I was deeply dismayed, yet not surprised, to learn that British Prime Minister Liz Truss was considering following Donald Trump’s lead and moving Britain’s embassy in Israel from its current location in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Dismayed, because the move would signify to Palestinians that the British government cares nothing for their rights to freedom, self-determination and equality.
On the day the US embassy opened in Jerusalem in May 2018, 59 Palestinians were killed by the Israeli military along the fence of the world’s largest open-air prison, the Gaza Strip, in what Amnesty International called “a horrifying example of use of excessive force and live ammunition against protesters who did not pose an imminent threat to life”.
What responsible government would risk reopening these wounds? Yet I am not surprised, for such behaviour, unfortunately, has a long chain of precedents. In the Balfour Declaration of 1917, Britain promised Palestine, with an almost 90 percent Arab Muslim and Christian population, as a Jewish homeland.
Over 30 years, Britain enforced the Balfour Declaration’s implications, its heavy-handed repression of the Arab Revolt of 1936–39 leaving Palestinian society broken and
— source middleeasteye.net | Gabriel Polley | 11 Oct 2022