Balfour: 105 years of British collusion in the colonisation of Palestine

Despite the UK’s current state of political turmoil resulting in three different Conservative Prime Ministers assuming power all within the same year, there seems to be one constant. Each PM’s unwavering and unconditional support for Israel and the Balfour Declaration, from Boris Johnson to Liz Truss to now, Rishi Sunak.

105 years ago the then Conservative British Foreign Secretary, Lord Arthur Balfour decreed a short but fatal document, known today as the Balfour Declaration. This ignited the barbarous Zionist colonisation and ethnic cleansing of Palestine still ongoing today.

The Balfour Declaration called for ‘the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people’, a land and a people the British had no right, authority or consent over, to determine the destiny of.

''I was a university student during 2017, the centenary of the Balfour Declaration. I was very active in my university’s student Palestine Society and Prevent was explicitly used as a means to contain and censor our campaigns, events and political organising condemning the Balfour Declaration. In British Universities we were not allowed to freely criticise nor condemn the government’s lavish celebration of a declaration that led to the colonisation and mass ethnic cleansing of my own country.''

Britain undeniably bears monumental responsibility for not only the fate its own declaration sealed, but for its own personal brutality inflicted upon the Palestinian population during the time of its ruling mandate over Palestine from 1918-1948. In recent years an abundance of historical evidence has come to light exposing the sheer inhumanity the British inflicted upon Palestinians, from arbitrary killings, torture, the use of human shields as well as bombings.

From the Balfour Declaration to the British Mandate of Palestine, Britain has played an irrefutable role in dispossessing Palestinians from their land, Palestine’s colonisation and ethnic cleansing, to the world's longest military occupation in history; Israel’s 55 years-long military occupation.

Yet despite this indisputable responsibility, Britain isn’t rectifying its role in Palestinian oppression or even trying to end it, instead it’s exacerbating it.

The British government under both Conservative and Labour rule has always unequivocally offered support to Israel, whether it’s by turning a blind eye to atrocities it routinely commits against Palestinians, its arms deals with the state, or encroaching on British citizens’ civil liberties in order to stifle Palestine solidarity efforts.

The UK government publicly claims in its foreign policy to support peace between Palestine and Israel yet simultaneously has licensed over £400m worth of arms to Israeli forces, including aircraft, bombs, armoured vehicles and ammunition, whilst witnessing their use on unarmed Palestinian civilians.

Furthermore, the British government spends millions every year on buying “battle tested” arms from Israeli companies. In 2016, Israeli arms company Elbit Systems signed a £800m arms contract with Thales UK, facilitated by the British government. The UK is the only country in the world that has consistently armed Israel throughout its 74 years of existence.

The UK government's outright support for Israel also comes at a price to the British people who wish to exercise their own freedoms and civil liberties at home. From the moment former PM Boris Johnson was elected in 2019, he focused on passing controversial anti-BDS legislation. The bill, although not yet passed, would act to stop public bodies from imposing their own boycotts of foreign countries, which is an attack on civil liberties and democracy. It would mean public bodies are banned from being able to support the peaceful BDS movement, which aims to pressure Israel to comply with international law and end its illegal occupation of the West Bank through the promotion of boycotts and sanctions.

Another way that the UK government has inadvertently used its domestic policies in defence of Israel whilst attacking its own citizens civil liberties and freedoms, is through Prevent. Prevent is one part of the UK governments counter-terrorism strategy ‘contest’ which concerns itself with preventing the ‘radicalisation’ of individuals towards ‘extremism’. However in 2015, the Counter Terrorism and Security Act put Prevent on a statutory basis for the first time, imposing an obligatory duty on public bodies including Universities, Colleges, Schools, Nurseries, NHS. This was then used as a means to clampdown on political dissent and undermine the bastions of free speech that universities, colleges and schools are all supposed to be.

Whilst Prevent was used to target climate change, living wage, and other activists, it is clear that it was used disproportionately to target Palestine solidarity activists in education – something I can attest to from my own personal experience.

As Palestinian students in British schools we were taught geography with maps that did not recognise Palestine. When setting up a cake sale to raise money for a charity aiding Palestinian hospitals with critical medical supplies just after Israel’s 2008 military assault on Gaza - I was interrogated by teachers on whether or not the money was funding ‘terrorism’.

At just 14 years old when trying to host a school assembly on Palestine, my presentation was ‘risk assessed’, censored by teachers who removed words like “occupation” and “apartheid”, before they eventually cancelled the whole thing. This is the Palestinian experience in British schools, being told that we do not exist, being pushed into a dehumanising narrative, and being censored.

Once I’d reached university, I had hoped the rigid confines of school classrooms would change, however they had only gotten considerably worse.

I was a university student during 2017, the centenary of the Balfour Declaration. I was very active in my university’s student Palestine Society and Prevent was explicitly used as a means to contain and censor our campaigns, events and political organising condemning the Balfour Declaration. In British Universities we were not allowed to freely criticise nor condemn the government’s lavish celebration of a declaration that led to the colonisation and mass ethnic cleansing of my own country.

I was censored by my own university, to which I paid tuition fees, from being able to condemn a declaration that led to a third of my family being forced to live under apartheid, another third to live under Israeli military occupation, and the rest to become refugees who are never allowed to return.

Britain shamelessly chooses to deny any accountability for the impacts of its imperialism in Palestine, from its brutal mandate era to its bloodstained Balfour Declaration. It also pushes dangerous and discriminatory policies like Prevent to censor any dissent that highlights their historical responsibility in Palestine as well as their current complicity in Israel’s oppression of Palestinians through their illicit arms deals.

Farrah Koutteineh is head of Public & Legal Relations at the London-based Palestinian Return Centre, and is also the founder of KEY48 - a voluntary collective calling for the immediate right of return of over 7.2 million Palestinian refugees. Koutteineh is also a political activist focusing on intersectional activism including, the Decolonise Palestine movement, indigenous peoples rights, anti-establishment movement, women’s rights and climate justice.

Follow her on Twitter and Instagram: @key48return

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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.