Mahmoud Abbas’ Lies About the Balfour Declaration, and the Truth About It

At a recent meeting of the Arab League, Mahmoud Abbas announced his intention to seek full membership in the UN for the “State of Palestine.” More on that here.

He said the declaration was aimed at “getting rid of the Jews in Europe and establishing the so-called Jewish national home in Palestine, to be an outpost to safeguard the interests of these colonial countries.”

The Balfour Declaration had nothing to do with creating an “outpost to safeguard British interests.” It was, as Lord Balfour wrote in his letter to Lord Rothschild (“Balfour Declaration” is the name by which that letter was subsequently known), a long-overdue recognition by His Majesty’s Government of the historic connection of the Jewish people to what they call Eretz Israel, the Land of Israel, the place where Jews had lived uninterruptedly for more than 3,000 years. This view of the matter was confirmed by the Great Powers when their post-World War I creation, the League of Nations, established the Mandates system to help that formerly had belonged to the Ottoman Empire to become independent. In 1922, several mandates for the Arabs were created in Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria (the Arabs were well provided for), while the Mandate for Palestine was created for the Jews; under the administration of Great Britain as Mandatory authority, Mandatory Palestine would initially become the Jewish National Home, and it was then expected to become the Jewish state.

Nor was the Balfour Declaration intended to “get rid of the Jews in Europe.” That was the last thing that the famously philosemitic Arthur Balfour, or British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, would have wished. In fact, the Balfour Declaration was careful to insist that “it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done [by the Declaration] which may prejudice… the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.” It was important, Lord Balfour believed, to reassure Jews in Western Europe that the existence of the Mandate would not change their situation at all; no one would be forcing them to leave Europe and move to what, five years later, became Mandatory Palestine. Balfour realized, as did his friend Lord Rothschild, the man to whom he wrote the letter that became known as the Balfour Declaration, that there were other Jews – the millions of impoverished and persecuted Jews living in Russia and Eastern Europe — who would, however, want to find refuge in a Jewish state.

“Just as our people rejected the Balfour Declaration and its results, we also rejected all attempts to liquidate our cause or falsify the facts about it. We rejected the ‘deal of the century,’ and we refused — and we still refuse — to move the US embassy or any other embassy to Jerusalem,” a reference to former US president Donald Trump’s 2020 peace proposal and his 2018 decision to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

“We refused – and we still refuse — to move the US embassy…to Jerusalem.”

Thus declares Mahmoud Abbas. Perhaps someone should take Abbas gently aside and explain that it’s not up to him to decide where the American Embassy should be located. It’s in Jerusalem, and in Jerusalem it will stay.

In December, the UN General Assembly approved a resolution promoted by the Palestinians requesting that the International Court of Justice weigh in on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, Israeli “annexation” and the “legal status of the occupation.”

Israel has accused the Palestinians of trying to use the world body to circumvent peace negotiations and impose a settlement to the conflict.

Abbas’s comments [at the Arab League meeting on Feb. 12, where he declared that he would be applying for full membership in the UN for the “State of Palestine”) came after the US urged both Israel and the Palestinians to refrain from unilateral moves, amid a recent spike in violence that has included a number of deadly terror attacks on Israelis and gun battles between IDF troops and Palestinian gunmen in the West Bank.

The decision of Mahmoud Abbas to apply full membership in the UN is precisely one of those “unilateral moves” that the Americans have warned against.

There is no equating the Palestinian terrorists who murder Israeli civilians and the subsequent response by the IDF, with its raids in Jenin and Nablus, at present the two main centers of Palestinian terrorists in the West Bank, to arrest or “neutralize” those terrorist murderers.

Sunday’s Arab League meeting in Cairo was attended by President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi of Egypt, Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Abbas, along with many foreign ministers and senior officials.

Sissi warned of dire repercussions of any Israeli measures to change the status quo on the Temple Mount flashpoint holy site in Jerusalem, saying they would “negatively impact” future negotiations to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

El-Sissi’s warning to Israel was quite unnecessary. When Israel’s Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, recently visited the Temple Mount, even this “far-right” and “extremist” politician did not do a single thing to “change the status quo.” He appeared accompanied only by one rabbi and a security detail. He walked around the perimeter of the Mount, as Jewish visitors have for a long time been wont to do. He steered clear of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. He did not pray aloud. He did not pray silently. He did not make a statement of any kind. He quietly left. His entire visit had lasted for a mere 13 minutes. Yet ever since then Palestinian and other Arabs have been getting their knickers in a twist about Israel trying to “change the status quo.”