Centenary
PALESTINE - ISRAEL, 8 Feb 2021
Mazin Qumsiyeh | Popular Resistance – TRANSCEND Media Service
6 Feb 2021 – From The Times of London Centenary anniversary of the Mandate on Palestine (thanks to Michael for sharing this). The British empire was complicit with the Zionists in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in these 100 years (and killing over 100,000 natives and injuring nearly a million) and that is precisely why we have 7.5 million displaced or refugee Palestinians and the rest squeezed into 8% of their historic lands and living under racist apartheid policies. The prosperity of the Israeli economy–like that of the US or Australia–is baptized by the blood of the native Palestinians. Lest we forget, the latest “Israeli” nationality law calls the whole land the land of the Jews and only Jews have a right to “self-determination” in this land (Palestine). Britain owes us an apology and restitution. We have a right to return to our homes and lands and a right to end racist apartheid laws.
“The terms of the Palestine Mandate, published today, have notoriously been pulled about a great deal, but in final form they lay down conditions that are necessary for the liberty and progress of the country and for the satisfaction of Mr Balfour’s promise that Palestine should be a national home for the Jews. The phrase “national home” has never seemed to us a happy one; for, whereas some — ourselves among them — have interpreted it as meaning that the Palestinian nation, while being an amalgam of different races and creeds, should be one that the Jew will some day be able to call his own, others have interpreted the promise much more narrowly. The Mandate repeats the phrase without defining it; but on the whole, and despite the criticisms of the Jewish Chronicle, it seems to us to incline to the wider and more generous view. It speaks in the preamble of the “historical connection” of Jewry with Palestine, and of “reconstructing” a national home for Jews there; later it recognizes the Zionist Organization, “so long as its organization and constitution are appropriate”, as a body that should cooperate with the Government on all matters affecting Jewish interests in the country. The British Government will depend on the Organization to interpret our message and discipline enthusiasm into practical channels. We want Palestine to become a nation, because only so will it be able to stand alone, and without the help of the Jews there can be no nation there. To the Arabs, too, the Jew brings the gifts of money and brains such as served them in the days of their political greatness. There are ample provisions in the Mandate for the protection of all existing rights and for absolute equality between races and creeds, and the Arab who agrees to be a Palestinian first and an Arab second will have full share in the prosperity of the country and whatever political distinction it may achieve. He will be unwise if he allows himself to be used by anti-Semites in this or any other country. There is no way to success except in a wise policy of Jewish immigration, which by union with the Arabs will form a strong Palestinian nationality, and it is one of the defects of the Mandate that this ambition of a future Commonwealth in Palestine is not expressly avowed.”
The UN has now a register of all the Palestinian property before 1948 with cadaster plan and cadaster register made by the British in 1920 -1940. Now it is possible ask a property certificate even of robbed property.
Palestine cadastre:
Interactive map: https://libraries.aub.edu.lb/poha-viewer/map/
Mazin Qumsiyeh, associate professor of genetics and director of cytogenetic services at Yale University School of Medicine, is founder and president of the Holy Land Conservation Foundation and ex-president of the Middle East Genetics Association. He won the Raymond Jallow Activism Award from the national Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee in 1998. He is co-founder and national treasurer of Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition, and has written extensively about the Middle East. Qumsiyeh is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment, author of Sharing the Land of Canaan and Popular Resistance in Palestine, a professor at Bethlehem University and director of the Palestine Museum of Natural History in Bethlehem. http://palestinenature.org
Tags: Checkpoints, Conflict, Coronavirus, Fatah, Gaza, Geopolitics, Hamas, Human Rights, International Criminal Court ICC, Israel, Nakba, Oslo Accords, Palestine, Palestine/Israel, Politics, Power, Settlers, Social justice, State Terrorism, UN, USA, Violence, West Bank, Zionism
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