To mark the centenary of the British Mandate in Palestine, the Council for British Research in the Levant (CBRL), in partnership with RACE.ED, and in co-sponsorship with Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, the Institute of Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH), the Centre for Research Collections (CRC), History, Sociology, Politics and International Relations Middle East Research Group (PIR-MERG) and Islamic and Middle East Studies (IMES), are delighted to present the full recording of Dr Salman Abu Sitta’s Address to Balfour at the University of Edinburgh from 8 November 2022.
A renowned historian and cartographer, Dr Salman Abu Sitta addressed Lord Balfour, who was Chancellor of the University of Edinburgh at the time of signing the declaration in 1917. This lecture reflected upon a lifetime of research arising from Balfour’s legacy and what it has meant for Palestine and Palestinians, past and present. 2022 marks the centenary of the establishment of British Mandate in Palestine (1922-1948), as instituted under the League of Nations. In the five years leading up to the start of this era, Lord Arthur James Balfour, who at the time served as Britain’s foreign secretary and the University of Edinburgh’s chancellor (1891-1930), issued a sixty-seven-word letter of intent, which had seismic implications on the Arab world in general, and Palestine specifically. Balfour’s promise was one that endorsed Britain’s support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, while simultaneously denying the recognition of Palestinian peoplehood with national rights to self-determination. This decision, though categorically challenged by Palestinian society and leadership, became juridically enshrined under British Mandate. The results of this decision would later come to sow death and destruction in Palestine through means of forced expulsion and colonial dispossession, setting into motion an ongoing structure of settler-colonialism and displacement today. In deepening transparency and accountability for the UK’s imperial past and UoE’s institutional memory, Dr Abu Sitta addressed Balfour on his deeds according to the record, as both witness and survivor.