Palestine - Abbas Abandons Peace Negotiations With Israel

[Published 18 August 2016]


Mahmoud Abbas’s decision to prosecute Britain for publishing the 1917 Balfour Declaration amounts to an outright rejection of the right of the Jewish people to have their own State in former Palestine - the major stumbling block to peacefully resolving the Jewish-Arab conflict for the last 100 years.

Abbas effectively abandoned further peace negotiations with Israel when his Foreign Minister Riad al-Maliki announced Abbas’s decision during an Arab League meeting in the Mauritanian capital of Nouakchott on 25 July:

“We are working to open up an international criminal case for the crime which they [Britain] committed against our nation — from the days of the British Mandate all the way to the massacre which was carried out against us from 1948 onwards ...

... With the commemoration of 100 years since this historic massacre, and following the continuity of this tragedy, we request that the Secretary General of the Arab League assist us in prosecuting the British government for publishing the Balfour Declaration which caused this catastrophe against the Palestinian people.”

The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) — from its founding in 1964 — had labelled the Balfour Declaration a “fraud” - revising this position in 1968 by claiming it was “deemed null and void.”

Such unsubstantiated assertions of British fraud and illegality are supposedly now to be legally challenged — but can Abbas be taken seriously?

Abbas has not similarly threatened France - although France’s Secretary General For Foreign Affairs - Jules Cambon — informed Nahum Sokolow on 4 June 1917 — 5 months before the Balfour Declaration:

“You were good enough to present the project to which you are devoting your efforts, which has for its object the development of Jewish colonization in Palestine. You consider that, circumstances permitting, and the independence of the Holy Places being safeguarded on the other hand, it would be a deed of justice and of reparation to assist, by the protection of the Allied Powers, in the renaissance of the Jewish nationality in that Land from which the people of Israel were exiled so many centuries ago.

The French Government, which entered this present war to defend a people wrongfully attacked, and which continues the struggle to assure the victory of right over might, can but feel sympathy for your cause, the triumph of which is bound up with that of the Allies.

I am happy to give you herewith such assurance.”

Abbas is not proposing to sue all 51 member States of the League of Nations who unanimously adopted and incorporated the Balfour Declaration in the Mandate for Palestine — when calling for the “reconstitution of the Jewish National Home in Palestine”.

Threatened legal action against Britain only will probably never eventuate — let alone have any chance of success.

Abbas’s latest grandstanding ploy comes as he desperately tries to recover lost political ground to Hamas by reinforcing his own Jew-hating credentials.

The Nouakchott Declaration has however served to focus attention on thirty years of long-overlooked international political decisions taken between 1917 and 1947 which resulted in:

1. 99.99% of the Ottoman Empire lands conquered by Britain and France in World War 1 being set aside for Arab self-determination whilst only 0.01% - Palestine — was set aside for Jewish self-determination

2. 78% of Palestine being closed in 1922 to Jewish settlement and development of the Jewish National Home — such territory subsequently becoming an independent sovereign Jew-free Arab State in 1946 — today called Jordan.

Burying Arab heads in the sand by refusing to accept these decisions remains an exercise in futility.

When Arab minds acknowledge these historic and legal realities - the peaceful resolution of the century-old conflict between Arabs and Jews becomes certainly attainable.

Palestine - UN Special Rapporteur Bans Free Speech

[Published 31 March 2013]


United Nations Special Rapporteur on “the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967” - Professor Richard Falk - has taken the extraordinary action to ban posts on his blog page “Citizen Pilgrimage”.

This has happened to myself and at least one other person when we attempted to post comments in response to an article written by Professor Falk titled ” What was wrong with Obama’s speech in Jerusalem”

My detailed comment sought to point out what was right with President Obama’s speech in Jerusalem. It had been published as an article on many Internet pages around the world and reproduced on the web sites of scores of others without editorial amendment.

I presented a considered and reasoned analysis of what President Obama had said. It was not couched in inflammatory or defamatory terms. It considered aspects of President Obama’s speech not referred to in Professor Falk’s article and came to an entirely different conclusion to the views expressed by Professor Falk.

To my amazement Professor Falk’s response to my post was:

“My blog is no longer open for this sort of polemics on the Israel/Palestine conflict. There are many other more important venues to carry on these discussions.”

My reply to Professor Falk - pointing out his decision amounted to the banning of free speech and requesting he reconsider his decision - went unanswered.

I subsequently sought to post an entirely different response to another contributor’s comment - but it was also not published.

One person who sought to post a comment to Professor Falk’s article received the following response:

“Mr. Skolnik: My blog is no longer open for this sort of polemical responses that insult either me or others who submit comments. There are many other venues for this sort of debate.”

Stangely Professor Falk had no similar qualms in publishing the following comment from one of his readers:

“I have been following events in Israel and Cyprus closely, and stand by my assertions. I find it both fascinating and terrifying that Germany is the force behind the Cypriot haircut, in which unscrupulous jewish industrialists, all of whom hold Israeli passports, are having their bank accounts seized and money transferred to Germany. Who would have predicted this turn of events, but really, once you spot the pattern, it becomes impossible to deny this jaw-dropping turn of events, and its ominous implications.”

It is clear that there are many readers of Professor Falk’s blog who would be grossly offended by this Jew-hating language - yet it was published.

I do not seek to silence these Jew-haters airing their views on Professor Falk’s blog. Better the world should be aware such views exist and are exposed to critical comment.

My articles sometimes attract such vile and repulsive comments. Never would I seek to have them expunged. I prefer to respond to such comments or let my readers do so.

But why should a UN Rapporteur concerned with human rights seek to ban the views of others like myself and Mr Skolnik - if he allows such a vile post as this to appear as a comment on the same blog page?

Intrigued by the Professor’s totally unexpected and unexplained reaction to my post - I contacted other sites where his article had been published.

One was a virulently Jew-hating web site called “Shoah - The Palestinian Holocaust” It had no problem posting the identical response that I attempted to post on Professor Falk’s web page

Another was “Ramy Abdeljabbar’s Palestine and World News” - not what one would call a pro-Israel site. It published my response to Professor Falk’s article without indulging in the histrionics and petulance displayed by Professor Falk.

A third site was “Transcend Media Service” - which describes itself in the following terms:

“TRANSCEND International is an experiment in promoting peace by peaceful means throughout the world. Traditionally, institutes have been centered around a building where the people who work together meet on a regular basis. Since many people who share common interests in helping transform conflicts nonviolently and creatively are geographically scattered and cannot usually be physically together, our solution is to create an electronic network of members. This, in addition, diminishes our carbon footprints and contributes to attenuate the global warming crisis.”

Professor Falk is a member of the Transcend Network.

Transcend saw nothing objectionable in posting my response to Professor Falk’s article

Professor Falk needs to understand that attempts by him to ban freedom of expression and free speech on his web site demean himself and his position as a UN Special Rapporteur.

Those in authority at the UN who repeatedly express their support for the protection of human rights must be prepared to act against one of their own by denouncing Professor Falk’s actions in the strongest terms with a view to ending his crass attempt to deny the inalienable right of every human being to speak out and be heard.

Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and members of the UN Human Rights Council - are you listening or do you endorse Professor Falk’s outrageous conduct?