PA President Abbas' Speech at Arab Summit: We Are Preparing to Sue British Government for Balfour Declaration

PA President Mahmoud Abbas' speech, delivered at the Arab League Summit in Nouakchott, Mauritania, on June 25, called for the Arab League's help in preparing a lawsuit against the British government for issuing and implementing the 1917 Balfour Declaration. The speech was read at the summit by PA Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Malki, following the death of Abbas' brother. The speech aired on Al-Jazeera network.

Following are excerpts

PA Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Malki on behalf of Mahmoud Abbas: Allow me first to convey the greetings of President Mahmoud Abbas, and his sincere apologies for being prevented, at the last moment, from attending the summit, even though he was on his way. The death of his brother, Omar, prevented him being here. His apologies are extended to you all. He asked me to represent him at the summit, and to read out his speech, which begins as follows...

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Mr. Chairman, my fellow leaders, almost a century has passed since the 1917 Balfour Declaration, and on the basis of this accursed declaration, which was given by those who did not own [Palestine] to those who did not deserve it, hundreds of thousands of Jews were transferred from Europe and elsewhere to Palestine, at the expense of our Palestinian people, whose fathers and forefathers lived on the soil of their homeland for thousands of years. In the wake of this [declaration], the British Mandate authority and the superpowers of those times allowed the Jewish terrorist movements to uproot, deport, and banish nearly half of the population of Palestine to neighboring countries and to what was left of the historical Palestine. Following the Nakba, the Israeli forces destroyed more than 485 Palestinian towns and villages.

As a result, approximately six million Palestinians are living in exile. We are working to open the files of the Israeli crimes, which were perpetrated against our people since the end of the British Mandate in Palestine, and the massacres perpetrated by [Israel] since 1948. On the occasion of this painful anniversary, and as we mark almost a hundred years since this historic massacre of our land and our people's resources, and since this catastrophe remains unresolved, we are asking the Secretariat-General of the Arab League to support us in preparing a legal portfolio in order to file a lawsuit against the British government, for issuing the Balfour Declaration and for subsequently implementing it, in its capacity as a Mandate authority. This caused the Nakba of the Palestinian people, its banishment, and its being deprived of living in its homeland, and of establishing its independent state, like the rest of the region's peoples.

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