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On November 2, 1917, Britain issued a directive robbing the Palestinians of their land. The Balfour Declaration became the foundational document of Israel; 100 years on, its impact is still being felt. See more at: http://gulfnews.com/gntv
Transcript
00:00I come from Nablus. It's a beautiful city. I've heard. I've never been there. I cannot
00:13go there. If I'm talking about my country, I love my country. If I'm talking about my
00:17passport, I hate it because we can't go anywhere. And it's been so bad for us that I can't even
00:23go into my own country. Me being Palestinian makes me feel really bad. Because of what
00:31happened, Palestinians, the whole conflict, especially because the Palestinian conflict
00:37is one of the biggest conflicts in history. It's been going for almost 70 years and still
00:41going. So the Balfour Declaration was basically the establishment of a national home for the
00:46Jews in Palestine. To me, it's not the declaration that gave the Jews Palestine. To me, that
00:53was the Oslo Accords. That was all the way to 1948. 1948 was the day I actually lost
01:01Palestine. But it was the first step in the gradual losing of my country, the gradual
01:07loss of my country. It's James Arthur Balfour's declaration to the Zionist leader. And he
01:16told him that he promised him land in the Middle East, and that was in Palestine. So
01:23they took it literally. They took it so literally that the Jewish population in Palestine became
01:31a lot. There was a condition that no act shall be done that might affect the rights of non-Jews
01:40in Palestine. And clearly, that's not what happened. They started thinking that that's
01:46their promised land, and they want it, and it's their rightful land, even though it wasn't,
01:53because it's ours. So they started war, and they started taking our homes away from us.
02:01He absolutely has no authority to just give any land away to anyone. It's not his land,
02:08of course. Yeah, that's an unfair act, actually. But I don't think they actually felt the guilt
02:15of all of that, because they thought that we were taking their homes instead of them
02:20taking ours. In my opinion, Palestinians are the bravest, especially the ones who are living
02:24in Palestine right now. Because Palestinians, like men, women, old or young, it doesn't
02:32matter. They're all facing soldiers with weapons. They're all facing war machines like tanks.
02:37It's just rocks. Being Palestinian means resistance. It means hope. It means dreams.
02:44It means an identity. And it means a constant conflict, an internal conflict, and an external
02:49conflict too. Internal conflict meaning I'm talking about a land which is politically
02:54not mine anymore, but deep down historically, to me personally, it's mine. Whether the lands
03:02of 1948, the lands of the West Bank, Jerusalem, everything. But we actually grew up seeing
03:09what happens to every person there in Palestine. We saw horrific things that no one should
03:16ever go through. And knowing that they're there, staying there and fighting for us,
03:24and they still want to get it back, I can't not be connected to that type of thing.
03:31From what I'm seeing now, there is no progress. There is no progress, but hopefully soon.
03:38All Palestinians have this hope that Palestine will come back.
03:42In Arabic, we have this proverb which says, whatever is far away from the eye is far away
03:48from the heart. But in Palestine, it's the total opposite for me. It's because it's far
03:53away, my relationship with it is even stronger. So I've never been there. I've never seen
03:59Palestine. I barely know. I only know that I'm from Nablus. I don't know the streets
04:04over there. But there's something inside of me. There's this struggle that I really want
04:12to go there. I really want to see it.
04:14We can't do anything. We feel like useless. Because we want to help people. We want to
04:20get back our country, but we can't. We don't know what to do.
04:29For more UN videos visit www.un.org

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