With the approach of the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, which falls this Thursday, the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, launched a campaign demanding that Britain apologize for the commitment of its then-foreign secretary to support the creation of “a national home for the Jewish people” in the Land of Israel. While London has made clear it will do no such thing, the date will still be greeted with anti-Israel protests. Rick Richman comments:
Peace processors used to believe that Israeli-Palestinian peace was a 1967 issue, negotiating suitable borders; or perhaps a 1948 issue, dealing with the refugees from the Arab war against Israel. It is now clear that it is a 1917 issue—the rejection by the Palestinian Arabs of any Jewish sovereignty anywhere in the ancestral homeland of the Jews. . . .
Instead of referring to “two states for two peoples,” the Palestinians always frame the goal of the process as ending “the occupation that began in 1967.” The reason they invariably add the last four words to that formulation is that they believe there is also another occupation that they want eventually to end as well: “the occupation that began in 1948.” That is the reason they say they can “never” give up an asserted “right of return.” To do so would be to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
President Trump’s administration is currently deliberating a new peace process, despite the failures of Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama over nearly three decades. A key to whether there would be any chance for success is whether the Palestinians will agree at the outset that the goal is “two states for two peoples.” One-hundred years after the Balfour Declaration, and 95 years after the international community endorsed it, the Palestinians are still fighting the recognition of any Jewish sovereignty.
Read more on New York Sun: http://www.nysun.com/foreign/how-the-balfour-declaration-has-emerged-at/90105/