Indonesian Activists Gather in Palestine Embassy to Protest Balfour Declaration
Jakarta, MINA – The Indonesian Consortium for Liberation of Al-Aqsa, which consists of several Palestinian supporters, organizes the Focus Group Discussion (FGD) on possible efforts to sue 100 years since the Balfour Declaration was signed on 2 November 2017.
The discussions, in collaboration with the Palestinian Embassy in Jakarta, are aimed at pressuring the British government for having begun the occupation of the three people’s land.
“The Balfour Declaration should be challenged, this declaration has been exploited by the Zionists to legitimize the Jews enter and colonize Palestine. As a result, the Palestinians are still suffering and colonized by the British action. It can not be allowed, “said Nur Ikhwan Abadi, the Secretary General of Aqsa Working Group (AWG) one of the consortiums.
Not only among activists, historians also noted the Declaration as a major British blunder. So the country should be responsible and apologize to the Palestinian people and change the contents of the declaration. In fact, an international campaign that sued Balfour stood recently.
In 2013, as many as 220 delegates from various countries signed a memorandum demanding that the UK apologize for the Balfour Declaration. The signing of the petition was made at a conference held in Cairo from April 4-6, 2013, attended by leaders from Arab and Muslim countries. The campaign was officially launched in London on January 19 at an academic conference hosted by the Palestinian Return Center. However, Britain refused to apologize to the Palestinian people.
In mid-April 2017, a globally and massively deployed online petition called The Balfour Apology Campaign (BAC), appeared to urge the UK to apologize. At least more than 12,000 people signed the petition. In Britain, a petition with more than 10,000 signatures must receive an official response from the British government. However, England again refused to ask amaaf.
In addition to the AWG, MINA News Agency is a member of ICLA as a media originally established to support the Palestinian struggle for independence. In addition, Jama Jama, Muslimin (Hizbullah), Radio Silaturahim, Medical Emergency Rescue Committee (MER-C) is an institution that also realizes humanitarian aid Indonesia by establishing hospitals in Gaza Strip.
Discussions present speakers who are known to consistently voice the Palestinian cause, including: KH. Yakhsyallah Mansur, MA., Imaam Jama’ah Muslimin (Hizbullah), Mr. Taher Hamad (KUAI Embassy of Palestine for Indonesia), Prof. Dr. Makarim Wibisono (Former UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation of the Palestinian territories), dr. Joserizal Journalist (Presidium MER-C), and Sakuri SH, an activist.
The Balfour Declaration was a letter published in 1917 by the then British Foreign Minister, Arthur James Balfour. to Walter Rothschild, the second son of Baron Rothschild. He was the leader of the British Jewish community at that time.
In the 167-letter letter, James Balfour said the British government officially endorsed the idea of creating a Jewish state in the Palestinian territories and also expressed equality to other communities, in which 700,000 Arabs live on the land.
However, in fact, since Israel was declared its founding in 1948, it continues to annex the land of Palestine from day to day, year to year, until now entering a century since England made room for European Jews to move to that holy land. In the same year, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled from their land until now commemorated as the day of the Nakba (the day of disaster) each year.
Currently Israel controls more than 85 percent of Palestinian land or about 27 thousand square kilometers. The remaining for the Palestinian people alone is only about 15 percent. Israel established an isolated region along the border with the Gaza Strip by annexing some 24 percent of the Gaza Strip or about 360 square kilometers.(L/RE1/P2)
Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)
