December 21, 2017, Cairo – The Cairo Review of Global Affairs recently published a special report on, “Palestine’s Century of Conflict,” which marks a series of historic milestones in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: one hundred years since the Balfour Declaration on November 2, 1917; seventy years since the UN General Assembly partition resolution on November 29, 1947; and fifty years since the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 242 on November 22, 1967. In an essay, Mohamed Abbas, the President of the State of Palestine asks the United Kingdom’s government to apologize for the Balfour Declaration, a document that set off a century of suffering and dispossession for the Palestinian people.
“Lord Arthur Balfour was a British foreign secretary who decided to change the identity and fate of Palestine, a land that he did not own, by promising it to the Zionist movement, and dramatically altering the history of the Palestinian people,” writes Abbas, who has served as president of the State of Palestine and of the Palestinian National Authority since 2005, and as chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization since 2004.
Abbas believes that, ultimately, “a just and lasting peace is possible,” if and when Israel and the international community recognize the right of Palestinians to a sovereign state, and begin to repair the century of injustice their nation has suffered. The first step, both timely and critical, is for the United Kingdom to apologize to the Palestinian people for the document that started it all.
The special issue includes essays by leading policymakers all of whom reflect on the course of the conflict and the prospects for peace including: Nabil Elaraby, former Secretary General of the League of Arab Nations and foreign minister of Egypt; Nasser S. Judeh, former deputy prime minister and foreign minister of Jordan; Miguel Ángel Moratinos, the European Union's first Special Envoy for the Middle East peace process and former foreign minister of Spain; Nabil Fahmy, former foreign minister of Egypt; and Daniel C. Kurtzer who served as U.S. ambassador to both Egypt and Israel. This edition also features a collection of essays by scholars and analysts discussing the past, present and possible futures of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
The Cairo Review of Global Affairs is the quarterly journal of AUC’s School of Global Affairs and Public Policy (GAPP). The journal is available online at www.thecairoreview.com.
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