The Balfour Declaration was signed on November 2, 1917, at a time when Britain and its allies were driving the Turks and Germans out of Palestine, a barren region of a decayed and defeated Ottoman Empire.

The Palestine Campaign turned the tide of World War One. It was won by allied troops, including a large fighting contingent of Palestine Jews. No Arabs fought on the west side of the Jordan River, part of which is called, by ignorant activists and politicians, “the West Bank.”

America remained neutral until April 1917 and didn’t get into the fight until the summer of 1918, by which time the Palestine Campaign was over. The Allied Powers met in San Remo in 1920 to decide the future of the defunct Ottoman Empire. The United States participated only as observers.

Arabs were rewarded with independence in Syria, Lebanon, and Mesopotamia (today’s Iraq). Jordan was created later as a reward for Arab participation in the Palestine Campaign on the East Bank of the Jordan River. This part of Palestine was given to the Hashemite tribe, a minority in Jordan. The majority of Jordanians are Palestinians, as is the queen.

This fact has been conveniently forgotten by those physically and verbally fighting against Israel. Those with an aversion to history have held back peace for decades with a two-state non-solution that demands Israel give up its ancient historic homeland and divide Jerusalem, its eternal capital.

The Allied Powers gave Britain the mandate for Palestine based on the principle of the Balfour Declaration, which had become official British policy: It called for establishing Palestine as the national home for the Jewish people while protecting the civil and religious rights of all its citizens, which Israel has diligently done.

This was reaffirmed at the 1922 League of Nations Conference on the Mandate for Palestine. (The League of Nations was the forerunner of the United Nation.)

The world celebrated the return of the Jews to their ancient biblical...and then things went wrong.

British officers arrived in Jerusalem to administer British policy but instead turned against their own government policy by encouraging a raging anti-Semitic Arab leader to incite the murder and expulsion of Jews in Jerusalem, Hebron, and throughout pre-state Palestine.

The notorious Haj Amin al-Husseini was the architect of anti-Jewish terror that has lasted a century. After fleeing Jerusalem, he joined Adolph Hitler to plan the Final Solution of the Jewish Problem in the Middle East.

He became the mentor of Yasser Arafat who deceived the world at the 1993 White House ceremony by promising to deliver the “peace of the brave.” Instead, he gave Israelis the peace of the grave. Over a thousand Israeli Jews were slaughtered by Arafat’s terror war. This was after a peace agreement was signed in America. Ever since, America has propped up a corrupt Palestinian Authority with taxpayers’ money that the PA spends promoting and rewarding anti-Jewish terror.

Under Trump, this funding stopped. The Biden Administration renewed it, despite two existing US laws forbidding funding the Palestinians until they stop paying reward money to their killers.

According to the Clinton-era Oslo Accords, the West Bank was to be divided into three parts – A, B, and C:

• Area A to be under full Palestinian control, administratively, and security.
• Area B to be under Palestinian administration, with joint Palestinian and Israel security.
• Area C to remain under sole Israeli administration and security control until a permanent peace can be reached with the Palestinians, which is highly unlikely given the past and current history of their divided leadership.

Palestinians can build homes in Areas A and B without any Israeli or American permission. Israel can only build in Area C, according to the Oslo Accords but, when we do, the US Administration is angry.

Recently, the Israeli Government approved 3,134 new homes to be built in Judea & Samaria, within Area C. We keep hearing that Judea and Samaria are “occupied Palestinian land.” Nothing is “occupied Palestinian land” until the Arabs sit down with Israel and agree to conditions of peace, borders, and cooperation.

Seven-hundred-thousand Jews live in 30 towns and villages in Area C. Three thousand new homes is a drop in the bucket of natural growth requirements. Nevertheless, Secretary of State Blinken told Israeli Defense Minister, Benny Ganz, that Jews building homes in Judea and Samaria was “unacceptable.”

State Department spokesman Ned Price called Jews building homes as being “completely inconsistent with lowering tensions and reduces the prospects of a two-state solution.”

The discrimination between rampant Arab construction and modest Jewish building is blatant and appalling.

What was missing from Price’s biased venom was the absence of an official acknowledgment that Israel had made a historic gesture to Mahmoud Abbas by allowing 4,000 non-Israeli Arabs to build over 1,300 homes in Israeli-held Area C. On the other hand, the PA punishes with death any Arab who sells his land or builds a home for a Jew in either Area A or B.

The perfidy continues.

Israel is expected to agree that the only way she will have peace is to carve out pieces of her land, including Jerusalem our eternal capital, and feed them to the hungry beast. To this end, Biden wants Israel to divide her capital so the United States can support a consulate in Jerusalem for the Palestinians. This is reminiscent of the time when Jordan invaded Israel, drove Jews out of their homes in the Old City and East Jerusalem, and gave them to non-Israeli Arabs.

The 1967 liberation of Jerusalem and of Judea and Samaria are intertwined. Both places are integral parts of the biblical heartland. Any accommodation with the Arabs must take this, and the topographic advantages of retaining the high ground, into consideration. Israel must control both as an integral security necessity, as well as biblical legitimacy, in any agreement with the Palestinians.

It is puzzling that the Biden Administration is willing to put such strain on US-Israel relations over this minor issue of opening a consulate in the middle of Israel’s capital in West Jerusalem to serve non-Israeli Arabs who publicly declare Israel an enemy state that must be annihilated. When an Israeli official recommended that the State Department locate its office in Ramallah or in Gaza City, the State Department took great offense. Yet it remained deaf to Israel’s claims that there are no legal or historic precedents for the United States to use Israel’s capital to serve an external nation or entity, let alone an enemy.

Both sides of the warring Palestinian factions, backed by their Congressional supporters, are pushing the current Administration hard on this point. It’s obvious that there is a growing anti-Israel, even anti-Semitic, groundswell in the Democrat Party, led by a radical grouping within the ruling government that is dictating thought, language, and policy.

Some observers say that the State Department is adopting an anti-Israel strategy as a sop to the radical wing of the party. This is precisely the point. They are the ones who are calling the shots, not Biden in the White House nor Blinken in the State Department.

As we have learned from our history, when a great power tacks away from its original and affirmative support and caters to those who are baying for Jewish blood, bad things happen. Planting a consulate in Jerusalem to assist an enemy is akin to planting a stake in the heart of Judaism.

Perfidy against Jews is never a good thing.

Barry Shaw is the International Public Diplomacy Director at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies. Author of ‘1917 From Palestine to the Land of Israel.’

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