EGYPTIAN DIPLOMAT: PALESTINIANS SHOULD UNITE TO ACHIEVE FREEDOM
Jakarta, 23 Jumadil Akhir 1434/2 May 2013 (MINA) – The Palestinian should be united to achieve their right to get their country back from Israeli occupation, Egyptian ambassador to Indonesia, Bahaa Dessouki told Mi’raj News Agency in an exclusive interview on Wednesday (1/5).
Palestinian people that are now divided into several factions, will affect their communication to the International community because there are many voices from Palestinians themselves.
“However strong our efforts to achieve peace and freedom for the Palestinians, but if they have problems among themselves, they won’t be possible to achieve it,” Bahaa said.
The Palestinians reconciliation is very important to achieve the freedom for Palestine with Jerusalem as the capital city of united Palestine.
Egypt has played a lot of actions concerning the Palestinian cause. So, we’re with the Palestinians to find out the fair way to achieve freedom. Dessouki also said that Palestine issue is a special priority in Egyptian political policies, so Egypt will always be actively involved in the talks to get back Palestinian freedom.
To realize it, Egypt is joining the international community, the UN and Arab countries to see how it can settle this matter.
Egypt is also working with other countries and also with Israel itself because Egypt has been in the relationship with them in Camp David accords that urge Israel to give the Palestinian’s right to be free and to take back Al-Aqsha as it belongs to all Muslims.
Palestine has been occupied by Israel since its 1948 declaration of independence in the land that was stolen from the Palestinians. The Zionists stealing of the Palestinian land had direct link with the Balfour Declaration of 1917.
The Balfour Declaration of 1917
The Balfour Declaration was made in November 1917. The Balfour Declaration led the Jewish community in Britain and America into believing that Great Britain would support the creation of a national home for the Jewish people in the Middle East.
On November 2nd 1917, Arthur James Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary of the time, wrote to Lord Rothschild. The Rothschild’s were considered by many Jews to be one the most influential of all Jewish families – they were certainly one of the wealthiest. Their influence in America was considered to be very important to the British government.
Balfour declared his support for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in the area known as Palestine – though there had to be safeguards for the “rights of non-Jewish communities in Palestine”. This communication was accepted by the Jewish community as Great Britain’s support for a Jewish homeland. Other nations that fought for the Allies offered their support for the declaration.
However, from a Palestinian Arab point of view, the same area had been promised to them for siding with the Allies in World War One and fighting against the Turks who were fighting on the side of the Germans.
Therefore, when Britain was given Palestine to govern as a League of Nation’s mandate at the end of the war, both the Jews and the Arabs believed that they had been betrayed as both believed that they had been promised the same piece of land. After 1918, politics in the Middle East was to become a lot more complicated as many Jews took the Balfour Declaration as read and emigrated to Palestine. The Arabs there saw the increasing number of Jews moving to the region as a threat to their way of life and problems quickly multiplied..
However Historians until now still disagree as to what the then British Foreign Secretary, Arthur James Balfour, intended by his declaration. The letter has no mention of the word “state”, and insists that nothing should be done “which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”. (L/P01/P02/P04/E1).
Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)
