Following the 1917 Balfour declaration, Sharif Hussein, leader of the Arab Revolt, urged the Arabs to “welcome the Jews as brethren and cooperate with them for the common welfare”. Those wise words were ignored by the Palestinian Arab leadership then, and continue to be ignored by President Mahmoud Abbas now (Britain must atone for Balfour and 100 years of suffering, Opinion, 1 November).

Rather than “negating the Arab-Palestinian right to self-determination”, President Abbas knows that Britain repeatedly put forward proposals that would have led to Palestinian independence. Even when, in 1937, Britain tabled a partition plan offering the Jews a mere 15% of the land, the Palestinian leadership refused, believing that negating my people’s right to self-determination took precedence over sovereignty for their own people.

Looking back over the past century, it is easy for the Palestinians to blame Israel, Britain and others, while ignoring their own culpability (which includes the Grand Mufti’s alliance with Hitler). Had the Palestinians pursued negotiations instead of extremism and confrontation, perhaps President Abbas would correctly recognise Balfour today as a positive step towards Jewish statehood, and not be so embittered by the failure of his own leadership to achieve sovereignty for his people.

Mark Regev

Israel’s ambassador to the UK

• In response to the letter (31 October) from Tom Brake MP and three other MPs, I would like to point out that there were three promises made in the Balfour declaration. The third one, often overlooked and ignored, was that the civic and religious rights of Jews in other lands should be protected. I’m glad to say that this has always been the case in the UK, but sadly not so in other countries, particularly those in the Middle East. In reviewing the Balfour declaration we need to consider all the promises, not just those that suit our own prejudices.

Ella Marks

London

• Four MPs write that the Balfour declaration contained a promise to facilitate the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. But this is not the case. On many occasions, British ministers told the Arabs, 90% of the population, that the declaration did not promise a Jewish state, merely a “Jewish national home”, whatever that is. But this was not enough for the Zionists, who pressured successive British governments to take the land away from its indigenous inhabitants, and so the British did, lying to the Palestinians about their intentions. These are matters of historic record, as detailed in my new documentary Palestine: The Reality. Compare Churchill saying to the Arabs: “Unauthorised statements have been made to the effect that the purpose in view is to create a wholly Jewish Palestine … His Majesty’s Government … have no such aim in view,” with Chaim Weizmann saying in private: “Palestine shall be just as Jewish as America is American and England is English” and describing the indigenous Palestinians as akin to “the rocks of Judea, as obstacles that have to be cleared on a difficult path”.

Lord Curzon, later foreign secretary, knew the truth and objected strongly to the actions of Balfour and Lloyd George, saying in a private letter to Balfour: “I do not myself recognise that the connection of the Jews with Palestine, which terminated 1,200 years ago, gives them any claims whatsoever. On this principle we have a stronger claim to France.”

What the British government should apologise for is successive governments treating the Balfour declaration as promising a Jewish state when it didn’t.

Karl Sabbagh

Author, Britain in Palestine