13 Jan 2023, 15:05 WIB

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is closely related to British policy.

BY  ANDRIAN SAPUTRA, ANI NURSALIKAH

On Thursday (12/1), Lord Tariq Ahmad from Wimbledon, England made a historic small gesture. He alone performed prayers at the Dome of the Rock Mosque in the al-Aqsa Mosque Complex, Jerusalem.

“It was an honor and a privilege to spend time at the holy al-Aqsa Mosque this morning with the Director of the Jerusalem Waqf Department, Sheikh Azzam Al-Khatib,” the British minister of state for the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia and the United Nations tweeted Friday. 13/1/2023).

Tariq Ahmad emphasized the UK’s unwavering support for Jordanian custodianship of the holy sites in Jerusalem, along with maintaining the status quo at the sites. The status quo allows Muslims to worship at the al-Aqsa compound and followers of other faiths to visit the site.

Ahmad also visited the West Bank city of Hebron and toured within the city. On Wednesday (11/1), he started his first official visit to the Palestinian Territories since he became minister.

He briefly met Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen in West Jerusalem on Wednesday before moving to the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah to meet Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Maliki.

The al-Aqsa Mosque is the third holiest site in the world for Muslims. Jews call the area the Temple Mount, claiming that it was the site of two Jewish temples in ancient times.

Britain was originally linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In fact, the kingdom can be said to be a trigger for sparks which then flare up later.

November 2 became one of the dark dates for the Palestinian people. On that date in 1917, the land of Palestine was “halalized” to become a home for the world’s Jewish people. It was the Balfour Declaration which contained the official support from the British Government for the world’s Jews to occupy Palestinian land.

British Foreign Secretary at that time Arthur James Balfour sent an official letter to the leading Jew in England, Baron Lionel Walter Rothschild.

The Rothschilds are considered by most Jews to be the most influential and wealthy Jewish family. Their influence in America was considered important by the British Government.

Official Letter of the British Empire signed by Arthur Balfour – (British Library)

At that time, Jews around the world, through their Zionist group, actively planned to build a Jewish state in the Middle East. This plan has been in the minds of the Jews since around the end of the XIV century, and is becoming more and more obvious with the flow of support from several world political powers. The Balfour Declaration was like the gasoline that ignited the Jewish dream of a homeland.

Communication through the letter was received by the Jewish community as a form of support for Great Britain to make Palestine their home.

Britain, which won World War I, felt entitled to the territory controlled by the Ottoman Turks, including Palestine. Britain saw an important role for the Zionist movement which needed territory to establish the state of Israel. Britain also embraced the Jewish Zionists in order to get the United States and Russia as allies. Two countries where the Zionist movement is growing rapidly.

This British support began with the friendship of British Prime Minister David Lloyd George with a Jewish chemist living in Manchester, Chaim Weizmann. Weizmann was credited to the British for creating chemicals as a weapon against Germany. In return, Weizmann designated Jerusalem as the home of the Jews.

US President Harry S Truman with Israeli President Chaim Weizmann. At that time, Weizmann handed over the star of David robes as a thank you for supporting the establishment of the state of Israel. – (Public Domain)

At the same time, Britain promised the Palestinian territories to the Saudi Arabian Royal family which helped them defeat the Ottoman Turks. The Balfour Declaration became the ‘passport’ for the exodus of thousands of world Jews to Palestine. Meanwhile, the Palestinian Arabs who live in the area feel betrayed by the British, who had promised the area to the Arabs.

The Balfour Declaration did not necessarily trigger an exodus of Jews from England. The flood of European Jewish immigrants to Palestine only occurred in the 1930s and 1940s, when many European Jews became victims of the massacres of Nazi Germany under Hitler in World War II.

Seeing the massive migration of Jews, Palestinian Arabs immediately sensed a threatening danger. Fears that the Jews would take over their land soon spread among Palestinians. And since then there has been tension and physical conflict between Palestinian Arabs and Jews.

Britain, which at that time was in the position of occupier, had actually tried to “protect” Palestinian Arabs. This can be seen from the policy of the British colonial government to stop the flow of Jewish migration in 1939. But that did not last.

The reason is, the Nazi mass extermination of Jews is increasingly rampant. European countries that were sympathetic to the plight of the Jews then put pressure on Britain, which in turn immediately lifted the ban on European Jewish immigration to Palestine. As a result, the annexation of Palestinian land by the Jews is also increasingly rampant.

The conspiracy of the world community in the United Nations has contributed to the misery of the Palestinian Arabs. In 1947, the United Nations made a controversial decision limiting the land of Palestine to be divided equally between Arab citizens and immigrant Jews.

Exactly at midnight on May 14, 1948, Britain officially ended its occupation of Palestinian lands. Ironically, it was the Jews– not the Palestinians– who proclaimed the establishment of the state of Israel the next day. That provoked the anger of several Arab countries, which immediately mobilized their military forces to enter Palestine to attack the Israeli Jews.

The results of the 1948-49 war showed that Zionist Israel was superior and managed to beat back the Arab powers that ganged up on it. At the end of the war, Palestinian land under Israeli control increased by 50 percent, including the area west of Jerusalem.

Palestinians expelled from the Tantura area by Israeli forces in 1948. – (Israel Archives)

On the other hand, the fate of the Palestinian Arabs is getting worse. They were expelled from their homeland, and forced to live at the mercy of some of the Arabs where they fled. At that time, tens of thousands of Palestinians were expelled. They commemorate the days of the expulsion as the Nakba, aka Catastrophe, to this day.

On October 14, 2014, the British House of Commons paid for its blunder in the Balfour Declaration. Quoted from the BBC , through a vote, the assembly recognizes Palestine as a state. In the voting results, 274 members of parliament supported the recognition of a Palestinian state while 12 other members rejected the recognition.

Meanwhile, in 2017, the UK finally admitted Balfour’s mistake in not including a clause on the political rights of Arab citizens in its 2017 declaration. Regret a little too late considering the grip of the Zionists in Palestine is so strong. Read more

source https://www.republika.id/posts/36408/menteri-inggris-al-aqsa-dan-balfour