On 105th anniversary of Balfour Declaration, Hamas vows Palestinians to keep up struggles to restore their legitimate rights

The Palestinian Hamas resistance movement has strongly denounced Britain's 1917 Balfour Declaration, which set the stage for the occupation of Palestine, stressing that Palestinians will remain adherent to their national rights and will continue to defend them until full liberation of their territories from the clutches of the Israeli regime.

“The British pledge and the ensuing political sins and human massacres committed against our people, our rights and our historic land, and the continued American bias and support for the occupying regime are abortive attempts to entrench the Israeli project on the Palestinian land,” Hamas said in a statement released on the 105th anniversary of the ominous treaty.

Hamas described the occupied city of al-Quds and the sacred al-Aqsa Mosque compound as “the core of the conflict” with the Tel Aviv regime, which presses ahead with its plans to Judaize them.

“This year’s anniversary of the Balfour Declaration comes as the residents of al-Quds and the West Bank are waging the most wonderful and multi-faceted campaign of steadfastness and resistance against Israel to liberate Palestine,” the Gaza-based movement said.

Britain’s 1917 Balfour Declaration to blame for Israeli crimes in Palestine: Syria

The Syrian parliament denounces the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which led to creation of Israel, as a flagrant violation of the most basic principles of the international law and blames it for the plight of Palestinians.

Hamas went on to point to the crimes and atrocities that Israel has perpetrated against the Palestinian nation and their land since the announcement of the Balfour Declaration, adding that “Palestinian refugees' right to return to the homes from which they were displaced is a legitimate and legal one that cannot be revoked, waived or bargained over.”

The Balfour Declaration came in the form of a letter from Britain’s then-foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, addressed to Lionel Walter Rothschild, a figurehead of the British Jewish community. It was published on November 2, 1917.

The declaration was made during World War I (1914-1918), and was included in the terms of the British Mandate for Palestine after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire.

It is widely seen as the precursor to the 1948 Palestinian Nakba, when Zionist armed paramilitary groups, who were trained and created to fight side by side with the British in World War II, forcibly expelled more than 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland. 

Israeli forces kill Palestinian man during West Bank raid

Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers have shot dead a Palestinian man during a military raid in the central part of the occupied West Bank, Palestinian officials said, in the latest confrontation that has made 2022 the deadliest year of violence in the occupied territory in nearly a decade.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health on Thursday identified the victim as 42-year- old Daoud Mahmoud Khalil Rayan, according to the official Wafa news agency.

Palestinian officials said the raid began with Israeli military vehicles entering the village of Beit Duqqu northwest of al-Quds in the early hours of the day. In videos circulated on social media, exchanges of fire could be heard.

Wafa reported that Rayan was struck with a bullet in the heart.

The development comes a day after Israeli forces killed a Palestinian man, named as Habis Abdel Hafeez Rayan, aged 54, over an alleged vehicle ramming and stabbing attack on an Israeli soldier at a military checkpoint near an illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank.

Car-ramming operation: Palestinian driver shot dead; Israeli soldier seriously injured

A Palestinian driver has been shot dead by Israeli forces in a car-ramming operation that seriously injured an Israeli occupation soldier as well.

According to witnesses, Israeli soldiers opened fire on Rayan.

Israeli army radio said the soldier was seriously injured and taken to Shaare Zedek Medical Center in al-Quds.

Israeli forces have recently been conducting overnight raids and killings in the northern occupied West Bank, mainly in the cities of Jenin and Nablus, where new groups of Palestinian resistance fighters have been formed.

Israel has killed more than 150 Palestinians since the start of 2022 in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, including 26 since the start of October, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said in a new report yesterday.

Local and international rights groups have condemned Israel’s excessive use of force and “shoot-to-kill policy” against Palestinians.

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