’ which is very much at the centre of…
William M Mathew compares the work of two Jewish historians on the long-term effects of the inter-communal violence and harsh response by British forces which rocked Palestine in 1929. Part 1.
William M Mathew compares the work of two Jewish historians on the long-term effects of the inter-communal violence and harsh response by British forces which rocked Palestine in 1929. Part 2.
This article was part of Robert Cohen’s talk at the Balfour Project conference,’How will we mark the centenary of the Balfour Declaration’ in Southwark Cathedral on November 5th 2016: A leading British Rabbi has written: “Zionism and Zionistic activities not only depress Judaism by putting nationality first and religion second, but they injure Judaism by…
This talk was given at the Balfour Project conference in Southwark Cathedral on 5th November 2016 entitled: ‘How will we mark the Centenary of the Balfour Declaration’ By Dr Peter Shambrook Context: it is only in the context of the development of the war that all the promises/agreements that the British government made can be…
Charles Glass, writing in the London Review of Books in 2001, reviewed two books looking at the period of the British Mandate in Palestine. The review is reproduced here by kind permission.
by WILLIAM M. MATHEW Lecture given to the History Group of The Norfolk Club, 14 April 2016 to mark the centenary of the Sykes-Picot Agreement 1916 Abstract These three war-time initiatives are presented as part of a compressed, uncoordinated, two-year sequence set against the changing circumstances of international rivalries, imperial anxieties, and domestic politics. Contradictions …
Dr. Nadia Naser-Najjab finds in Jeffries’ documentations of 1923 a significant mix of parallels and contrasts with current British attitudes and policies towards Palestine.
Concluding remarks at Balfour Project meeting in Durham – 31.10.2015 by the Very Rev Nicholas Frayling One of the questions we as members of the BP are often asked is: ‘Why didn’t I know about this?’ Today, even those who have wrestled with the agonies of Palestine and Israel for years have surely deepened their…