“We will give our children’s blood” to undo Balfour Declaration, says Fatah official in Gaza

Senior Fatah official in Khan Yunis Faisal Fayyad: “We demand that the international community and the free people of the world stand with us to restore our rights in this usurped land. It was stolen in 1917 in the cursed Balfour Promise (i.e., Declaration), and also in the May 15, 1948 Nakba (i.e., “the catastrophe,” the establishment of Israel). We all emphasize that we are still defending this stolen land, and that we will give our blood and the blood of our children and our families for the sake of Allah and the homeland.”

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." In 1922, the League of Nations adopted this and made the British Mandate "responsible for putting into effect the declaration," which led to the UN vote in favor of partitioning Mandatory Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state in 1947. In response, Britain ended its mandate on May 15, 1948, and the Palestinian Jews, who accepted the Partition Plan, declared the independent State of Israel. The Palestinian Arabs rejected the plan and together with 7 Arab states attacked Israel, in what is now known as Israel's War of Independence.