British Prime Minister Theresa May and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will join 150 guests for a celebratory dinner Thursday night in London to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the British government’s endorsement of the establishment of “a national home for the Jewish people’’ in Palestine.
The origins of this historic statement pledging that the government would use its “best endeavors” lay not only in British support for Zionism, but wartime calculations and imperial interests.
The Balfour Declaration, as it has come to be known, was just 67 words, but their meaning and effect continue to be contested a century later. In Jerusalem on Thursday, in a sad metaphor of this continuing conflict, separate Palestinian and Israeli Balfour conferences will be held on opposite sides of the city.
Last week, I traveled to both Israel and the Palestinian Territories. In Tel Aviv, I witnessed the dynamism of an economy so vibrant and innovative that Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Alphabet, recently called Israel “the most important high-tech center in the world outside of the US.”
Despite facing existential dangers since its establishment in 1948, Israel has built a vibrant democracy, a welfare state that supports the poor, strong and well-organized trade unions, a critical and unfettered free press, and an independent judiciary.
These are characteristics worthy of admiration and, indeed, celebration.
Yet the next day in Bethlehem, I visited Palestinian refugee camps and met children who are now the third generation of displaced refugees in their families. The sounds of security forces operations in the neighboring camp could be clearly heard, while used tear gas canisters lay discarded at my feet, and the wall that today divides Bethlehem loomed behind me.
It was a painful reminder of how distant and difficult the prospect of a peaceful resolution remains, a century after Balfour’s declaration.
For half of that century, it has been judged that, ultimately, this conflict will be resolved only by both sides engaging in a negotiated peace process toward a two-state solution. Yet the tragedy is that today, there is not only no peace, but also no process. And in this environment, despair dominates as hope struggles to survive.
While the Palestinians agreed to a reconciliation last month, aimed at ending the feud between Fatah and Hamas that has divided the nation between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip for a decade, they are still struggling to find a way to implement this agreement.
Yet the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, has little prospect of offering his people meaningful negotiations with Israel in circumstances where a majority of the Israeli Cabinet have publicly stated that they will never agree to a Palestinian state.
Unprecedented rates of settlement-building on Palestinian land are not only changing the facts on the ground, but are also undermining the very idea of a two-state solution.
In this year alone, more than 6,000 housing units have been approved for construction in East Jerusalem and the West Bank by the Israeli government, with a further 1,292 settler units approved last month.
Earlier this year, the Knesset voted to allow the Israeli state to seize land privately owned by Palestinians in the West Bank and grant the properties to Israeli settlements for their exclusive use. Benny Begin, a Likud MP and the son of former prime minister Menachem Begin, described it as “the robbery bill.”
With each passing month, the dynamic drifts further away from two states and further towards the situation former US Secretary of State John Kerry warned of: “one state and perpetual occupation.”
That one-state solution is simply not a solution at all. It would mark the end of the dream of national self-determination for the Jewish people, anticipated by the Balfour Declaration, and would involve almost 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank being ruled perpetually by a minority, with different laws and fewer rights.
It would mean either the demise of Israel as a Jewish state or the demise of Israel as a democratic state.
To rescue the two-state solution, the recognition of Israel must now be balanced with the recognition of Palestine as part of continuing steps to achieve a comprehensive negotiated agreement.
Amid the despair and disappointment I witnessed last week in Bethlehem, recognition would strengthen moderate Palestinian opinion, encourage the Palestinians to take the path of politics, reject the path of violence, and rekindle hopes that there is a credible route to a viable Palestinian state and a secure Israel achieved by negotiations.
All the former heads of Israel’s own security agencies — Mossad and Shin Bet — support the establishment of a Palestinian state as fundamental to finding an alternative to continued conflict; 137 nations out of the 193 UN member states already recognize Palestine.
Back in 2014, in the British Parliament, I voted as a Labour MP to urge the Conservative-led government to “recognize the state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel” as part of a contribution to securing a negotiated two-state solution.
Britain’s involvement in the Palestinian tragedy is beyond dispute. The centenary of the Balfour Declaration is the historic moment to right a historic wrong. A century on, the declaration’s promise that nothing should be done to prejudice the “civil and religious rights” of Palestine’s “existing non-Jewish communities” remains unkept.
Britain should mark this moment with more than a commemorative dinner. It should mark this moment by recognizing the state of Palestine.
The Balfour Declaration was famously described by the British writer Arthur Koestler as “one nation solemnly promised to a second nation, the country of a third.” For Britain, a century on, statehood for the Palestinians is not a gift to be given, but a right to be recognized.
Douglas Alexander is a senior fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School and a former British Cabinet minister.