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I raised my eyebrow when I read recently The Palestinian Authority intends to sue the British government over the issuance in 1917 of the Balfour Declaration, according to the Times of Israel.
The Balfour Declaration stated that the British government “views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and would use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object.”
The PA Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki blamed Britain for the issuance of the Balflour declaration which led to all all “Israeli crimes” committed since 1948, (the end of the British Mandate). "The decision, al-Malki said, “gave people who don’t belong there something that wasn’t theirs.”
It is not clear where the PA intends to sue Britain, in Britain, the International Criminal Court or elsewhere.
But if they are going to sue Britain, why don't the Palestinians sue the Turks for the fact that the Ottoman Empire lost the battle over Palestine to the British, which lead to the British Mandate of Palestine in the first place ?
And why doesn't the PA sue the Allied Powers for Defeating Nazi Germany, as if they hadn't the Nazis could have overtaken Palestine and then would have exterminated all the Jews? In the alternative, the PA could sue Germany for its failure to win World War II, which resulted in the Nazis not overtaking Palestine.
Additionally, why don' t the Palestinians sue the Arab States who failed to win the War against Israel in 1948 ? Had the Arab states been victorious the war would have resulted in the Jews being thrown into the sea?
And what about France. There must be some good reason to sue France. Why don't the Palestinians sue France for the fact that it carved up the Middle East with the Sykes -Picot agreement in 1916, and allowed the British to get the mandate over Palestine ?
And shouldn't the Palestinians sue all the member states of the UN who voted in favour of the 1947 partition plan ? or maybe they should blame the lack of a Palestinian state on the surronding Arab states who rejected the UN partition plan that could have created one in 1947?
Why doesnèt the not sue the former Soviet union for letting so many Jews out of Russia, which resulted in a mass Jewish aliya to Israel ?
And why doesn't the PA sue Jesus, for the fact that not all of the Jews followed him and became Christian, instead of remaining Jewish ?
And why doesn't the PA sue Madagascar, since the Nazis had plans to relocate the Jewish population of Europe to Madagascar, but this plan was thwarted by the British naval blockade?
And then of course when they are done preparing all these lawsuits, the Palestinian Authority can sue itself, for being in a time warp and taking steps that are backward thinking, forward thinking- and for failing to accept Israel's existence and being willing to make the required concessions that will be necessary to end one day end the conflict.
Additionally, it's worth noting that since the Brits no doubt have been sending the PA aid money, in essence they are going to be paying for the privilege of being sued.
Zalman Shoval has pointed out in Yisrael Hayom that there is a reason why the Palestinians are going after the Balfour Declaration. As he wrote," The Balfour Declaration is dangerous for them, not just because it spoke of a national home, emphasis on "national", for the Jews of the land of Israel, but becasue it relates to the Arab population in the land of Israel in the context of its religous and civil rights, without any mention of national rights. It was clear to British statesman that Arabs in that part fo the Ottoman Empire called Palestine did not have the history of a nation, nor did they ever have one in the past...It [the Balfour declaration] corrected a historical debt toard the Jewish nation, as stated by Winston Churchill in 1949 when he said, "The coming into being of a Jewish state in Palestine is anevent in world hisotry to be viewed in the perspective not of a generation or a century, but in the perspective of 1000,2000, or even 3000 years."
