"Living for decades in crowded refugee camps in the West Bank, the elderly survivors who MEE met spoke of their steadfast yearning to return to their former homes. Some said they still have dreams at night of working in the fields. Azza, who now lives in al-Amari camp near the city of Ramallah, recalls how Tell al-Safi used to be a self-sufficient village with an abundance of various crops - fields growing wheat, barley, corn, sesame, tomato and okra, while trees bore olives, apples, figs and almonds. "At the edge of the village, there was a water well and, using animals, water was pumped from the well to water tanks,” she recalled. “We didn’t need anything from outside the village.""

Palestinian women harvest cotton in the village of Kafr Saba in 1937 (Agricultural memory of Palestine)

Lost land: Nakba survivors recall rural struggle in Mandate-era Palestine

Agriculture was central to Palestinian society before the creation of the state of Israel - and British colonial powers knew it

 

By Fareed Taamallah in al-Amaari refugee camp, occupied West Bank

Published date: 13 May 2020

For Khadija al-Azza, her home village of Tell al-Safi was a paradise. 

"We lived the best of lives,” the 88-year-old Palestinian woman told Middle East Eye, recalling the small rural community of her childhood, before its population was forcibly expelled by Zionist militias in 1948 during the Nakba - Arabic for “catastrophe”.

Between 1917 and 1948, the United Kingdom occupied Palestine during what was known as the Mandate era. Small-scale farmers, known as fellahin, were central to Palestinian society at the time, with three quarters of the population living in rural areas and agriculture the main source of livelihood, bringing families together to work in the fields.

With the Balfour Declaration of 1917, the British government vowed to establish a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine, carrying out various policies seeking to fulfill this promise - many of which came at the expense of the Palestinians.

Now, 72 years after the establishment of the state of Israel and the mass displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their lands, Nakba survivors share with Middle East Eye memories of the lives and land they lost, to which they maintain a deep attachment

Country life

At least 750,000 Palestinians were displaced from their homes during the Nakba. They and their descendants now number more than 5.4 million scattered across the occupied West Bank, the besieged Gaza Strip and surrounding countries. Many of the villages that were forcibly evacuated were destroyed or turned into national parks by Israel, trees growing on the ruins of abandoned homes.

Living for decades in crowded refugee camps in the West Bank, the elderly survivors who MEE met spoke of their steadfast yearning to return to their former homes. Some said they still have dreams at night of working in the fields.... READ MORE  https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/palestine-nakba-farmers-rural-resistance-british-mandate

The abandoned harvests of 1948: Palestinian farmers remember the Nakba

Read More »

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Britain and the Nakba: A history of betrayal- An unbroken thread of duplicity, mendacity and chicanery connects British foreign policy from Balfour to the Nakba to the present day

A demonstrator holding an umbrella with colours of the Palestinian flag stands by an Israeli flag during a protest against a visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on 24 March 2023 (Reuters)

Avi Shlaim

10 May 2023

Britain created the conditions that made the Palestinian Nakba possible.

In 1948, the Palestinians experienced a collective catastrophe of monumental proportions: some 530 villages were destroyed; more than 62,000 homes were demolished; about 13,000 Palestinians were killed; and 750,000 Palestinians, two-thirds of the Arab population of the country were driven out of their homes and became refugees.

This was the climax of the Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

In its essence, Zionism had always been a settler-colonial movement. Its ultimate aim was to build an independent Jewish state in Palestine on as much of the land as possible and with as few Arabs within its borders as possible. Zionist spokesmen constantly reiterated that they meant no harm to the Arab inhabitants of the country, that they wanted to develop the country for the benefit of both communities.

But this was largely rhetoric, kalam fadi in Arabic, empty talk.... READ MORE  https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/nakba-britain-history-betrayal 

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Mike Huckabee lifts the veil on US backing for Israeli expansionism: His interview with Tucker Carlson did not merely expose a diplomat's worldview. It illuminated a dangerous regional project

Soumaya Ghannoushi

26 February 2026 

 

When Tucker Carlson recently interviewed the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, their exchange did more than expose policy differences. 

It revealed something more consequential: not merely an ambassador misrepresenting history, but a vision of Israel’s place in the Middle East, and of Washington’s role in enabling it.

A pattern emerged quickly. When confronted with inconvenient historical facts or legal complexities, Huckabee professed uncertainty. But when repeating familiar Israeli government positions, his confidence was unwavering. Precision disappeared only when it complicated the narrative.

Consider his claim that Christians are “thriving” in the Holy Land. He cited 34,000 Christians in Israel in 1948 and 184,000 today, figures intended to suggest steady growth and protection.

But numbers without context are a distortion. In December 1946, the United Nations estimated that there were approximately 145,000 Christians in Palestine, representing around eight percent of the country’s total population. 

During the 1948 Nakba, Jewish militias expelled or drove out hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, including roughly 90,000 Christians. Only around 39,000 remained in their homes within 1948 borders, the nucleus of today’s Palestinian Christian minority inside Israel.

Jerusalem’s demographic trajectory is equally stark. Christians constituted around 20 percent of the city’s population in 1946. Since then, their numbers have declined significantly; by 2006, they accounted for roughly two percent of the city’s population, according to demographic data published by the Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research.

To describe this as “thriving” obscures the increasingly precarious position of Palestinian Christians within a state that defines itself in explicitly Jewish national terms, and where ultra-nationalist currents have grown more assertive.

Defining moments

The evasiveness extended beyond demography. Huckabee claimed that Britain controlled Palestine at the time of the 1917 Balfour Declaration. It did not. The declaration preceded the mandate system and carried no binding force in international law; it was an imperial pledge, not a legal instrument.

He further implied that Arabs initiated the 1956 Suez War. The record is unequivocal: Israel invaded Egypt in coordination with Britain and France. Former US President Dwight D Eisenhower publicly opposed the invasion and forced their withdrawal, contributing to the resignation of his British counterpart, Anthony Eden.

In 1982, during Israel’s invasion of Lebanon and the bombardment of Beirut, former US President Ronald Reagan deliberately used the word “holocaust” in a call with Israeli leader Menachem Begin, warning that the assault endangered the future of relations between Washington and Tel Aviv.

These are not marginal details. They are defining moments in American foreign policy. Misrepresenting them does not merely obscure history; it reshapes political memory.

It was equally striking to watch Huckabee cite Gaza health ministry figures - numbers he elsewhere disputes - to argue that... READ MORE   https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/mike-huckabee-lifts-veil-us-backing-israeli-expansionism

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"This is where things get tricky: I’m not sure what I’m allowed to say about Palestine Action in this column without getting chucked in jail myself. Last July, you see, the British government took the extraordinary, and hugely criticized, step of terming the group a terrorist organization on the same level as the Islamic State militant group. This is despite the fact that Palestine Action has killed nobody; its efforts are focused on trying to shut down weapons manufacturers enabling the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Even the government’s own intelligence assessment, a declassified version of which was obtained by the New York Times, undercut its condemnations of the group, finding that most of their activities “would not be classified as terrorism” under Britain’s legal definition. Still, the British government has been very busy arresting thousands – many of whom are elderly activists – for the “crime” of peacefully holding up a sign saying: “I support Palestine Action.” "

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/06/greta-thunberg-palestine-action-arrest 

Greta Thunberg came to stay – and my kid may have inadvertently helped her get arrested

Arwa Mahdawi

 

The activist had held a sign written with my daughter’s crayon. Try explaining that to a four-year-old 

 

Tue 6 Jan 2026 05.00 EST

 

‘I’m back in the US now and I can’t quite fathom what Britain, under the leadership of a former human rights lawyer, has become.’  Photograph: Prisoners for Palestine/AP

 

It was 6am. London. A few days before Christmas. My four-year-old is singing at the top of her lungs and charging around my parents’ house on a hunt for the perfect crayon. There is nothing particularly unusual about this scene except for the fact that the crayon in question was for Greta Thunberg. The world’s most well-known activist needed a writing tool and my daughter, O, was on the case. (Remember this crayon: it’s going to be important later on.)

O, I should note, had absolutely no idea who Greta was. We’re not longtime chums or anything like that. Rather Greta was in London to support the Palestine Action-linked hunger strikers. She needed somewhere to stay and my dad, who is a Palestinian refugee, and appreciative of anyone speaking up about the place where he was born but can’t return to live in, keeps an open house for activists who need a bed or a meal. When the visit had been hastily arranged by a friend of a friend of my sister a couple days earlier, we’d tried to explain to O that Greta was a famous activist who tried to help people and the environment.

“Does famous mean beautiful?” my princess-obsessed child asked. Oh dear, I thought, I have failed as a parent and a feminist.

“No, it doesn’t. And remember being beautiful is not important – what’s important is being kind,” I said, trying to redeem some feminist points.

“How dare you!” O replied. This has been her favourite catchphrase for a while now. I have no idea where she picked it up; probably from a kid’s show. I had thought nothing of it until the surprise Greta visit.

“Please don’t say that while Greta is here,” I told O. I didn’t want her to think we were making fun of her memorable rebuke. But once again, I failed at parenting: everyone knows that the best way to get a kid to keep doing something is to suggest they stop doing it.

While Greta may be famous, the hunger strikers she was coming to support are definitely not; they have had very little mainstream media attention. Indeed, if you are reading this in the US, you may not have heard about them at all. So, in brief, eight activists awaiting trials for alleged offences relating to Palestine Action have been on hunger strike since 2 November, the anniversary of the Balfour declaration.

This is where things get tricky...  READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/06/greta-thunberg-palestine-action-arrest

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"The Nakba – Arabic for “catastrophe” – happened because the politicians of this country enabled it. They enabled it with the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which supported the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine...." Britain must help establish a Palestinian state It has a historical responsibility to do so- By William Dalrymple in The New Statesman

[Palestine Refugees Nakba 1948] Photo by CPA Media/Alamy

Seventy-seven years ago, 750,000 Palestinians were terrorised out of their homes and farms and villages in Galilee – from Tiberias, Beit She’an, Safed and the great Palestinian ports of Jaffa and Acre.

They were driven out with napalm and machine guns and machetes, and forced to flee from their groves of olive trees on to the barren dunes of Gaza where they remain. By the end of 1948, less than 15 per cent of Palestinians remained where they had always lived. More than 85 per cent had been ethnically cleansed, despite the promises of Arthur Balfour in his declaration that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”.

The Nakba – Arabic for “catastrophe” – happened because the politicians of this country enabled it. They enabled it with the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which supported the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. They also enabled it with 30 years of British colonial rule in Palestine during which the indigenous inhabitants were disarmed and their leaders arrested and sent to prison camps in the Seychelles and Cyprus. The black and tans, notorious for their violence, were brought in on Churchill’s orders and unleashed on those Palestinians who tried to stand up against the erosion of their land.

The British, determined to suppress the revolt militarily, dispatched 25,000 soldiers and policemen to Palestine in 1938 – the largest deployment of British forces abroad since the end of the First World War. They established military courts, operating under “emergency regulations” that gave the British Mandate the legal trappings of a military dictatorship. The best account of what we unleashed on the Palestinians can be found in Caroline Elkins’s Legacy of Violence, a chilling study of British anti-insurgency techniques in our imperial colonies. Elkins shows how the British destroyed the houses of all those involved in attacks under the legal authority of the emergency regulations. An estimated 2,000 houses were destroyed from 1936 to 1940.

Combatants and innocent civilians alike were interned in concentration camps – by 1939, more than 9,000 Palestinians were held in overcrowded facilities; many endured violent interrogation or torture. Younger offenders, between the ages of seven and 16, were flogged. Over 100 Arabs were sentenced to death in 1938 and 1939, and more than 30 were executed. By the time the revolt was crushed in 1939, the Palestinian leadership had been so badly intimidated they were in no position to fight for their survival when the British finally pulled out in 1948, leaving the Palestinians to their fate... READ MORE  https://www.newstatesman.com/international-politics/2025/09/britain-must-help-establish-a-palestinian-state

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Palestinians to ask UK to own up to ‘law violations’ between 1917 and 1948 Petition, drafted by human rights lawyers, says war crimes were committed during British occupation of Palestine

Munib al-Masri in the garden of his home outside the West Bank city of Nablus. Photograph: Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP/Getty

A group of Palestinians will serve a legal petition asking the UK to take responsibility for what they call “serial international law violations”, including war crimes committed during the British occupation of Palestine from 1917 to 1948, the consequences of which it says still reverberate today.

The 400-plus page document, drafted by human rights KCs, details “incontrovertible evidence” of the UK’s unlawful legacy.

This includes the 1917 Balfour declaration, acting as an occupying power during the mandate period – an authority to rule the territory that it says had no legal basis – and the subsequent “systematic abuse” of the Palestinian people.

The submission says the Palestinian people face their gravest crisis since 1948, which Britain bears its own distinct responsibility for and so owes them a special debt.

Among the petitioners is the 91-year-old philanthropist Munib al-Masri, who was shot in the leg by British soldiers when he was 13.

The submission, served on the UK government on Sunday, marks the launch of a campaign, Britain Owes Palestine, which is pressing for official UK acknowledgment of wrongdoing, apology and reparations for what it calls a “century of oppression”.

A legal petition is a formal request to the government to act based on evidence and legal analysis, often used by victims of colonial wrongdoing.... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/07/palestinians-petition-uk-legal-violations-last-century

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It's been 107 years since the Balfour Declaration and Britain has not yet atoned for its grave historic mistake. It is time to make amends with the Palestinian people.

It's been 107 years since the #BalfourDeclaration and Britain has not yet atoned for its grave historic mistake. It is time to make amends with the Palestinian people.

 

Husam Zomlot

@hzomlot

Ambassador of the State of Palestine to the UK. Former Ambassdor to the United States.

 

Today, 2 November 2024, marks 107 years since the Balfour Declaration was issued in 1917. 

 

It has never been more urgent that the injustice of that declaration be addressed and accounted for.

By ignoring the rights of the Palestinian people to their own land, the Balfour Declaration effectively cancelled the Palestinian people.

 

This set in motion a series of events culminating in the ethnic cleansing of two-thirds of the Palestinian people in the 1947-49 Nakba. 

 

By then allowing Israel to ignore, without consequence, the right of return of Palestinian refugees, a long record of Israeli impunity began. 

 

This record of impunity has emboldened Israel not only to seek to take more territory by force over the following decades, but to engage in an ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza and across occupied territory.

 

It is time Israeli impunity ends. 

 

It is time the cancellation of the Palestinian people embodied in the Balfour Declaration is addressed.

And it is time the British government accepts its historic responsibility for this state of affairs, and took action to redress the injustice at the heart of the Balfour Declaration. 

 

How can the UK begin to make amends and work toward ending Israeli impunity? 

 

The UK must take steps to end the ongoing genocide. 

 

It can do this by imposing a full arms embargo, instituting sanctions against Israel for its illegal occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank including occupied East Jerusalem, and demand accountability for Israeli leaders accused of war crimes. 

 

The UK must immediately recognise the State of Palestine as a long overdue inalienable right of the Palestinian people and in compliance with international law and international resolutions.

 

This should come along with an official apology from the British government for the cancellation of the Palestinian people and their legitimate rights.

 

 Simultaneously, the UK must also, in compliance with the International Court of Justice and international law and in accordance with the UK’s explanation for its the vote in the UN’s General Assembly on 18 September, ban all trade in goods and services with Israel’s illegal settlements in occupied territory, penalise British companies that operate illegally there, and affirm the UK’s support for the right of return of Palestinian refugees.

 

International law as expressed by the International Court of Justice is clear: third parties must end any support for Israel’s illegal occupation and recognise the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination. 

 

Those steps are well understood. It is time to take them.

Palestine in the UK

@PalMissionUK

 

 

1917 Balfour Declaration

Israel-Palestine war: Why Gaza genocide is seen as an existential threat to Jordan

"Israel has perceived Jordan through typical settler-colonial frontier logic, whereby Jordan has been approached as a functional colonial space rather than a sovereign state.

Notably, not only Palestine but also Jordan is perceived through a biblical lens as the “Land of Gilead”, with Jordan being purported as an integral part of “greater Israel”. This perspective has gained such prominence that it found expression in popular song lyrics, such as “Two Banks has the Jordan [River] - This is ours and that is as well”, from a song titled The East Bank of the Jordan penned in 1929 by Vladimir Jabotinsky, a Ukrainian Jewish leader of Revisionist Zionism.

Leaders of various Zionist stands deemed the British exclusion of Transjordan from the purview of the colonial promise to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine as a “serious whittling down of the Balfour Declaration”, as Chaim Weizmann noted in his memoir,

Despite their objection to this exclusion, pragmatic leaders within the Zionist movement continued to view Jordan as a vital security buffer and frontier space, where they contemplated transferring - that is ethnically cleansing - the indigenous people of Palestine to neighbouring countries.

Today, more than two million Palestinian refugees reside in Jordan as a result of the ongoing ethnic cleansing since the Nakba, the mass expulsion in 1948.

Revitalised Revisionist Zionism

Since the 1930s, the Hashemites have attempted to navigate and counter this threat through various strategies..."  READ MORE

 https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-palestine-war-jordan-gaza-genocide-existential-threat

Emile Badarin

8 December 2023 11:47 GMT | 

 

Amman faces difficult choices now that Revisionist Zionism, which sees Jordan as part of 'Greater Israel', has been revitalised by the messianic far-right dominating Israeli politics

 

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