THE year 1947 witnessed the emergence of two disputes — Palestine and Kashmir. Both remain unresolved. At the heart of both disputes is the unfulfilled right of two peoples to self-determination. Both are protracted cases of resistance to foreign occupation. And in the genesis of both conflicts, the underlying common factor is the British geopolitics of the time.
The Palestine dispute arose when, following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, Britain, which had been given the mandate to govern Palestine, announced in 1917 its intent to create a Jewish homeland in Palestine. This announcement — the Balfour Declaration — stated that the new state would not prejudice the civil and religious rights of the non-Jewish communities living in Palestine. In 1947, Britain took the matter to the UN, where the General Assembly adopted Resolution 181, which decided to partition Palestine into the independent states of Israel and Palestine with Jerusalem placed under an international regime. Israel has consistently refused to honour the commitments given under the Balfour Declaration as well as the decision of the UN resolution, and has never allowed the Palestinians to form an independent and viable state of their own.