Balfour Declaration Centenary

Lord Polak Excerpts

Wednesday 5th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Polak (Con)]

My Lords, I refer the House to my registered interests. It took me a while at primary school, the King David Primary School in Liverpool, to understand why the four houses it was divided into were Hillel, David, Cromwell and Balfour. Hillel and David are well-known Jewish figures, Cromwell allowed the Jews back into this country, and Balfour. This shows the importance that the Jewish community attaches to Balfour. In fact, my niece has just named her new puppy Balfour.

I wish to pay particular tribute to Dr Jacques Gauthier, who has spent 20 years researching and writing on the subject of the Jewish claim to Jerusalem. In April this year he invited the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, and me to a conference held in San Remo. It was at the San Remo conference of April 1920 where the principal powers—the US, the UK, Italy, France and Japan—gathered to make a decision about the sharing out of the Ottoman Empire. Previously, on 6 February 1919 at the Paris peace conference, the allied powers had received submissions from the Arabs, as well as from the Jews on 27 February of that year. The Arabs asked for independence for the old Arab territories under Ottoman rule while the Jews asked for recognition of the historical connection to the land and the right to reconstitute what they used to have. They urged the principal powers to set up a mandate in Palestine because they were not ready for statehood. The principal powers met again in April 1920 in San Remo to make the decision. They said yes to the Jews to establish a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine and later put that into the Treaty of Sèvres in August 1920. The transfer of title was made to the principal powers, which now gave the rights to the Jewish people, and the wording of the Balfour Declaration was incorporated into Article 2 of the Mandate for Palestine and became binding in international law by the League of Nations in 1922.

Last night I explained to the House that there are those who suggest that the second part of Balfour has not been fulfilled—the part of that resolution concerning,

“the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country”.

Will the Minister confirm, in the words of the Prime Minister, that we will be marking the 100th anniversary with “pride”?