Centenary of the Balfour Declaration

Peter Grant Excerpts

Wednesday 25th October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Dr Offord]

I agree with that understanding of the declaration, but I will move on.

Arabic is Israel’s official second language—I thought it was English. Many of the road signs are in Hebrew and Arabic. Just like all Israelis, the Israeli Arab community have freedom to practise their faith. The Palestinians today refer to Israel’s war of independence as “al-Nakba”, meaning the catastrophe, when an estimated 750,000 Arabs fled from the fighting. While there is much debate about their reasons for leaving, the Israeli Prime Minister at the time, David Ben-Gurion, had called on all Arabs within Israel to stay and live as equal citizens in a Jewish state. While Israel protected those Arabs who remained, the neighbouring Arab nations refused to absorb the Palestinian refugees; instead, they confined them to refugee camps and have denied them citizenship to this day.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

Will the hon. Gentleman accept that the reason why a lot of Palestinian refugees and their descendants do not have citizenship in any other country is that they rightly consider themselves to be Palestinian and they will not accept citizenship of any country other than their own? They are not being refused citizenship; they are declining to take it—they are holding out for their right to be citizens of their own homeland, just as we enjoy that right here.

[Dr Offord]

I do not accept that at all.

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

I am grateful to you, Sir David, for the opportunity to sum up on behalf of the Scottish National party. The Balfour Declaration has clearly been one of the pivotal events in the tragic and often violent history of the middle east, but I do not think that its centenary can be met with unbridled celebration and joy. The Balfour Declaration and the thoughts that went into it have contributed to the history of the middle east in the past 100 years being more tragic and more violent than it might otherwise have been.

Before I explain that, I will reiterate the SNP’s position, which my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) outlined. We fully support the principle of the establishment of a two-state future for the middle east. We absolutely support the right of Israel to continue as an independent state. We support early and, I would argue, immediate recognition of Palestine as an equal state to Israel. I want to see a future in which the two can co-exist as equals in every way, with each fully recognised by the international community, each fully recognising the rights of the other and each fully accepting the responsibilities under international law.

That means that the state of Palestine has to take appropriate action against any of its citizens who engage in acts of violence against Israel or any of its citizens, and it also means that the state of Israel must stop using those murderous attacks as an excuse to launch military action that it knows for certain are likely to result in the deaths of innocent children and other unarmed civilians. Two wrongs do not make a right. As the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) said very powerfully, the first step in any peace process is that all the killings have to stop.

[Ian Austin]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Peter Grant]

I will give way briefly, because we are short of time.

[Ian Austin]

When the hon. Gentleman alleges that Israel is looking for an excuse to bomb people in Gaza, is he suggesting that the Israeli Government want to do that, and that the Israeli people have some desire to wipe the people of Gaza off the map? Is he saying that the people of Israel have no right to defend themselves against rockets being fired into Israel? What exactly is the point he is making when he uses the word “excuse“?

[Peter Grant]

The point I am making is that I entirely respect the right of any nation to use targeted and appropriate military action to defend itself against an aggressor. All too often, the military action from Israel has not been targeted, and arguably it has not been proportionate. The number of civilians who have been killed is far too high for it just to be an accident.

Let me also make it clear that it is completely unacceptable for anyone to use legitimate criticism of the actions of the state of Israel to defend or justify any form of anti-Semitic racism against Jewish people in Israel or anywhere else. People should never blame an individual for the disagreeable actions of the Government of the country in which they live.

I said I would come back to my reasons for saying that I did not think the Balfour Declaration was something to be celebrated without at least some sense of regret. The first part of the declaration has been mentioned, but a huge principle of it has been completely ignored in the past 70 years. The rights of the Palestinian people, certainly in the parts of Palestine that are illegally occupied by Israel, have been violated time and again. Until that stops, we cannot celebrate the Balfour Declaration. We cannot celebrate it while one of the main parties to that declaration is deliberately and repeatedly violating some of its most important principles.

We also need to look at the background of the declaration, and I am surprised that no one has picked up on this point. The declaration was not the act of a Foreign Minister who was a friend of Israel or who cared particularly about the welfare or plight of Jewish refugees. A few years earlier, when he was Prime Minister, the same Arthur Balfour had talked about

“the undoubted evils which had fallen upon portions of the country”—

this country—

“from an alien immigration which was largely Jewish”.—[Official Report, 10 July 1905; Vol. 149, c. 155.]

Those are not the words of a friend of the Jewish people; those are the words of a racist and an anti-Semite. I believe that that was part of the attitude behind the whole Balfour Declaration and all the manoeuvring and double-dealing that went into it. It was not primarily about the welfare of the Jewish people; it was primarily about ensuring that the desperate problem of Jewish refugees was kept away from the shores of Great Britain. The parallels with the plight of Syrian refugees today are far too obvious to have to be made explicit.

As far as the wider foreign policy agenda was concerned, many of the actions of Balfour and his successors were more about looking about the narrow, selfish, colonial interests of the United Kingdom than about caring for the people of Israel or Palestine.

[Andy Slaughter]

rose—

[Ian Austin]

rose—

[Peter Grant]

As I have very little time, I really cannot give way.

I genuinely wish Israel well. I wish my Jewish friends and those who want to celebrate well, but in all conscience I cannot celebrate with them this year. I want to be able to celebrate with them in future. I want to be able to celebrate the fact that this year’s celebrations gave an impetus to creating the kind of middle east that we should all be looking for: a middle east where the two peoples who call Palestine/Israel their ancient homeland can genuinely live together in peace and security. I believe that a significant and symbolic step towards that would be for the United Kingdom to recognise Palestine and at the same time call on Palestine to accept its responsibilities as a nation among the international family of nations.