Hamas Vows Palestinians Will Keep Up Struggles to Restore Their Legitimate Rights

By Staff, Agencies

The Palestinian Hamas resistance movement strongly denounced Britain's 1917 Balfour Declaration, which set the stage for the occupation of Palestine, stressing that the 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’ occupation 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’ scheme on the Palestinian land,” Hamas said in a statement released on the 105th anniversary of the ominous treaty.

The resistance group described the occupied city of al-Quds and the holy al-Aqsa Mosque compound as “the core of the conflict” with the Tel Aviv regime, which presses ahead with its attempts 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.

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 [catastrophe], 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.