With the approach of the 100th anniversary of Britain’s declaration that it favored “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people,” a Palestinian campaign is underway to obtain an apology from the United Kingdom for this supposed injustice. Alex Joffe explains what the campaign reveals about Palestinian leaders’ aspirations and tactics:

[T]he campaign against the Balfour Declaration [characteristically involves] mistaking symbolism for practical action. Presumably an apology would achieve a partial restoration of Palestinian national honor and constitute another step toward the complete eradication of Israel. However, . . . it is difficult to see what direct value an apology would have in helping to establish a Palestinian state. . . .

The Balfour apology campaign is thus another element in the Palestinian wars against inconvenient historical facts that must be denied, attacked, rewritten, or otherwise assailed, rather than debated, conceded, or shared. This approach accounts for such extraordinary Palestinian claims as [Yasir] Arafat’s denial that there was ever a Jewish Temple in Jerusalem [and] Saeb Erekat’s statement that the Palestinians are descendants of Epipaleolithic inhabitants and thus the “real” indigenous population of the land. . . .

These [preoccupations]—redeeming lost honor, perpetual victimhood, international responsibility, and achieving through guilt what politics and force of arms cannot—are cultural ideas, transmitted endlessly by Palestinian leaders and through their educational system and media. But they are also reflected in Palestinian politics. At every turn, negotiations get to a stage and then stop because compromise would preclude full “restoration” of what never was. Fighting century-old events and hoping to produce another outcome is consistent with this pattern. It is unlikely to build either a stable Palestinian society or peace with Israel.

There is little doubt that if Hizballah had participated more intensively in Saturday’s attack, Israeli air defenses would have been pushed past their limits, and far more damage would have been done. Daniel Byman and Kenneth Pollack, trying to look at things from Tehran’s perspective, see this as an important sign of caution—but caution that shouldn’t be exaggerated:

Iran is well aware of the extent and capability of Israel’s air defenses. The scale of the strike was almost certainly designed to enable at least some of the attacking munitions to penetrate those defenses and cause some degree of damage. Their inability to do so was doubtless a disappointment to Tehran, but the Iranians can probably still console themselves that the attack was frightening for the Israeli people and alarming to their government. Iran probably hopes that it was unpleasant enough to give Israeli leaders pause the next time they consider an operation like the embassy strike.

Hizballah is Iran’s ace in the hole. With more than 150,000 rockets and missiles, the Lebanese militant group could overwhelm Israeli air defenses. . . . All of this reinforces the strategic assessment that Iran is not looking to escalate with Israel and is, in fact, working very hard to avoid escalation. . . . Still, Iran has crossed a Rubicon, although it may not recognize it. Iran had never struck Israel directly from its own territory before Saturday.

Byman and Pollack see here an important lesson for America:

What Saturday’s fireworks hopefully also illustrated is the danger of U.S. disengagement from the Middle East. . . . The latest round of violence shows why it is important for the United States to take the lead on pushing back on Iran and its proxies and bolstering U.S. allies.