The Gulf Crisis and New World Order — Page 211
The Gulf Crisis & The New World Order actions based on justice they should talce in the future to arrive at a lasting peace. Now I shall briefly discuss the historical background of this issue which is called the "Palestinian Problem", and which now is being reflected in the context of the "Gulf War". THE BACKGROUND TO THE PALESTINIAN ISSUE I have mentioned in a previous sermon that in 1917 Lord Balfour made some commitments with the Jews. Later, in 1920 a surprising incident occurred on the political scene. The League of Nations gave a mandate to the British government to assume the role of the caretaker of the Palestinian territory. This mandate included a specific provision that whatever promise Balfour had made with the Jews for the creation of a Zionist state shall be honoured by the British government. Paul Harper writes: 1 "In 1920, at the League of Nations Supreme Council meeting in San Remo, Britain was assi gn ed the mandate for Palestine, which carried with it the obligation to implement the Balfour Declaration. " (Pages 32-33) This was a display of highhandedness and injustice by this organiz. ation that is unprecedented in the history of the world. It was clearly the result of a conspiracy of the big powers. The League of Nations was designed to be a representative body of all the nations of the world, watching their interests with impartiality. It had no jurisdictions to delegate such mandatory powers to anybody. A British Minister wrote a letter to Lord Rothschild, a distinguished banker belonging to a Jewish family of France, that the British Cabinet was contemplating the enforcement of a decision in compliance with the mandate passed by the League of Nations. The question is, who had vested such an authority in the League of Nations to dispose of the fate of a nation in this manner, and then authorize the same country, which had made a promise to the Jews, to go ahead and enforce its 1 Paul Harper, The Arab-Israeli Issue. Wayland Publishers Ltd. England. 1986. 211