British Mandate directly paved way for Palestinians displacement: Palestine Ambassador to India
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: UK policies during the British Mandate directly paved the way for the displacement of Palestinians and the entrenchment of Zionist settler presence, Palestine Ambassador to India Abdulla M Abu Shawesh said at the opening of the International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) on Friday. Speaking ahead of the screening of Palestine 36, he described the film as a window into a history that Palestinians were long denied the platform to narrate. Shawesh said the Balfour Declaration of 1917 marked the moment when Britain without any legal or moral right pledged Palestine to the European Zionist settler movement. According to him, the declaration and British actions turned every stone to entrench the presence of the European settler and set in motion the mass displacement of indigenous Palestinians. The impact of these decisions, he said, was not confined to the past and continued to shape Palestinian life today. The history of our region needs to be revisited, Shawesh said, saying that Palestinian history had been rewritten and zionised, leaving Palestinians unable to document their own experiences for decades. The platforms were controlled. This is fact, he said, adding that his criticism could not be dismissed as anti-Semitic. I am a Semitic man, he remarked. Pointing to references in ancient texts, Shawesh said the existence of Palestine and the Canaanite people was repeatedly recorded, yet modern political narratives continued to deny this continuity. Up to today, some still deny the existence of the Palestinian people, he said, arguing that erasure served political purposes. Israel is fighting a ghost, if you deny our existence. Introducing Palestine 36, which is set during the 1936 uprising against British colonisation and Zionist expansion, he said the film was neither fiction nor nostalgia. It is a reflection of reality, the Palestine ambassador said. He criticised the global media for its long-standing role in shaping one-sided narratives. The media did not give us the chance to tell our story, he said. Instead, it repeatedly amplified what he termed Zionist and Israeli narratives, including early slogans such as a land without people for a people without land. Such framing, he said, facilitated the erasure of Palestinians from international consciousness and continues to influence perceptions today. Listen to us. We have a story, Shawesh said, calling for spaces where Palestinians themselves could narrate their history and present.
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