Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas shakes hands with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at a joint news conference in Berlin. Photo: Reuters/Lisi Niesner

As Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) has repeatedly exposed, an integral part of the Palestinian Authority (PA)’s “narrative” to undermine Israel’s legitimacy is to claim that Jews lack any historical connection to the land of Israel, and that the creation of Israel was nothing more than an act of Western colonization.

To support their historical revision, PA leaders and officials often claim that there was a secret plan formulated by British Prime Minister Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, to plant “a foreign body in the middle of the people of the Arab nation in order to fragment its solidarity, steal its resources, and prevent its revival.” According to the PA’s historical revision, this is the sole reason for the establishment of the state of Israel.

Similar to many other parts of the PA narrative, the claim regarding the Campbell-Bannerman conspiracy is a complete lie, lacking any factual or evidentiary basis. In fact, honest Muslim-Arab scholars who have tried to prove this document’s authenticity eventually admitted that no such document exists.

An article written by Dr. Mohsen Mohammad Saleh, a professor who heads the Al-Zaytouna Centre for Studies and Consultations, a Lebanese research institute that “focuses on the Palestinian issue and the conflict with Israel as well as related Palestinian, Arab, Islamic and international developments,” wanted to determine the origins of the so-called “Campbell-Bannerman document.”

Although his goal was to attempt to authenticate the document, Salah was disappointed:

“In short, I became curious about the issue. In one visit to Britain, I therefore set out to investigate, it but found no trace or source of it!!” [emphasis added]

[Website of Al-Zaytouna, Political Analysis: “Is the ‘Campbell-Bannerman Document’ Real or Fake?”,  Sept. 29, 2017]

In the article, Salah exposes how Dr. Anis Sayegh (who Salah refers to as “one of the leading researchers in modern Palestinian history, and head of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Research Center between 1966 and 1976”), discovered the origin of the alleged document. According to the account, the document was first referenced after an incidental discussion between an Egyptian named Antoun Canaan (“the first Arab to reference the Campbell-Bannerman document in a published work”) and an unidentified Indian man, sitting next to him on a plane:

In his account, Sayegh mentions that when he served as chairman of the PLO think tank, he was keen to reach the “important document,” but could not find a single established source for it in dozens of references and books citing it, including works by reliable writers such as Buhran al-Dajani, Munthir Antabawi, Khairi Hamad, and Shafiq Irshidat. Each of them referenced another in a sort of a circular way.

For this reason, Dr. Sayegh decided to dedicate time to research the document in Britain, spending a whole month in the British National Archives, the British Museum library, and Cambridge University, where Campbell-Bannerman had studied and deposited his entire private documents collection. Dr. Sayegh also examined the archives of The Times newspaper covering the period 1904–1907, and found thousands of references to the imperialist colonial conference, but found nothing about the document itself.

After returning empty handed to Beirut, he had the chance to learn that the first Arab to reference the Campbell-Bannerman document in a published work was Antoun Canaan. He went to Egypt where Antoun was living, and met him after some time searching and seeking him out. He was surprised to hear from him that when he travelled from Palestine to London to study law in the mid-1940s, he met in the plane an Indian man sitting next him. The man told him he remembers reading about a colonial conference held in London attended by delegates from several colonial powers to discuss the partition of the Arab nations, prevent their reunification, and the establishment of a Jewish state, but the Indian man did not give Canaan any documented academic material regarding the document.”

[Website of Al-Zaytouna, Political Analysis: “Is the ‘Campbell-Bannerman Document’ Real or Fake?”,  Sept. 29, 2017]

While Salah notes “Our failure to secure the document does not prove its non-existence in the same or different form,” he adds, “at the same time we cannot claim something exists, when this is far from being conclusively established.”

Salah concludes the article by equating the alleged Campbell-Bannerman document to the thoroughly discredited “Protocols of the Elders of Zions” and the so-called “promise of Napoléon” in 1798… cited in some Arab and Islamic literature without evidence”:

Thus, the Campbell-Bannerman document is added to the so-called “The Protocols of the Elders of Zions” and the so-called “promise of Napoléon” in 1798, which were also never authenticated, yet are still being cited in some Arab and Islamic literature without evidence. [emphasis added]

While there is clearly no factual or evidential basis to support the existence of the alleged Campbell-Bannerman document, this — in true PA fashion — does not prevent the conspiracy from being repeatedly referenced by the PA and its officials.

In a sermon explaining how the Koran teaches Palestinians to discern their enemies, PA Supreme Shari’ah judge and Mahmoud Abbas’ Advisor on Religious Affairs and Islamic Relations Mahmoud Al-Habbash, who recently referred to Jews as “grazing herds of humanoids… apes and pigs”, answered the question “How will you know your enemy?” by saying:

The enemy is the one who trespasses, transgresses, attacks, oppresses, harms, damages … Anyone who does one of these things to us… is an enemy, and we must view him only from this viewpoint… They will spare no effort to attack you in every way and form, and they will ‘extend against you their hands and their tongues with evil.” […]

Who are the ones who “extend against you their hands and their tongues with evil,” and they wish we would abandon our religion, our values, and our principles… who are they?…

Not only those who are imposing the occupation on us directly are enemies. They are enemies, the occupation is an enemy, it has no other name, the occupation is an enemy; but not just the occupation, rather the forefathers of the occupation as well, the founders of the occupation who established it and helped in its establishment more than 100 years ago.

[Official PA TV, Sept. 9, 2022]

Preparing his reference to the Campbell-Bannerman document, Al-Habbash then embellished the incidental story of the unidentified Indian man, into an entire conspiracy about the Western counties foreseeing their demise, their replacement by “the civilization to the east and south of the Mediterranean Sea,” and their plot to counter that possibility:

More than 100 years ago, at the start of the 20th century, the colonialist forefathers of the Zionist project convened, the forefathers of the project of “Israel,” which occupies our land and steals our rights. They met and convened and said that their culture — the aggressive imperialist culture of colonialism that is based on materialism, oppression, profit, and cruelty — this civilization, if it can be called that, is about to collapse. And who is the candidate to take its place, to lead the world, and to raise the flag of justice and goodness.

Those who convened, who were prime ministers and ministers of the European colonialist states, and also thinkers, historians, and advisors, they met in London at the start of the 20th century in 1902 or 1903, and said that their culture is about to collapse, and the one who will take its place is the civilization to the east and south of the Mediterranean Sea…

But the oppressive attacking colonialists do not want this. They said: In order to prevent this, we must prevent the progress of this region. We must leave it divided, disintegrated, split, conflicted among itself. We must spread hatred, grudges, and conflicts among them. [We must leave the region] backward. We must prevent the region from progress, the capability of initiative, and the foundations of identity. And more than all of this, we must plant in the heart of this region an isolated entity, a people that is foreign to them and their lands, that will be a friend to us — and they will be the Jews. This is what they wanted, they only used the Jews. They used them to realize colonialist desires of expansion, aggression. They and the occupation are two faces, two ugly faces of one coin, two ugly faces of an even uglier coin…

[Official PA TV, Sept. 9, 2022]

Al-Habbas then concluded:

“They are the ones who convened together against us, and then they issued what was known in history as ‘the Balfour Promise’ (i.e., Declaration). They are an enemy. They attacked us, oppressed, stole our rights, gave our well-rooted and permanent rights to those who are not worthy of them, and they deserve none of them… The Quran did not mention Balfour by name, and it did not mention the report- the plot that preceded him, which we noted earlier, and which was known in history as the British Prime Minister [Henry] Campbell-Bannerman plot, or document, or plan. The Quran did not mention the names of these criminals, but it noted their character traits and their descriptions…” [emphasis added]

This was not the first time Al-Habbash told the invented story, arguing that the goal of implanting the Jews in the Middle East was to leave the residents of the area “divided, backward, and fighting among themselves”:

More than 100 years ago, a few leaders of the west met in London, in 1905, and discussed the status of Europe, colonialism, and the world. Their conclusion was: Their civilization is about to fall. The culture of the West, the culture of wild capitalism, and the culture of aggression, imperialism, and colonialism, are about to fall. And the [inhabitants of the] area that would inherit its place was the [inhabitants of the] area south and east of the Mediterranean Sea thanks to its advantages of geographic unity, large natural resources, and a unified language and religion, “and in order to prevent this area from leading the nations, we must leave this area and its residents divided, backward, and fighting among themselves.”

[Official PA TV, March 15, 2019]

PA TV also interviewed an Egyptologist who also explained how, as part of the Campbell-Bannerman conspiracy theory, Britain planted Jews in Middle East to divide Arabs:

Egyptologist Dr. Wasim Al-Sisi: In 1907, the prime minister of England was a man named Sir Henry Campbell-Banner. … He gathered delegations of European states, and said: “There is a very wealthy, fertile, and uneducated region and it is the Middle East region. The most important state is Egypt because of the richness of its civilization. This region, if it develops, they will strangle us [Europe] … We want an entity… that we will plant in this region. Its role is to break them up [the Arab states]. It will not give them the opportunity to align. For if they align and unite, we will be lost. In return for this, we will help this entity and strengthen it, as it is a part of us.”

Maurice Hirsch, Adv. is the Head of Legal Strategies for Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article first appeared.