================================================================================

Petition

We intend to make the petition based on our campaign aims and similar to the one (dependent on circumstances at the time) below to the British Government. Please fill in your contact details now and click submit . When we are ready to hand in the petition we will contact you for you to sign it. Please tell your friends.

=========================================================================

We call on our British Government to publicly acknowledge

that the policies and actions of previous administrations , from Balfour Declaration on , have had dreadful consequences for the indigenous people of Palestine

and

that Britain failed in 1948 to use its army to prevent the Nakba , the systematic violent expulsion of over half of all Palestinian families from their homeland by the Zionist army

Following on from British rule half of all Palestinians have been living as refugees for the last 60 years and the other half belligerently occupied for the last 40 years.

The truth about 1948 has remained largely hidden and consequently the Palestinian case for justice  has been little heard.

Our Government should therefore now seek to undo wrongs done to the Palestinians and in addition to the public acknowledgement , promote the implementation of UN resolution 194 , the right of the refugees to return home  and UN resolution 242 , to end the occupation.

========================================================================

Comments on righting wrongs and reconciliation

====================================================

Duty to right wrongs:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ed Husain is Co-Founder and Quilliam ambassador and is the celebrated author of ‘The Islamist’, shortlisted for the George Orwell Prize for best political writing. He is currently a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, DC.

"Our (British) rushed withdrawal in 1948 is partly to blame for the crisis in the Middle East, so now we must help create a new Palestine. At schools across the Arab world children are taught about the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916. Here in Britain, we might want to forget this imperial past, but ask any Arab and they will reel off these dates and confirm Britain's involvement in creating Israel. As a country, we have a moral duty to right our historical wrongs. We helped create Israel. We must now help create a Palestine."

Article in Guardian Tuesday 30 December 2008

....................................................................................................................................................................................

Nur Masalha is a Palestinian writer and academic. He is Professor of Religion and Politics and Director of the Centre for Religion and History and the Holy Land Research Project at St. Mary's University College, University of Surrey. He is author of "Expulsions of the Palestinians: the concept of transfer in Zionist political thought , 1882-1948"

”Israel's first president, Chaim Weizmann proclaimed the Arab evacuation as 'a miraculous clearing of the land; the simplication of Israel's task ' - It was in fact less than a miracle than the culmination of over a half century of effort, plans and in the end brute force.”

" For the Palestinians both refugees and non-refugees the traumatic events of 1948 became central to Palestinian history, memory and identity".

...............................................................................................................................................

Dr Salman Abu Sitta is author of The Return Journey (2007) Palestine Land Society, Atlas of Palestine, 1948 Palestine Land Society (January 2004) , the Palestinian Nakba 1948: The register of depopulated localities in Palestine (1998 reprinted 2000)

"It is significant to note that each phase of the Zionist assaults was opened by a massacre, followed by others during the same phase. During operation Dalet whilst Palestine was under British protection , the Dayr Yassin massacres was committed followed by 16 others. The " success" achieved by driving the citizens out of their homes was not lost on the Zionist leaders , especially in the absence of any British action to stop the massacres or protect the population".

43% of localities and their refugees with known depopulation dates were run over by the Zionists (not yet Israelis) while Palestine was under the protection of the British Mandate Government. The expulsion of the population was largely due to Plan Dalet. "The Master Plan for the Conquest of Palestine."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Reconciliation

.................................................................................................................................................

Natasha Gill is a research associate at Columbia University and co-author of the forthcoming book The Struggle for Palestine in the 1930s. She teaches courses on genocide, human rights, and intractable conflict. Her current research focuses on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict working with Israeli and Palestinian scholars.

"A frank recognition of its past in the Middle East can give Britain a unique role in the peace process.

A decision to openly address Britain's role could have an impact on the most unbridgeable gap between Palestinians and Israelis: the question of ultimate responsibility for the conflict.

The responsibility issue – and its twin, recognition – has only become more intractable in recent years. The Palestinians insist that Israel acknowledge its responsibility for the 1948 Nakba and the refugee problem. For Israelis this is unacceptable because they believe it corners them into confessing to "original sin" and ultimately delegitimises Zionism and Israel. They have thus upped the ante recently by requiring that Palestinians recognise Israel "as a Jewish state", which the Palestinians consider as tantamount to putting a stamp of approval on the loss of their homeland.
This is a circle that seemingly cannot be squared. So what could Britain possibly do about it? Britain might consider making an important public speech that would address the problems of recognition and accountability directly.

Acknowledging its own role in the origins of the conflict might afford Britain the opportunity to speak to the parties from a position of humility and even complicity: not as an outsider trying to impose its will, but as a former party to the conflict, one that has a moral and historical stake in its resolution, in a way that even the US can never have.

Guardian Thursday 25th March 2010

........................................................................................................................

Nur Masalha

"Israel’s acknowledge of its wrong doing in 1948 remains  a pre condition for genuine negotiations and reconciliation between the Palestinians and Israelis and the achievement of a just and lasting peace."

................................................................................................................................................

Ilan Pappé

"However I am a great believer that in order to further the chances of reconciliation, you have to have a kind of link, an association between the ability of the Israelis to stop denying the Nakbah ( the catastrophe visited on the Palestinians in 1948) , and the Palestinians accepting that the Holocaust plays a role in the life of Jews in Israel, and the life of Jews everywhere.”

.

......................................................................................................................................................................................

Anne Alexander & John Rose in 'The Nakba' , A Bookmarks Publication.

John Rose is author of 'The myths of Zionism' (2004).

Anne Alexander is author of ' The New Intifada: Israel, Imperialism and Palestinian Resistance' (2001)

Decsribing the negotiations between Israel & the Palestinians in Taba , in 2000.

"The Palestinians did insist on something , which, in one sense, was really rather timid , and yet in another sense , it literally touched a raw nerve. The Palestinians insisted that Israel publicly recognised that it bore responsibility for creating the problem of the refugees. Barak angrily and 'categorically' rejected this proposal".

................................................................................................................................................

Ilan Pappe and Karma Nabulsi
Karma Nabulsi is Palestinian and a Fellow in Politics at St. Edmund Hall and University Lecturer in International Relations at Oxford University and author of Traditions of War: Occupation, Resistance and The Law.

What would be the structure of a real peace between Israel and Palestine?

Karma Nabulsi and Ilan Pappé The Guardian, Thursday 19 September 2002

First, the refugee issue needs to be placed at the centre of the process from where it has mysteriously disappeared. Next, all those involved in resolving the conflict must have the public courage to confront the Israeli denial of the expulsion and ethnic cleansing at the heart of the Palestinian refugee question. This remains the single largest stumbling block towards a lasting peace between both people

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------