PRESS RELEASE
Mathematics of the Palestinian Nakba75
Exhibition Dates: 12th – 27th May 2023
Exhibition Opening Night: 11th May 2023, 18:30 – 20:30
P21 Gallery presents Mathematics of the Palestinian Nakba75, an exhibition with public program of activities. The featured works comprise video works, prints, and photography.
Contrary to Common Belief, The Nakba did not happen in 1948, but had its roots in November 1917.
That is when Lord James Balfour, who was born excatly 100 years before The Nakba, and was the British Foreign Secretary in 1917, sat down in his office and wrote his infamous Declaration offering Palestine, a country not his own, as a ‘National Home for the Jewish People”.
67 words that sealed the fate of Palestine.
3000 miles to the east, the same time the Balfour Declaration was issued, Field Marshal Edmund Henry Allenby was entering Jerusalem on horseback – thus ending Ottoman rule lasting 400 years.
In 1919, WW1 ended. The Ottoman Empire collapsed. The British Empire laid claim to Palestine.
In 1919, the League of Nations mandated Palestine to the British under Article 22 of the League of Nations dated 1919. Palestine was seen as a Class A Mandate ready for self-governance when the Manadate ends in 1948.
With Zionist lobbying, the British Mandate adopted the Balfour Declaration as its twin document thus sealing the fate of that Class A Mandate.
In 1919 The population of Palestine was 750,000 of which 84,000 were Jews mostly immigrants to Palestine.
In 1930 Balfour died, aged 82, before his dream was realised: a Jewish Home in Palestine.
His dream became a nightmare for the Palestinian people. The 1936-1939 Palestine Revolt erupted: 5000 Palestinians were killed, 15,000 injured and 5,500 imprisoned.
By 1947 and 30 years after Balfour, the 84,000 Jews became 600,000 - mostly through illegal immigration. The indigenous Palestinians numbered 1.3 Million hailed from the Land of Palestine.
And exactly 30 years after the Balfour Declaration, the British handed a wounded Palestine over to the UN. That was 1947.
By 1948, the last year of the Mandate, 13 British High Commisioners had governed Palestine, but failed to steer it to independence.
By 1948, the Empire was getting old and was bleeding from acts of terror by the Irgun and the Haganah, the two main underground Jewish gangs operating there.
And exactly 30 years after Balfour Declaration, its promise of “ a National Home for the Jewish people” in Palestine was to be realised in November 1947.
UN General Assembly Res 181, The Partition Plan of 29 November 1947, was written, forced down the throats of the 1.5 Million Palestinians and adopted.
By not consulting the indigenous Palestinians, The UN had violated its won principle of Self-Determination – Article 1(2) of its Charter.
The vote roll, mostly by UN members who has nothing to do with Palestine was:
33 for, 13 against and 10 abstentions (including the British).
To add insult to injury, the UN declared that Palestine will patitioned into two unequal parts: 44% of the Land of Palestine was allocated to the indigenous Palestinians and 56% the the Jews who were mosty illegal immigrants.
Jerusalem was to be a Corpus Separatum zone under UN administration.
The Jews rejoiced. The Palestinians and the Arab countries protested.
The Jewish underground gangs, seeing upon this political vacuum and instability, went on a military rampage with the aim of implementing the Zionist project in the whole of Palestine.
By May 1948, 30 years after Balfour, 700,000 Palestinians had been expelled from their homes and more than 550 of their villages and towns were destroyed while the world looked on.
By the end of 1948, 25 documented massacres were committed by the Zionist underground gangs. The most infamous of these was Deir Yasin in April 1948.
And by the time the Armstice Agreements were drawn up in 1949 for the cessation of hostilities, the Zionist gangs, now under the official status of the newly declarded State, had occupied 77% of Historic Palestine while the world looked on.
On the eve of the Sabbath May 14, 1948 the State of Israel was unilaterally declared over the ruins and the ashes of the land of Historic Palestine.
On the eve of the Sabbath May 14, 1948, 37 Zionist leaders from all over the world gathered at the Tel Aviv Museum on Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv to sign a “Declaration of Independence” for a state without defined borders, without a Constitution and without legitimacy. That remains so to this day.
Of the 37 Zionists gathered for that Declaration, the oldest was 82. The youngest was not yet 30.
Of the 37 Zionists gathered, 3 became prime ministers, 1 became president and 14 became cabinet ministers.
Of the 37 Zionists gathered, 13 were born in Russia, 11 in Poland, 2 in Romania, 2 in Germany , 2 in Lithuania, 1 in Austria, 1 in Hungary, 1 in Denmark, 1 in Yemen.
Of the 37 Zionists gathered, only 1 was born in Palestine (and his family hailed from a colonial Moroccan background).
Of the 1.5 million Palestinians, all 1.5 million Palestinians were born in Palestine.
One day before that Declaration, The British Empire packed their gear and left Palestine to the wolves – 31 years after Allenby had entered it.
To this day, 75 years after the ‘creation of Israel’, and 105 years after the Balfour Declaration was issued, the Palestinian people continue to reject the Partition of their historic homeland, and to declare tha, under International Law and in accordance with UN Resolutions, the acquisition of territory by military means is illegal and is forcefully rejected.
To this day, 75 years after the ‘creation of Israel,’ and 105 years after the Balfour Declaration was issued, the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine continues and the Palestinian Nakba is ongoing.
That is The Mathematics of the Palestinian Nakba75.
Curated by Antoine Raffoul and Yahya Zaloom