It began before the Balfour Declaration and even described them as "terrorists"... Britain's historical hostility to the Palestinians

On Thursday, November 25, 2021, the British House of Commons (first chamber of Parliament) approved the memorandum submitted by Home Secretary Priti Patel to classify the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) - with its political and military wings - as terrorist.

The decision is scheduled to be presented to the British House of Lords (the second chamber of Parliament) today, Thursday, and the ban will enter into force on Friday, and includes penalties of up to 14 years in prison or a fine for anyone who supports Hamas or raises its flags or slogans.

This memorandum was approved to amend the Terrorism Law of 2000, so that the current ban on the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, extends to the movement in its two wings.

A few days ago, British Home Secretary Priti Patel announced that she had submitted a memorandum in Parliament to amend Chapter Two of the Terrorism Act of 2000 to ban Hamas entirely, including its political wing, and designate it as terrorist.

"Groups like Hamas threaten our freedoms with their anti-Semitism," said Patel, one of the most prominent "friends of Israel" in the Conservative Party.

Britain's recent decision siding with Israel brought to mind a series of hostile decisions and steps issued by London towards Palestine, which began before the "Balfour Declaration" in 1917, which paved the way for the founding of Israel and enabled the Jews to occupy the land of Palestine, expel its residents, demolish villages and homes and commit massacres, through facilitating the processes of Jewish immigration, All the way to the official establishment of the state in 1948.

A national home for the Jews

1830: Henry John Temple (known as Lord Viscount Palmer Stone III) took over the British Foreign Office, and the weakness of the Ottoman Empire was clear, so Palmer Stone tried to keep the Ottoman Empire alive and searched for someone to protect British interests in the Arab East, and he found what he wanted in the Jews by establishing an entity them in the future.

Palmer Stone discussed the subject with Lord Shaftesbury, who is the author of the aphorisms (Palestine is a land without a people to a people without a land), meaning the Jews. The Zionist Jews adopted this sentence and it became the first of the Zionist slogans.

1834: The British role continued to be concerned with encouraging Jews to immigrate to Palestine.

- The British helped a number of Jews to buy lands in Palestine and build Jewish settlements on them, especially in the areas of Mulbis, Uyun Qara, Hadera and Tal al-Rabi`.

- In 1838: Britain opened its first consulate in Jerusalem under the Ottoman rule, taking advantage of the Ottoman peace laws, and one of its interests was to take care of the Jews in order to establish an entity for them in the geographical area separating the two parts of the Arab world, i.e. between the continents of Asia and Africa so that there would be no contact with the region In the future, it may lead to any military moves, the failure of Arab unity, the guarantee of its interests in the Arab Gulf region, the ease of access to India, and the permanent security of the Silk Road, which was an important economic nerve at the time.

August 11, 1840: Palmer Stone sent a letter to the British ambassador in Turkey requesting to urge the Sultan to issue a decree encouraging the scattered Jews in Europe to travel to Palestine under the Sultan's protection and blessing.

The first objective of this planning was Britain's commercial interest, due to Palestine's location on the road between Britain and India.

Aside from that, Palmer Stone was of the opinion that the Jewish presence in Palestine also achieves two other benefits for British interests, one direct, which is the presence of a group loyal to Britain in an area where there is no one loyal to it, and another indirect is the flow of Jewish capital to the Ottoman Sultan to support his collapsed economic system, and he becomes the Sultan He obeyed British Jewish policy.

It is historically established that Christian Zionism was, until the middle of the 19th century, restricted to non-Jews who chose to support the Jews, and that the transition of the Zionist project from the European Christian arena to Judaic Christianity was faltering.

- With the passage of about 30 years, the invitation began to receive success among the Jews, and after that the mass immigration of Jews to Palestine and also to America began, and they were the nucleus of the huge Jewish community, and they were in Palestine the nucleus of the Zionists.

Colonies were established in Palestine, and these colonies and the settlement process in Palestine faced violent and armed resistance from the Arabs with their attack on these colonies year after year.

After that, the Zionist movement began to spread. The Jew, Theodor Herzl, founder of the Zionist movement, was the first to plan to establish a Jewish state on the land of Palestine by extracting the ownership of the land that would be given to them and encouraging the people of Palestine to emigrate to neighboring countries.

August 29, 1897: The first Zionist conference was held in Basel, Switzerland. The most prominent issues of this conference were the revival of Judaism in the Jews of Western Europe and the teaching of the Hebrew language to the Jews. The main issue was directing the attention and feelings of the Jews towards Palestine and diverting it from South America. They held several conferences for the same purpose.

- Herzl tried to obtain Palestine from Sultan Abdul Hamid in several ways, including financial and material temptations, by paying off the debts of the Ottoman Empire, and also establishing a Jewish-Ottoman company and sending European and Turkish mediators to the Sultan to convince him. But this proposal was rejected.

Herzl died without realizing his dream, and after him many tried to follow in his footsteps to establish a state for the Zionists, and the displacement of Jews to Palestine continued, and the Zionists' plans to establish a Jewish national home in Palestine after the Jewish component increased in it.

1915: The British Zionist politician Herbert Samuel wrote a secret memorandum entitled "The Future of Palestine" to the British government.

1916: Meetings were held between the Zionists, the British and France, and the Sykes-Picot Agreement was signed, and they made plans for settlement around the Suez Canal.

Arthur James Balfour was Prime Minister in Britain between 1902 and 1905 and became Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1916 to 1919 (Getty Images)

1917.. "The Balfour Declaration"

- During this period, Balfour was appointed British Foreign Minister, who was known to be a Zionist more than the Zionists. At the time, Lauer George was the prime minister, so Balfour sent a delegate for him to negotiate with the Zionist movement and study its demands regarding Palestine.

Balfour met with them and they began asking the British government to issue an official government promise to give them Palestine after the victory in the World War. Thus, the plan was made to formulate the Balfour Declaration and the British government signed it, and their justification for that was their desire to attract the Jews of Germany to join the Jews of Britain with the help of the British in World War I (1914 - 1918).

November 2, 1917: British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour sent a letter to Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild, one of the leaders of the Zionist movement, later known as the "Balfour Declaration".

The text of the letter stated: "His Majesty's Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will make every effort to facilitate the achievement of this end."

Balfour claimed in his letter that Britain would preserve the rights of the other nationalities residing in Palestine, which it did not commit to.

The promise coincided with Britain's occupation of the entire lands of historic Palestine during the First World War (1914-1918).

1918: The British government decided to send a Zionist delegation to Palestine that included Chaim Weizmann, the most famous Zionist figure after Herzl. Weizmann was president of the World Zionist Organization from 1920 until 1946, then was elected as the first president of the State of Israel in 1949.

- The purpose of the visit was to study the situation on the ground in light of Balfour’s statement, and Allenby advised the commander of the British forces in Palestine, Weizmann, to visit Prince Faisal bin Sharif Hussein, the Emir of Mecca and the commander of the Arab army at the time. He met him and established a lifelong friendship between them.

On that visit, he laid the foundation stone for the Hebrew University, which opened seven years later (1925).

1918: The British government presented the text of the Balfour Declaration to US President Woodrow Wilson, and he approved its content before its publication, as was officially approved by France and Italy.

"San Remo Conference".. Mandate Instrument

1920: The "San Remo Conference" of the victorious powers in the First World War was held, and the meeting decided to grant Britain the Mandate for Palestine.

July 1921: The League of Nations (currently the United Nations) announced the British Mandate for Palestine, stating that the project was based on the promise made by Balfour in 1917, to establish a homeland for the Jews in Palestine.

During the British occupation of Palestine, London worked to attract Jews from all countries of the world, organize them and provide them with support for the establishment of the State of Israel.

During that period, the British forces committed a number of massacres, and suppressed the Palestinian revolutions, most notably the 1920 Revolution, the Buraq Revolution in 1929, the Qassam Revolution in 1935, and the Great Palestinian Revolution in 1936.

Withdrawal from Palestine..Declaration of the State of Israel

April 9, 1948: Jewish gangs annihilated the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin and killed all of its 279 residents at the time, most of them children, women and the elderly, while the British High Commissioner was watching the massacre from his headquarters, which was only a few kilometers away from its scene.

Deir Yassin massacre (social networking sites)

May 14, 1948: Britain withdrew from Palestine and the Zionist organizations declared the establishment of the State of Israel, after nearly 950,000 Palestinians were displaced through massacres and intimidation from their villages and cities to the West Bank, Gaza Strip and neighboring Arab countries, out of a million and 400 thousand.

2001: Britain designated the Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, as a terrorist organization.

2002: The Guardian newspaper said that the government of Tony Blair (1997-2007) had reached limits in its support for Israel that Margaret Thatcher's government (May 4, 1979-November 28, 1990) did not even dare to think about.

Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair (Al Jazeera)

- June 27, 2007: Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair was appointed as the international envoy of the International Quartet for Peace in the Middle East, and his positions were biased towards Israel.

December 2012: Britain and Germany abstained in the UN General Assembly on the draft resolution recognizing Palestine as a non-UN member state (observer member).

August 2014: Media reports spoke of a German-British-French proposal being discussed based on the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip in exchange for the disarmament of the Palestinian resistance.

October 2014: The House of Commons votes 274 to 12 to recognize a Palestinian state, but former Prime Minister David Cameron (11 May 2010 - 13 July 2016) ignores the non-binding vote.

Cameron described himself as a "passionate friend" of Israel, insisting that nothing could break this friendship.

2015: On his trip to Israel as mayor of London, Boris Johnson (current prime minister) praised the Balfour Declaration as a "great thing".

December 2016: The government of former British Prime Minister Theresa May officially adopts the definition of anti-Semitism, as issued by the International Holocaust Remembrance Coalition, which considers even criticism of Israel and comparing its practices to Nazi practices as anti-Semitic.

Former British Prime Minister Theresa May (Al Jazeera)

- 2017: Just before the commemoration of the centenary of the Balfour Declaration, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas demanded that Britain recognize the Palestinian state and apologize for the Balfour Declaration, which established the occupation of his country.

Britain refused to apologize, on the contrary, Theresa May expressed her desire to celebrate 100 years of the "promise".

October 2017: Johnson, in his capacity as Foreign Secretary at the time, presented a debate in the House of Commons on the Balfour Declaration, and reiterated British pride in the role it played in establishing a Jewish state in Palestine.

May 2021: When the United Nations Human Rights Council approved the establishment of a commission to investigate Israeli violations of human rights committed in the occupied Palestinian territories, Britain was at the head of 9 countries that rejected the resolution, namely Austria, Bulgaria, Cameroon, the Czech Republic, Germany and Malawi , the Marshall Islands and Uruguay.