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Through the Balfour Declaration, Britain “laid the foundations for the crime of the century in 1948,” i.e. Israel’s establishment, and still continues its “colonialist way”

Headline: "Britain harmed the Paris [Peace] Conference"

Excerpt of an op-ed by Omar Hilmi Al-Ghoul, regular columnist for the official PA daily

    "Unfortunately Britain made a grave and disgraceful error regarding the Paris [Peace] Conference [on Jan. 15, 2017,] by not signing the concluding declaration of the conference…
The conservative British government led by [UK Prime Minister] Theresa [May], in its position contradicting the conclusions of the conference, was as if it wanted to say that Britain, the central player in the Nakba (i.e., “the catastrophe,” Palestinian term for the establishment of the State of Israel) of the Palestinian Arab people, is continuing the same policy. It has not learned lessons from history, has not retreated from its colonialist way, has not tried to atone for its errors towards the Palestinian people, and is still hostage to the Israeli policies.
Nonetheless, in my opinion the Palestinian leadership will not close the doors on dialogue and contact with the British government, will act to influence its erroneous positions, and will press it to reexamine its policies, as they are quite far from support for the option of peace. This [will be done] by demanding that it atone for its policies that led to the Nakba of the Palestinian people, and particularly the Balfour Promise (i.e., Declaration) and its results that laid the foundations for the crime of the century in 1948."
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Paris Peace Conference - A peace conference was held in Paris on Jan. 15, 2017, attended by representatives from over 70 countries, but with no representatives from Israel or the PA. The conference issued a declaration calling for a negotiated peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians based on the two-state solution and praising UN Security Council Resolution 2334. Britain and Australia refused to sign the declaration, with Britain arguing that the declaration, which was made as part of the French Peace Initiative, might harden the Palestinian negotiating position, particularly given its timing right before the inauguration of US President Donald Trump’s administration. The following day Britain blocked the EU Foreign Affairs Council from adopting the declaration.

The Balfour Declaration of Nov. 2, 1917 was a letter from British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Baron Rothschild stating that “His Majesty's government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” and is seen as the basis for later international commitments to establish the State of Israel.

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