{"id":48709,"date":"2019-11-03T09:32:10","date_gmt":"2019-11-03T01:32:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.namnewsnetwork.org\/?p=48709"},"modified":"2019-11-03T09:40:09","modified_gmt":"2019-11-03T01:40:09","slug":"britain-should-apologise-for-balfour-declaration-peer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/?p=48709","title":{"rendered":"Britain Should Apologise For Balfour Declaration &#8211; Peer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p> LONDON, Nov 3 (NNN-AGENCIES) &#8211; Two years ago, a peer called on the British government to apologise for the &#8220;suffering&#8221; of Palestinians, 100 years after the Balfour Declaration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The UK government&#8217;s declaration was the first commitment by a world power to a &#8220;Jewish national home&#8221; in Palestine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lord Warner said, the UK had failed to protect the rights of non-Jewish people in the region and should apologise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The government said, there would be no apology but it would work for peace between Israel and the Palestinians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>During questions in the House of Lords, the Foreign Office Minister, Baroness Anelay, told the independent peer that the government &#8220;will mark the centenary of Balfour with pride.&#8221; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, she added, &#8220;We recognise that the declaration should have called for the protection of political rights of non-Jewish communities in Palestine, particularly their right to self-determination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;This is why we support a two-state solution.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In Nov, 1917, the then British Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, wrote a letter to Lord Rothschild, a leader of the Jewish community in Britain. It became an important element in the movement to create a Jewish state in Palestine, which culminated in the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img src=\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/660\/media\/images\/83295000\/jpg\/_83295156_83295155.jpg\" alt=\"David Ben-Gurion announcing creation of state of Israel, in May 1948\"\/><figcaption>                                     David Ben-Gurion announced the creation of the state of Israel in 1948                 <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Historians disagree as to what Balfour intended by his declaration. The letter makes no mention of the word &#8220;state&#8221; and insists that nothing should be done &#8220;which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cross-bencher, Lord Warner, argued that, there was a &#8220;condition&#8221; to the declaration and successive UK governments &#8220;have failed to deliver that declaration &#8211;  protection to the Palestinian people.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He told the House, &#8220;Furthermore, should we not mark the centenary with a gracious apology from the British government in Parliament, for the suffering that failure has caused and try to make amends&#8230; with a clear commitment to recognition of a viable independent Palestinian state?&#8221;&#8211; NNN-AGENCIES <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>LONDON, Nov 3 (NNN-AGENCIES) &#8211; Two years ago, a peer called on the British government to apologise for the &#8220;suffering&#8221; of Palestinians, 100 years after the Balfour Declaration. The UK government&#8217;s declaration was the first commitment by a world power to a &#8220;Jewish national home&#8221; in Palestine. Lord Warner said, the UK had failed to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":48715,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[209,217,291,194,301],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48709"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/48715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}