The United Kingdom has urged to act on the case of the colonial era after recognizing the Palestinian state

The Palestinians pursuing apologies from the United Kingdom during the allegations of war crimes in the colonial era have urged the government to respond to the light of its recognition this week of a state of Palestine.

The group submitted a 400-page legal petition to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the beginning of the month to request official apology and repairs from the United Kingdom.

They represent 13 families who say they have been victims of violence, exile or repression during the period known as the British mandate in historic Palestine from 1917 to 1948.

Victor Kattan, who speaks for the petitioners, said that the government was responsible for recognizing what happened “to advance understanding and knowledge” on its past.

Addressing the BBC at this week’s UN conference in New York, he praised Great Britain’s decision to recognize a Palestinian state-but argued that it had not properly approached the historical conduct and heritage of the United Kingdom.

“Great Britain denied government autonomy to the Palestinian community … It has enabled a high-commissioner to behave like a dictator (and) of the Palestinian people wore the brunt,” he said.

“Recognition alone does not deal with all these historical problems which, for the Palestinians, are not history but living reality to date,” said Professor Kattan, expert in public international law at the University of Nottingham.

The foreign office, Commonwealth and Development (FCDO) would not confirm whether the ministers had been informed of the legal petition saying that it “did not start regularly”, although the BBC understands that the Deputy Prime Minister and former Foreign Affairs Secretary David Lammy is to ask the authorities to examine the submission.

He documented three decades of alleged abuse by British forces in increasing violence until 1948, after which the United Kingdom quickly withdrew and the state of Israel was declared.

The alleged abuses of the British forces range from murder, torture, expulsion and collective sanctions which, according to submission, refused the Arab Palestinian population rising to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In 2022, a BBC review of some of the historical evidence involved found details on arbitrary murders, a criminal fire of whole villages, “in the cage” of open -air civilians, the use of human shields by attaching them to the front of military vehicles and the introduction of demolitions at home as collective punishment.

The evidence included audio recordings made of decades later in which British soldiers and police described the abuses. Some were carried out in formal policy directives for the British forces at the time or with the consent of senior officers.

The British Defense Ministry said in 2022 that he was aware of historical allegations against the staff of the armed forces during the period, and that any evidence provided would be “examined thoroughly”.

During the First World War, Great Britain invaded Palestine, which took out the Ottoman Turks and facilitated its promise for a Jewish homeland made in the Balfur Declaration of 1917.

In the decades that followed, violence rose between the Arabs and the Jews.

An insurrection known as the Arab revolt broke out against the British regime from 1936 to 1939. It was brutally suppressed by the British, leaving about 10% of the Palestinian Arabic Male Palestinian population killed, injured, imprisoned or exiled, according to an estimate.

Palestinian petitioners seek to rely on the previous concessions made by the United Kingdom on war crimes of the colonial era, including the apology of this year for the Batang Kali massacre in 1948 in Malaysia and the colony on the abuses of Kenyans during the Mau Mau uprising of the 1950s.

The decision of the United Kingdom, France and several other countries to recognize a Palestinian state has seen them join more than 150 nations which already do it.

This decision was greeted by the Palestinians-but rejected by Israel and the United States, which argued that it had damaged the efforts to mediate a cease-fire in the war in the Gaza Strip.