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Britain should never have allowed Jewish people to settle in Palestine and is therefore accountable for the ensuing decades of ethnic unrest in the Middle East, as expressed at today’s Labour Party conference.
Dr. Victor Kattan asserted that the ongoing violent conflict in Gaza was essentially ‘a British creation,’ urging the UK to apologize and offer ‘reparations’ to the Palestinian Arabs in consequence.
At a gathering with attendance from left-leaning Labour MPs and peers, it was noted that the British rule from 1917 to 1948 was marked by policies of ‘occupation, repression, and partition.’
Labour politicians, including Jeremy Corbyn’s ally John McDonald, back the initiative, ‘Britain owes Palestine’, which calls for the UK to acknowledge ‘serial international law violations,’ including alleged war crimes committed during the British Mandate period.
It also criticizes the UK for the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which advocated for ‘the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine.’
Dr. Kattan stated at the Liverpool event that Britain’s control over the Middle East ‘breached contemporary legal standards,’ with policies that involved ‘significant demographic manipulation,’ notably the mass Jewish immigration to Palestine, which in 1917, when Britain assumed control, was over 93 percent Palestinian Arab.
He added: ‘When the British government, British armed forces left Palestine, the Jewish population constituted 33 per cent of the total population, having grown from less than 5 per cent of the population when Britain had arrived.
‘Throughout those years Britain denied self-government to the Arab majority, suppressed opposition to Zionism violently and then abandoned the country in the summer of 1948 leaving Palestine in a state of chaos and anarchy.’
Dr Victor Kattan said that the current bloody conflict in Gaza was ‘made in Britain’ as he campaigned for the UK to apologise and make ‘reparations’ to Palestinian Arabs.
Labour politicians, who include Jeremy Corbyn ally John McDonald (left), are supporting a petition handed in to Downing Street last week.
Police arrested protesters supporting the banned group Palestine Action outside the Labour party conference in Liverpool
He added that the Palestinian people were facing their gravest crisis since 1948, with the Israelis flattening Gaza and threatening to annex the entire West Bank, adding: ‘This conflict which we see on our screen of starving children, of mass destruction, death and displacement, was made in Britain.’
Lead petitioner 91-year-old Munib al-Masri was also at the event, alongside Mr McDonald, fellow MPs Simon Opher and Afzal Khan, and peer Lord Dubs.
The 400-page legal document, which was handed into No 10 earlier this month, launches the Britain owes Palestine campaign demanding official UK acknowledgement of ‘wrongdoing, apology and reparations for creating a century of oppression’.
The petition’s organisers said it details Britain’s ‘unlawful legacy’ including the Balfour Declaration in 1917 which stated support for establishing a home for Jewish people in Palestine, ‘acting as an occupying power during its self-granted mandate’ and ‘subsequent systematic abuse of the Palestinian people’.
Organisers added that it shows how ‘ongoing Palestinian suffering can be traced directly to Britain’s violations of international law during occupation and withdrawal’.
Lead petitioner 91-year-old Munib al-Masri was also at the event, alongside Mr McDonald, fellow MPs Simon Opher and Afzal Khan (pictured), and peer Lord Dubs.
Mr McDonald told the event the UK has a ‘hidden guilt, a hidden refusal of responsibility’ but social media meant a new generation was interested in Gaza
They added that the UK Government is ‘obliged to respond’ to the petition or it could ‘find itself brought before the courts in judicial review proceedings’.
Mr McDonald told the event the UK has a ‘hidden guilt, a hidden refusal of responsibility’ over what happened in the first half of the 20th century.
But he said that social media meant a new generation was coming forward and wanting to know the history of what happened in Gaza.
‘This new generation that has come forward wants to know this and what this new petition is all about is making sure they have access to the resources they need to do that,’ he said.
‘We talk about reparations … but part of the reparations process is reparations based on understanding and it is about repairing the way in which we have educated our own people about this matter.’
Elsewhere at the conference police arrested arresting protesters supporting the banned group Palestine Action.
Around 100 people have gathered silently to hold signs reading: ‘I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action’, protest group Defend Our Juries said.
Palestine Action was banned as a terror organisation in July after the group claimed responsibility for an action in which two Voyager planes were damaged at RAF Brize Norton the previous month.
