In September 2025, fourteen Palestinian petitioners submitted a 400-page legal petition to the UK Government setting out evidence that Britain acted unlawfully in Palestine during the three decades it governed the territory, from the Balfour Declaration of 1917 to the end of the Mandate in 1948.
Drafted by a team of lawyers and historians including Ben Emmerson KC, Danny Friedman KC, Professor Avi Shlaim, Professor John Quigley and Dr Victor Kattan, the petition calls on the Government to acknowledge Britain’s conduct and to apologise for it.
In the month of the Balfour Declaration’s 109th anniversary, three of the petition’s authors come to Trinity College to set out the petition's case and to take questions from the audience.
Professor Avi Shlaim, one of the foremost historians of the Arab-Israeli conflict, will trace Britain’s role in Palestine from Balfour to 1948 and ask why so little of it is remembered in Britain today.
Danny Friedman KC will explain where, in the petition’s account, British rule crossed into illegality, and why the Mandate was not the League of Nations instrument it is often taken to be.
Dr Victor Kattan will turn to the use of law as a machinery of repression under the Mandate, to partition and Britain’s abandonment of Palestine in 1948, and to what acknowledgement, apology and repair would mean now.
Professor Dawn Chatty will provider her perspective on the human consequences of that history and what acknowledgement and redress might mean for displaced communities today
The panel will be chaired by Dr James McDougall, a historian of colonialism and decolonisation at Trinity College, and the presentations will be followed by an extended discussion with the audience.
The event is free and open to all members of the university and the public.
Event venue & nearby stays
Levine Building, Trinity Street, Oxford, United Kingdom
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