Yasir Arafat, Palestinian Leader

Yasser Arafat Palestinian leader Also known as: Muḥammad ʿAbd ar-Raʾūf al-Qudwah al-Ḥusaynī, Yāsir ʿArafāt Written by Fact-checked by Last Updated: Jan 16, 2025 • Article History Quick Facts Also spelled: Yāsir ʿArafāt Byname of: Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Raʾūf al-Qudwah al-Ḥusaynī Also called: Abū ʿAmmār Born: August 24?, 1929 [see Researcher’s Note], Cairo?, Egypt Died: November 11, 2004, Paris, France Top Questions Who was Yasser Arafat? What role did Yasser Arafat play in Palestinian politics? When was Yasser Arafat born and when did he pass away? Yasser Arafat (born August 24?, 1929 [see Researcher’s Note], Cairo?, Egypt—died November 11, 2004, Paris, France) was the president (1996–2004) of the Palestinian Authority (PA), chairman (1969–2004) of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and leader of Fatah, the largest of the constituent PLO groups. In 1993 he led the PLO to a peace agreement with the Israeli government. Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres of Israel were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1994. Early life Arafat was one of seven children of a well-to-do merchant and was related, by his father and by his mother, to the prominent al-Ḥusaynī family, which played a major role in Palestinian history (among its members was the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Amīn al-Ḥusaynī, a key figure of the opposition to Zionism during the British mandate). In 1949 Arafat began his studies in civil engineering at Cairo’s King Fuʾād University (later Cairo University). He claimed to have fought as a volunteer during the first of the Arab-Israeli wars (1948–49) and then again against the British at the Suez Canal in the early 1950s, although these claims—along with other facts and episodes from his early life—have been disputed. While a student in Egypt, he joined the Union of Palestinian Students and served as its president (1952–56). He was also associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, and in 1954, in the crackdown that followed an assassination attempt on Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser by one of their members, Arafat was jailed for being a Brotherhood sympathizer. After his release he completed his studies, graduating with an engineering degree in July 1956. Arafat was subsequently commissioned into the Egyptian army, and in October 1956 he served on behalf of Egypt during the Suez Crisis. Creation of Fatah After Suez, Arafat went to Kuwait, where he worked as an engineer and set up his own contracting firm. In 1959 he founded Fatah, a political and military organization, with associates such as Khalīl al-Wazīr (known by the nom de guerre Abū Jihād), Ṣalāḥ Khalaf (Abū ʿIyāḍ), and Khālid al-Ḥassan (Abū Saʿīd)—individuals who would later play important roles in the PLO. At that time most Palestinians believed that the “liberation of Palestine” would come as a result of Arab unity, of which the first step was the creation of the United Arab Republic between Egypt and Syria in 1958. Central to Fatah doctrine, however, was the firmly held notion that the liberation of Palestine was primarily the business of Palestinians and should not be entrusted to Arab regimes or postponed until the achievement of an elusive Arab unity. This notion was anathema to the Pan-Arab ideals of Nasser and the Egyptian and Syrian Baʿth parties, which were then the most influential parties in the region. Second in importance for Arafat and Fatah was the concept of armed struggle, for which the group prepared as early as 1959, following the model of guerrillas fighting in the Algerian War of Independence. Algeria’s independence from France, achieved in 1962, confirmed Arafat’s belief in the soundness of the principle of relying on one’s own strength. Fatah carried out its first armed operation in Israel in December 1964–January 1965, but it was not until after 1967, with the defeat of the Arab forces by Israel in the Six-Day War (June War), that Fatah and the fedayeen (guerillas operating against Israel) became the focus of Palestinian mobilization. In 1969 Arafat was named chairman of the executive committee of the PLO, an umbrella organization created in 1964 by the Arab League in Jerusalem, which had until then been under the control of the Egyptians. Although Arafat and Fatah were the main players in the PLO, they were not the only ones. Contrary to other liberation movements—such as the National Liberation Front of Algeria, for example, which eliminated all its rivals—Fatah not only had to take into account rival organizations (such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, led by George Ḥabash, and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, led by Nayif Hawātmeh) but also had to cope with interference from various Arab governments. Such interference stemmed largely from the fact that no Arab country was able to consider the Palestinian issue a truly foreign affair. The Syrian and Iraqi Baʿthist regimes, for example, challenged the PLO with their own “Palestinian” organizations (al-Ṣāʿiqah and the Arab Liberation Front, respectively); each maintained deputies within the PLO itself and were funded by and entirely dependent upon their sponsor governments. Indeed, throughout his life Arafat tried to maneuver among these constraints, understanding that the unity of the Palestinians was their best asset. Get Unlimited Access Try Britannica Premium for free and discover more. After 1967 most of the Fatah forces were based in Jordan, whence they launched attacks against Israel. Not only were the assaults largely unsuccessful, but they also created tension with Jordan’s King Ḥussein that culminated in the king’s decision in September 1970 to put an end to the PLO presence in Jordan altogether. Following Black September, as the expulsion of the PLO came to be known, in 1970–71 the fedayeen migrated to Lebanon, which became their main base until 1982. Toward diplomacy After its defeat in Jordan, Fatah moved to international acts of terrorism through its “Black September” organization. In parallel, however, Arafat also began to change course and tried a diplomatic approach, especially after the Yom Kippur War (October War) of 1973. Arafat renounced the idea of liberation of the whole of Palestine and the creation of a democratic state where Muslims, Christians, and Jews would coexist (which meant the destruction of Israel as a state) and accepted the notion of a state comprising the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital. In Arab summits in 1973–74, the PLO was recognized as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. As a result, the organization was able to open offices in many countries, including in some cities in Europe. In November 1974 Arafat became the first representative of a nongovernmental organization to address a plenary session of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly. While the United States and Israel considered the group a terrorist organization and refused any official or nonofficial contact with it, a number of European countries soon began political dialogue with the PLO. In 1975–76 the armed Palestinian presence in Lebanon helped fuel that country’s descent into civil war, and, in spite of Arafat’s early efforts to remain free of it, the PLO was drawn into the fighting. The large-scale intervention of the Syrian army in Lebanon in mid-1976 in support of the Christian right against the PLO-Muslim-left alliance strained relations between Arafat and Syrian Pres. Ḥafiz al-Assad. As a result, Syria alternated between undermining or confronting the PLO (by attacking it directly or indirectly through Palestinian factions) and seeking to draw it into its orbit (by attempting to establish a sort of protectorate over it). Arafat, however, suspicious of Syria, strove to maintain PLO autonomy. The Israeli invasion of Lebanon forced Arafat to abandon his Beirut headquarters at the end of August 1982 and set up a new headquarters in Tunis, Tunisia. Conflict between Syria and Arafat broadened in the wake of the Israeli invasion, and Syria took advantage of a rift in the PLO to support anti-Arafat factions, hoping to remove Arafat and restyle the PLO as a pro-Syrian organization. Although Arafat tried to return to Lebanon in 1983, he was besieged by Fatah rebels supported by Syria and was again forced into exile. Syria’s actions, however, bolstered support for Arafat among many Palestinians, and, as the PLO split healed, Arafat was subsequently able to reaffirm his leadership. UN partition plan for Israel and Palestine in 1947 UN partition plan for Israel and Palestine in 1947 The outbreak in December 1987 of the first intifada (from Arabic intifāḍah, “shaking off”)—large-scale riots and demonstrations that would continue for more than five years—gave Arafat new, much-needed legitimacy following his departure from Beirut and confirmed Palestinian support for the PLO from within the Palestinian territories. Although the intifada empowered Arafat, it also marked the birth of the militant Islamist organization Hamas, which would later become Fatah’s main challenger in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In November 1988 Arafat led the PLO to recognize UN General Assembly Resolution 181 (the famous partition plan of November 1947) and UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 (which called for an end to the Six-Day War and Yom Kippur War, respectively). He also announced the establishment of an independent Palestinian state (without defined borders), of which he was nominated president. Within days more than 25 countries (including the Soviet Union and Egypt but excluding the United States and Israel) had extended recognition to the government-in-exile. From agreement to the second intifada of Yasser Arafat Oslo Accords: Declaration of Principles on Palestinian Self-Rule 1 of 2 Oslo Accords: Declaration of Principles on Palestinian Self-RuleU.S. Pres. Bill Clinton (center) looking on as Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (left) shakes hands with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat after the signing of the Declaration of Principles on Palestinian Self-Rule, September 1993. Discover a historical milestone in the Israeli-Palestinian relationship with the signing of the Declaration of Principles, 19932 of 2 Discover a historical milestone in the Israeli-Palestinian relationship with the signing of the Declaration of Principles, 1993U.S. Pres. Bill Clinton shaking hands with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat after the signing of the Declaration of Principles on Palestinian Self-Rule, 1993. See all videos for this article On October 30, 1991, following the Persian Gulf War, the Madrid Conference—a peace conference including Arab countries, Palestinians, and Israel—opened under the joint presidency of the United States and the Soviet Union. There the Palestinians were represented not through the PLO—which the Israeli government refused to deal with—but through a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation led by Palestinians from the occupied territories. Although the Madrid talks themselves failed to achieve a substantive agreement, they were valuable in paving the way for additional negotiations. Among these was a secret channel of negotiations in Oslo, held beginning in January 1993 between PLO and Israeli officials, which produced an understanding known as the Oslo Accords. In September 1993 Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin exchanged letters in which Arafat, as head of the PLO, formally recognized “the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security” while Rabin recognized the PLO as the “representative of the Palestinian people” and made clear Israel’s intention to begin negotiations with the organization. On September 13, 1993, Arafat, Rabin, and U.S. Pres. Bill Clinton signed the Declaration of Principles on Palestinian Self-Rule in Washington, D.C. The Israeli-PLO accord, also known as Oslo I, envisioned the gradual implementation of Palestinian self-government in the West Bank and Gaza Strip for a transitional period not exceeding five years and leading to a permanent settlement based on UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338. The following year Arafat returned to the Gaza Strip and began implementing Palestinian self-rule. Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin: Nobel Prize Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin: Nobel PrizeYasser Arafat (left), Shimon Peres (center), and Yitzhak Rabin with their Nobel Prizes for Peace, 1994. The provisions of the Declaration of Principles were enacted on May 4, 1995, by a pact signed by Arafat and Rabin in Cairo. Several months later, in September 1995, Rabin, Arafat, and Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres—all newly named winners of the Nobel Peace Prize—signed the Interim Agreement on the West Bank and Gaza Strip (often called Oslo II). The agreement established a schedule for Israeli withdrawals from the Palestinian population centers (to be implemented in several stages) and created a complex system of zones that were divided between areas fully controlled by the Palestinians, those under Palestinian civil authority but Israeli military control, and those exclusively under Israeli control. It also set elections for a president and council of the Palestinian Authority, which would govern the Palestinian population in the occupied territories, and on January 20, 1996, Arafat was elected president of the PA. With a turnout of close to 80 percent, Arafat won 88 percent of the vote. Wye River Memorandum Wye River MemorandumYasser Arafat (far left), leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, signing the Wye River Memorandum alongside (left to right) King Hussein of Jordan, U.S. Pres. Bill Clinton, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, 1998. Relations with Rabin had remained respectful, even if they were sometimes difficult—especially on the sensitive subject of Israel’s ongoing settlement activity. But with Rabin’s assassination by a Jewish extremist in November 1995 and the election in May 1996 of Benjamin Netanyahu—leader of the Likud, a right-wing political party, and an opponent of the Oslo Accords—as prime minister, relations grew strained. Negotiations became deadlocked, even after an intervention by Clinton, who arranged a summit meeting with the two leaders at the Wye Plantation in eastern Maryland in 1998. Negotiations were revived after the election of Israel Labour Party leader Ehud Barak as prime minister in 1999, but in a very tense context. The unabated continuation of settlement activity—some 100,000 more settlers arrived in the West Bank between 1993 and 2000 (without taking Jerusalem into account)—created great discontent among the Palestinians and strengthened the Hamas opposition to the Oslo Accords. For his part, Arafat proved unable to create the structures of an independent state (for reasons linked with his own shortcomings and with the fact that most of the West Bank and Gaza Strip were still occupied). In July 2000 Clinton convened a summit at Camp David in northern Maryland, where the historic Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt had been negotiated in 1978. The aim was to find a final agreement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict after five years of Palestinian self-rule. The summit was hastily prepared, however, and, since the most contentious issues—the question of the right of return for Palestinian refugees, control of Jerusalem, borders, and Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip—were being discussed for the first time, it was unlikely that these sensitive and complex matters would be resolved quickly. From the beginning, Arafat was suspicious of the summit and its timing, and although some progress was made, in the end there was no final settlement. Negotiations continued after the failure at Camp David, but a visit by Likud leader Ariel Sharon to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem in September 2000 sparked the second intifada, and the dwindling talks ground to a halt. A spiral of harsh repression by the Israeli army and violence by different armed Palestinian groups subsequently led to both sides’ total loss of confidence in the peace process. In spite of the January 2001 negotiations at Ṭābā, Egypt, which were held independently of the United States and made important progress, the Barak government lost the February 2001 general elections and Sharon—a strong opponent of both the Oslo Accords and the creation of a Palestinian state—was elected prime minister. “We have no partner for peace” was once more the general sentiment of many Israeli political parties. Arafat lost much of his diplomatic credibility with the West after the election of U.S. Pres. George W. Bush in November 2000 and the launch of the “war on terror” in 2001, which followed the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. In 2001, following suicide attacks in Israel that Sharon blamed Arafat for instigating, Arafat was confined by Israel to his headquarters in Ramallah. In October 2004 Arafat fell ill and was transported to Paris for medical treatment, where he died the following month. Fatah later passed a unanimous resolution that held Israel responsible for Arafat’s death. Alain Gresh Many of Arafat’s supporters doubted that he had died a natural death, their suspicions being fueled in part by the doctors’ inability to identify the origin of his illness and the lack of an autopsy, and rumors circulated that he had died from poisoning. These suspicions surfaced again in July 2012 when a Swiss laboratory announced that it had discovered elevated levels of polonium-210 on some of Arafat’s clothes and personal belongings. French prosecutors launched a murder investigation later that year in response to a request by Arafat’s widow. In November 2012 Arafat’s remains were exhumed so that teams of Swiss, Russian, and French experts could test for signs of poisoning. The results of the separate investigations, released in late 2013, were contradictory. The Russian report was released first and found no traces of polonium-210. The Swiss and French results both found abnormally high levels of polonium-210 but disagreed on how it got into his remains: the Swiss study concluded that poisoning could not be ruled out, while the French study concluded that the presence of polonium-210 could be explained as environmental in origin. No report went without controversy, moreover. There were claims of outright interference in the Russian investigation, including claims that the Russian scientists were instructed on what the outcome should be. The Swiss report cited a number of intervening factors that effected uncertainty in the interpretation of the results, including the length of time since the death and the incomplete “chain of custody” of Arafat’s clothes and belongings studied in the earlier investigation. Palestinian officials and Arafat’s widow dismissed the French conclusions as “politicized.” The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Legacy An assessment of the personality of Yasser Arafat must take into consideration both his deep religiosity and his fierce nationalism (even if he tended to equate Palestinian nationalism with himself). He often said that he was married to the Palestinian cause, and indeed he had no other bride—at least until he married Suhā al-Ṭawīl, a Sorbonne-educated Palestinian woman of Christian origin, in 1990. He customarily worked late into the night, sometimes receiving leaders and journalists well after midnight. He lived in modest fashion—even as he provided supporters with money and costly favors, purchased influence, and accepted the corruption of many of those around him—and, in spite of criticism of his authoritarian style of governing, he managed to gain a wide popularity among his people. His opponents—both in Israel and in the Arab world—were numerous, however, and Arafat escaped so many assassination attempts through the years that his intuition and resilience became a sort of legend. To assess Arafat’s life as a whole is no easy task. He succeeded in putting the Palestinians back on the political map after their disastrous uprooting in the middle of the 20th century. He was also able to maintain the unity of a cohesive Palestinian organization in spite of interference from neighboring Arab states. But Arafat’s shortcomings in building solid state institutions after 1993 were matched by his shortcomings in understanding the Israeli public and its fears. At the end of his life he had reached a state of complete diplomatic isolation—and yet, as Hamas and Fatah continued to vie for influence in the occupied territories in the years after his death, it looked as though history might find that he was the last Palestinian leader able to sign a peace agreement and impose it on the Palestinian community as a whole

How Britain Destryed Palestine

Trending Occupied West Bank Donald Trump Gaza South Africa ICC Sudan Features | Al-Nakba How Britain Destroyed the Palestinian Homeland 100 years since Balfour’s “promise”, Palestinians insist that their rights in Palestine cannot be dismissed. Balfour day 48:30 By Ramzy Baroud Published On 10 Apr 2018 10 Apr 2018 When I was a child growing up in a Gaza refugee camp, I looked forward to November 2. On that day, every year, thousands of students and camp residents would descend upon the main square of the camp, carrying Palestinian flags and placards, to denounce the Balfour Declaration. Truthfully, my giddiness then was motivated largely by the fact that schools would inevitably shut down and, following a brief but bloody confrontation with the Israeli army, I would go home early to the loving embrace of my mother, where I would eat a snack and watch cartoons. Recommended Stories list of 4 items list 1 of 4 Locked out: Palestinians in Jordan still waiting to return to stolen homes list 2 of 4 PLO, History of a Revolution: Masters of Their Own Destiny list 3 of 4 Return to Palestine list 4 of 4 Rebel Writers: Palestine & Syria end of list At the time, I had no idea who Balfour was, and how his “declaration” all those years ago had altered the destiny of my family and, by extension, my life and the lives of my children as well. All I knew was that he was a bad person and, because of his terrible deed, we subsisted in a refugee camp, encircled by a violent army and by an ever-expanding graveyard filled with “martyrs”. 'Balfour had pledged my homeland to another people' [Getty Images] ‘Balfour had pledged my homeland to another people’ [Getty Images] Decades later, destiny would lead me to visit the Whittingehame Church, a small parish in which Arthur James Balfour is now buried. Advertisement While my parents and grandparents are buried in a refugee camp, an ever-shrinking space under a perpetual siege and immeasurable hardship, Balfour’s resting place is an oasis of peace and calmness. The empty meadow all around the church is large enough to host all the refugees in my camp. Sign up for Al Jazeera Weekly Newsletter The latest news from around the world. Timely. Accurate. Fair. E-mail address Subscribe By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policy protected by reCAPTCHA The British government remains unrepentant after all these years. It has yet to take any measure of moral responsibility, however symbolic, for what it has done to the Palestinians. Finally, I became fully aware of why Balfour was a “bad person”. Once Britain’s Prime Minister, then the Foreign Secretary from late 1916, Balfour had pledged my homeland to another people. That promise was made on November 2, 1917, on behalf of the British government in the form of a letter sent to the leader of the Jewish community in Britain, Walter Rothschild. At the time, Britain was not even in control of Palestine, which was still part of the Ottoman Empire. Either way, my homeland was never Balfour’s to so casually transfer to anyone else. His letter read: “His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.” He concluded, “I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.” Ironically, members of the British parliament have declared that the use of the term “Zionist” is both anti-Semitic and abusive. Advertisement The British government remains unrepentant after all these years. It has yet to take any measure of moral responsibility, however symbolic, for what it has done to the Palestinians. Worse, it is now busy attempting to control the very language used by Palestinians to identify those who have deprived them of their land and freedom. But the truth is, not only was Rothschild a Zionist, Balfour was, too. Zionism, then, before it deservedly became a swear word, was a political notion that Europeans prided themselves to be associated with. In fact, just before he became Prime Minister, David Cameron declared, before the Conservative Friends of Israel meeting, that he, too, was a Zionist. His successor, Theresa May, even celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Balfour declaration, ‘with pride’. To some extent, being a Zionist remains a rite of passage for some Western leaders. A rally in Beirut commemorating the Balfour declaration in 1945 [Getty Images] A rally in Beirut commemorating the Balfour declaration in 1945 [Getty Images] Balfour was hardly acting on his own. True, the Declaration bears his name, yet, in reality, he was a loyal agent of an empire with massive geopolitical designs, not only concerning Palestine alone but with Palestine as part of a larger Arab landscape. Just a year earlier, another sinister document was introduced, albeit secretly. It was endorsed by another top British diplomat, Mark Sykes and, on behalf of France, by François Georges-Picot. The Russians were informed of the agreement, as they too had received a piece of the Ottoman cake. Advertisement The document indicated that, once the Ottomans were soundly defeated, their territories, including Palestine, would be split among the prospective victorious parties. Play Video 47:24 Now Playing 47:24 Al-Nakba - Episode 1 Al-Nakba - Episode 1 Next 24:43 Turning the Tide: Mali | Africa’s New Directions Turning the Tide: Mali | Africa’s New Directions 25:14 Trump’s blitzkrieg: Overwhelm, confuse, confound Trump’s blitzkrieg: Overwhelm, confuse, confound 48:41 The Palestine Laboratory – EP 2 The Palestine Laboratory – EP 2 24:24 Hidden Strength: South Sudan | Africa's New Directions Hidden Strength: South Sudan | Africa's New Directions WATCH: Al-Nakba – Episode 1 (47:25) The Sykes-Picot Agreement, also known as the Asia Minor Agreement, was signed in secret 102 years ago, two years into World War I. It signified the brutal nature of colonial powers that rarely associated land and resources with people that lived upon the land and owned those resources. The centrepiece of the agreement was a map that was marked with straight lines by a china graph pencil. The map largely determined the fate of the Arabs, dividing them in accordance with various haphazard assumptions of tribal and sectarian lines. Once the war was over, the loot was to be divided into spheres of influence: France would receive areas marked (a), which included: the region of south-eastern Turkey, northern Iraq – including Mosel, most of Syria and Lebanon. British-controlled areas were marked with the letter (b), which included: Jordan, southern Iraq, Haifa and Acre in Palestine and a coastal strip between the Mediterranean Sea and the River Jordan. Russia would be granted Istanbul, Armenia and the strategic Turkish Straits. The improvised map consisted not only of lines but also colours, along with language that attested to the fact that the two countries viewed the Arab region purely on materialistic terms, without paying the slightest attention to the possible repercussions of slicing up entire civilizations with a multifarious history of co-operation and conflict. Advertisement The agreement read, partly: “… in the blue area France, and in the red area Great Britain, shall be allowed to establish such direct or indirect administration or control as they desire and as they may think fit to arrange with the Arab state or confederation of Arab states.” The brown area, however, was designated as an international administration, the nature of which was to be decided upon after further consultation among Britain, France and Russia. The Sykes-Picot negotiations finished in March 1916 and were official, although secretly signed on May 19, 1916. World War I concluded on November 11, 1918, after which the division of the Ottoman Empire began in earnest. British and French mandates were extended over divided Arab entities, while Palestine was granted to the Zionist movement a year later, when Balfour conveyed the British government’s promise, sealing the fate of Palestine to live in perpetual war and turmoil. INTERACTIVE: A century on – Why Arabs resent Sykes-Picot The idea of Western “peacemakers” and “honest-brokers”, who are very much a party in every Middle Eastern conflict, is not new. British betrayal of Arab aspirations goes back many decades. They used the Arabs as pawns in their Great Game against other colonial contenders, only to betray them later on, while still casting themselves as friends bearing gifts. Nowhere else was this hypocrisy on full display as was in the case of Palestine. Starting with the first wave of Zionist Jewish migration to Palestine in 1882, European countries helped to facilitate the movement of illegal settlers and resources, where the establishment of many colonies, large and small, was afoot. Advertisement So when Balfour sent his letter to Rothschild, the idea of a Jewish homeland in Palestine was very much plausible. Still, many supercilious promises were being made to the Arabs during the Great War years, as self-imposed Arab leadership sided with the British in their war against the Ottoman Empire. Arabs were promised instant independence, including that of the Palestinians. The understanding among Arab leaders was that Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations was to apply to Arab provinces that were ruled by the Ottomans. Arabs were told that they were to be respected as “a sacred trust of civilisation”, and their communities were to be recognised as “independent nations”. Palestinians wanted to believe that they were also included in that civilisation sacredness, and were deserving of independence, too. Their conduct in support of the Pan-Arab Congress, as voting delegates in July 1919, which elected Faisal as a King of a state comprising Palestine, Lebanon, Transjordan and Syria, and their continued support of Sharif Hussein of Mecca, were all expressions of their desire for the long-coveted sovereignty. Play Video 47:01 AL JAZEERA WORLD: Born in ’48 (47:02) When the intentions of the British and their rapport with the Zionists became too apparent, Palestinians rebelled, a rebellion that has never ceased, 99 years later, for the horrific consequences of British colonialism and the eventual complete Zionist takeover of Palestine are still felt after all these years. Paltry attempts to pacify Palestinian anger were to no avail, especially after the League of Nations Council in July 1922 approved the terms of the British Mandate over Palestine – which was originally granted to Britain in April 1920 – without consulting the Palestinians at all, who would disappear from the British and international radar, only to reappear as negligible rioters, troublemakers, and obstacles to the joint British-Zionist colonial concoctions. Advertisement Despite occasional assurances to the contrary, the British intention of ensuring the establishment of an exclusively Jewish state in Palestine was becoming clearer with time. The Balfour Declaration was hardly an aberration, but had, indeed, set the stage for the full-scale ethnic cleansing that followed, three decades later. The Balfour Declaration set the stage for the full-scale ethnic cleansing that followed three decades later [Getty Images] The Balfour Declaration set the stage for the full-scale ethnic cleansing that followed three decades later [Getty Images] In his book, Before Their Diaspora, Palestinian scholar Walid Khalidi captured the true collective understanding among Palestinians regarding what had befallen their homeland nearly a century ago: “The Mandate, as a whole, was seen by the Palestinians as an Anglo-Zionist condominium and its terms as instruments for the implementation of the Zionist programme; it had been imposed on them by force, and they considered it to be both morally and legally invalid. The Palestinians constituted the vast majority of the population and owned the bulk of the land. Inevitably, the ensuing struggle centred on this status quo. The British and the Zionists were determined to subvert and revolutionise it, the Palestinians to defend and preserve it.” In fact, that history remains in constant replay: The Zionists claimed Palestine and renamed it “Israel”; the British continue to support them, although never ceasing to pay lip service to the Arabs; the Palestinian people remain a nation that is geographically fragmented between refugee camps, in the diaspora, militarily occupied, or treated as second-class citizens in a country upon which their ancestors dwelt since time immemorial. Advertisement While Balfour cannot be blamed for all the misfortunes that have befallen Palestinians since he communicated his brief but infamous letter, the notion that his “promise” embodied – that of complete disregard of the aspirations of the Palestinian Arab people – is handed from one generation of British diplomats to the next, the same way that Palestinian resistance to colonialism is also spread across generations. In his essay in Al-Ahram Weekly, entitled “Truth and Reconciliation”, the late Professor Edward Said wrote: “Neither the Balfour Declaration nor the Mandate ever specifically concede that Palestinians had political, as opposed to civil and religious, rights in Palestine. The idea of inequality between Jews and Arabs was, therefore, built into British – and, subsequently, Israeli and US – policy from the start.” That inequality continues, thus the perpetuation of the conflict. What the British, the early Zionists, the Americans and subsequent Israeli governments failed to understand, and continue to ignore at their peril, is that there can be no peace without justice and equality in Palestine; and that Palestinians will continue to resist, as long as the reasons that inspired their rebellion nearly a century ago, remain in place. One hundred years later, the British government is yet to possess the moral courage to take responsibility for what their government has done to the Palestinian people. One hundred years later, Palestinians insist that their rights in Palestine cannot be dismissed, neither by Balfour nor by his modern peers in “Her Majesty’s Government”

Fikr-e-Yahud