Palestine to sue Britain for Israel`s creation

International Desk: The Palestinian Authority is preparing a lawsuit against the British government over the issuing of the 1917 Balfour Declaration that paved the way for the creation of the State of Israel.

 

The PA’s Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki told Arab League leaders gathered in Mauritania Monday that London is responsible for all “Israeli crimes” committed since the end of the British mandate in 1948.

 

Signed by British Foreign Secretary Lord Arthur James Balfour in 1917, the declaration was seen as giving the Zionist movement official recognition and backing on the part of a major power, on the eve of the British conquest of the then-Ottoman territory of Palestine.

 

The decision, al-Malki said, “gave people who don’t belong there something that wasn’t theirs.”

 

There was no immediate reaction from Britain.

 

A report in the official Wafa news agency did not note where the PA plans to file the lawsuit.

 

Last year, a group calling itself the Popular Palestinian Campaign to Sue the United Kingdom sued the UK in an Egyptian court.

 

In 2008, a Palestinian youth group said it would attempt to sue the UK over the Balfour Declaration in Britain or in the ICC.

 

Source: Agencies

 

risingbd/Dhaka/July 27, 2016/A K Azad