Centenary of the Balfour Declaration Debate
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Lord Walney
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Centenary of the Balfour Declaration
Lord Walney Excerpts(7 years, 1 month ago)
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Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)
I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, Sir David.
I was recently privileged to meet survivors of the holocaust and veterans of the Kindertransport. Their moving and humbling stories were a timely reminder of the importance of the existence of the state of Israel. Their stories were also a timely reminder that we must always speak out against injustice and abuses of the rule of law and on behalf of refugees’ rights.
Many of my constituents have written to me urging me to speak about the rights of Palestinians in this debate. They have pointed out that the Balfour Declaration disregarded the rights, wishes and claims of the Palestinian people, who made up nearly 90% of the population in Palestine in 1917. The land was not, as the hon. Member for Hendon (Dr Offord) said, desert. It was towns and villages in which 90% of the Palestinian population lived.
The Balfour Declaration and Britain’s subsequent acts when Palestine was under its control created the framework for Palestinian dispossession and the establishment in 1948 of a state whose basic laws and subsequent policies have privileged the rights of Jewish inhabitants above those of Palestinians. I saw that with my own eyes when I visited the west bank and Israel with the cross-party parliamentary delegation last year, led by the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding and Human Appeal.
John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)
Is the hon. and learned Lady equating the survivors and victims of the holocaust with the plight of the Palestinians now, because that is a very serious thing?
Joanna Cherry
Of course not. My point was that hearing stories of the abuse of human rights in Europe reminded me that we must be alive to the abuse of human rights anywhere in the world.