arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

Did The Balfour Declaration in l9l7and the UN Partition Resolution In 1947 Give Zionists a Legitimate Claim to Palestine?

It is difficult to imagine how a letter from a British Foreign Minister, Lord Balfour, to a British Zionist leader, Lord Rothschild, could be the legal basis for dispossessing an indigenous population in the Middle East. If anything, Balfour's letter was a political maneuver meant to further British imperial interests in the Middle East during World War II by rallying Jewish support for the Allied effort.

According to the American diplomat Sol Linowitz, "Great Britain had no sovereign rights over Palestine; it had no proprietary interest; it had no authority to dispose of the land. The Declaration was merely a statement of British intentions and no more." [See C. Wright, Facts and Fables: The Arab Israel Conflict, Kegan Paul, 1989, p. 159.1

Nor does the U.N. Partition Plan of 1947 give Zionists legal claim to Palestine because:

(1) the U.N. Plan, which granted 55% of Palestine to the Jews, who were then 30% of the population and owned 6% of the land, violated Article 1 of the U.N. Charter. This is the Article that sets forth the principle of self-determination for all peoples on earth, including the 70% of Palestinians who then owned 94% of the land;

(2) the Resolution was not binding since it was not passed by the Security Council but by the General Assembly, which can only recommend rather than legislate;

(3) the Resolution, like the Balfour Declaration, was a product of great power machinations, orchestrated by the United States, rather than the result of political idealism. [See A. Lilienthal, The Zionist Connection: What Price Peace?, Dodd, Mead, 1978.]

Yet, that infamous Balfour declaration is still being quoted by the Israelis to state that there was no actual Palestinian people before the state of Israel was founded in 1948.

The first general Palestinian uprising, which happened in 1936 (I think), was held before the 1947 U.N. resloution. Therefore, Palestinians state that their people existed before the foundation of the Israelian state. Most Palestinians see this uprising as the first confirmation of their identity as a people, as opposed to the Israeli's. (of course, they had been in the middle-east for ages...)

Israeli's fight that by saying that the 'right' to found a zionist state was already given by Balfour, who wrote something like "it's ok to found a zionist state, but the religious and social rights of the people who live there (being the palestinians) must be granted..." Note that Balfour didn't mention the political rights of the Palistinians...