unfinished

This November marks 108 years since the Balfour Declaration, a promise written in London by men who had never walked the soil of Palestine. Authored by Arthur Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary at the time and signed on 2 November 1917, it became the seed of a new state and the undoing of another people. For the Jewish world, it offered recognition after centuries of exile. For Palestinians, it marked the beginning of erasure.

To fully grasp its significance and the controversies surrounding it, it is essential to understand three key concepts that underpin the narrative: Zionism, antisemitism, and Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism. These terms not only illuminate the motivations behind the declaration but also help to elucidate the subsequent century of strife in the region.

Zionism: A Response to Antisemitism in the Quest for a Jewish Homeland

The Balfour Declaration did not emerge from nowhere. It came from fear, exile, and the slow death of faith in Europe’s conscience. In 1882, Leon Pinsker, a Jewish physician, wrote Auto-Emancipation after watching mobs tear through Jewish towns in Russia. Houses burned. Families fled. The pogroms of 1881 ended any illusion that Jews could ever belong in Europe. Pinsker saw what others refused to see: no law, no revolution, no education could protect a people the world had already decided to keep apart.

Safety would come only through self-determination, through land rather than tolerance. A generation later, Theodor Herzl carried that truth into politics through the Dreyfus Affair, when a Jewish French officer was condemned for a crime he did not commit, stripping away Europe’s mask of enlightenment. Even in Paris, the supposed capital of reason, antisemitism ruled the crowd. Watching from Vienna, Herzl understood what Pinsker had already warned: emancipation without equality is another form of captivity. Herzl built what Pinsker imagined. He turned despair into movement, organisation, and speech. Through the Zionist Congresses, he tried to make safety tangible. He pleaded with ministers and kings, searched for land across the globe that could hold both memory and survival. He even wrote to the Ottoman Sultan, Abdul Hamid II, for a homeland in Palestine. He refused.

Still, Herzl kept going. For him, it was not about conquest but about the right to live without permission. By 1917, when Britain issued the Balfour Declaration, Europe’s so-called “Jewish question”, a term used in European discourse to discuss the integration, segregation, or expulsion of Jews, had already revealed the sickness at its core. To Jews, it was a plea for existence. To the imperial powers, it was a strategy, another chance to extend control into the Ottoman world. One side sought a home. The other saw an opportunity. Between them, a promise was made that would change the fate of a land neither side fully understood.

Orientalism and Imperial Hubris

The Balfour Declaration was not only a promise; it was an act of power. Edward Said’s idea of Orientalism helps us see it for what it was, a colonial document disguised as moral duty. Britain spoke of creating a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, yet never paused to ask what that meant for those already living there. In its language, Palestine became an empty space waiting to be claimed, not a land of families, farmers, and memory.

The indigenous Arab population was reduced to a single phrase, “non-Jewish communities,” stripped of name, voice, and history. They were spoken about, not spoken to. It turned people into categories, presence into absence. That is the logic of Orientalism: to see the East not as a living world, but as material to be moulded by Western power and imagination. It is a way of thinking that empties lands of their people and people of their history.

British Strategic Interests and French Complicity

The arrogance that engineered the Balfour Declaration was rooted in Britain’s hunger for power. Behind its moral language lay a simple aim: control. The declaration was issued in the chaos of the First World War, when the British imperial power was fighting not only for victory but for territory. Palestine, with its trade routes and proximity to the Suez Canal, became part of a larger chessboard. The British saw the region not as a motherland for its people but as a prize to be managed.

Diplomacy and Dispossession

The Sykes-Picot treaty had already shown the pattern. Britain and France distributed the Arab world in secret, drawing borders that cut through language and kinship. These lines were not meant to unite but to divide and rule. The Balfour Declaration followed the same logic. It decided the fate of a land without asking its people. In London, it was called diplomacy. In Palestine, it became dispossession. For European Jews, it brought a fragile hope after generations of fear. They saw it as recognition, a long-awaited right to safety and belonging. For Palestinians, the same words felt like a sentence. Their land was discussed in foreign rooms, their future sealed in other people’s languages. What gave one people deliverance took away another’s birthplace. From that moment came a century of struggle. Two people, bound to the same soil, were caught in a story written by the colonial power.

Empire’s Shadow

The promise made to the Zionists through the Balfour Declaration exposed a truth that the imperial power could never admit. Western powers spoke of liberty while deciding who was human enough to deserve it. Their idea of freedom had borders. Beyond Europe, it turned into permission: granted, withdrawn, and traded according to interest. In that imagination, Palestine was stripped of its reality. It ceased to be a land of people and became a metaphor, a stage on which Europe could perform its moral ambitions. The men who wrote the declaration did not see villages, harvests, or prayer calls at dawn. They saw space, something to be promised, parcelled, and redeemed through the colonial idea of moral duty. The Balfour Declaration was more than policy. It was philosophy turned into power, the belief that history could be rewritten without the consent of those who lived it.

The Paradox of Liberation

The result was a century of grief, exile, and resistance that still shapes the region’s every breath. Theodor Herzl’s dream began in anguish. He wanted a shelter for Jews who had none, safety after centuries of persecution. His longing was human and urgent. But like many who lived under colonial rule, he saw the world through its gaze. In The Jewish State, Herzl wrote of building a homeland that would stand as a frontier of civilisation in what he saw as a backward East. This idea mirrored the Orientalist belief that the East was lesser, waiting to be corrected by the West. Herzl used that language to win Europe’s approval, presenting Zionism as a cause aligned with the imperial project. It revealed a deeper paradox: a movement born from the search for safety, adopting the very logic that had long denied it to others. The legacy of that choice lives on. Liberation cannot grow from someone else’s domination, and no people can find peace by inheriting the instruments of colonial power.

Revisiting Said’s Themes

Edward Said’s ideas on Orientalism help reveal what lay beneath the Balfour Declaration. He showed how the colonial system justified itself by turning the East into an object of control, stripping people of voice and history so that their land could be claimed in the name of development. The declaration was one such act. It spoke the language of promise but was written in the logic of empire. Palestine and its people disappeared behind the visions of those who believed they understood the region better than those who lived in it. Through that document, Britain set two peoples on a path of collision. What began as a political statement became a century of exile, fear, and mistrust. For Palestinians, the realisation of Balfour’s promise led to the Nakba of 1948, when hundreds of thousands were driven from their homes, their lives suspended between memory and survival. That wound never closed. Today’s war in Gaza is not separate from that history. It is its continuation.

Conclusion

The legacy of the Balfour Declaration shows how imperial power reshapes entire worlds. It reminds us how Western ambitions, guided by power and wrapped in Orientalist myths about “the East,” can alter the fate of nations for generations. To confront what followed, one must begin with understanding, not slogans. Real peace requires more than diplomacy; it needs a philosophical honesty about history itself. The prejudices that shaped a century of Western policy, the habit of deciding for others, of seeing one people’s freedom as another’s threat, must be broken

Peace will only come when we step out of Balfour’s shadow. Each home destroyed leaves its trace; each life taken leaves a silence that others now carry. The wound belongs to both. Peace is not a ceremony. It is a choice made in the smallest moments: to see, to stay, to listen. When that choice is shared, the land may grow still. Not with conquest, but with recognition.

In an interview with the Rio Ferdinand Presents Podcast, external, the ex-Anfield captain said there had been “five or six really interesting phone calls” since he left Saudi Arabian club Al-Ettifaq in January.

“I haven’t been ready because I haven’t got that [coaching] team set around me. And the timing hasn’t been right,” he explained.

“My daughter’s just had a baby. I’ve just become a grandad. I wasn’t ready. I haven’t got my staff ready.

“So unfortunately, those opportunities have come at the wrong time, if you like.

“But if the right call comes my way, the right club, the right challenge, and I’ve got my people set, which I will have at some point, I’ll take that challenge on because it’s in me.”

Gerrard was in charge at Ibrox from 2018 to 2021, winning the title in his last season.

“I know where I’m strong and I know there’s areas where I need good support and I need special skill sets to make me better and stronger in terms of my staff and my group,” he added.

“I felt like I had that to a tee at Rangers [with Gary McAllister and Michael Beale]. A lot of coach changes at Aston Villa and over in Saudi, I don’t think helped me from a personal point of view.

“I’d love another go at some point.

“I want to change a few things and improve a few things and come back fresh, with a few different people around myself.

“I’d love another couple of challenges doing this and that’s what I’m working on in the background at the moment.

“A few different ideas, a few different people around me.

“Now I’m enjoying family time and doing a lot of things that I haven’t been able to do. But there’s a part of me that still feels that there’s a bit of unfinished business in terms of wanting to go in and face another couple of exciting challenges.”

James Gunn has his own theory about why the movie industry is “dying.”

The filmmaker, screenwriter and co-head of DC Studios contends that the reason for bad movies is Hollywood’s tendency to begin productions before screenplays are complete, he told Rolling Stone in a new interview.

“I do believe that the reason why the movie industry is dying is not because of people not wanting to see movies. It’s not because of home screens getting so good,” Gunn said. “The number one reason is because people are making movies without a finished screenplay.”

That’s why one of his main rules at DC Studios is that movies must have finished scripts before they go into production. In fact, Gunn just scrapped a project because the screenplay wasn’t ready, he said. On the other hand, he described the scripts for the upcoming DC films “Supergirl,” “Lanterns” and “Clayface” as “so f—-ing good.”

Before taking the reins of DC Studios in 2022, Gunn co-wrote and directed three “Guardians of the Galaxy” movies for now-competitor Marvel Studios, which he said has been “killed” by Disney’s directive to increase output.

“We don’t have the mandate to have a certain amount of movies and TV shows every year,” Gunn said of DC Studios. “So we’re going to put out everything that we think is of the highest quality.”

During the interview, Gunn also addressed rumors that Matt Reeves’ sequel to “The Batman,” starring Robert Pattinson, has been axed. The film, which Gunn confirmed is still titled “The Brave and the Bold,” has been delayed a year and is now expected in October 2027.

“That’s the other thing I hear all the time — that ‘Batman Part II’ is canceled. It’s not canceled,” Gunn said. “We don’t have a script. Matt’s slow. Let him take his time. Let him do what he’s doing. God, people are mean. Let him do his thing, man.”

Finishing the scripts for the “The Batman” sequel and “Wonder Woman” are among DC Studios’ top priorities, Gunn noted.

Additionally, Gunn reflected on the 2018 scandal that saw him briefly fired from “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” when tweets resurfaced of him joking about pedophilia and rape. He said without that experience, his script for “Superman” — hitting theaters July 11 — would have been much different.

“That opened the door for me to stop creating so that people would like me. That’s downplaying it — so people would love me,” Gunn said. “I think on some level, everything I had done came from a pleasing place.”

When asked whether he’s worried about ever running out of ideas, Gunn didn’t seem too concerned.

“If I do, then I’ll go raise goats,” he said. “I really am fine. There’s a lot of directors who get worse as they get older, and I don’t wanna do that. Or maybe I do — I don’t know. It’s like, if it runs out — it hasn’t so far. But who knows?”

The Nigerian military’s quest to reclaim the North East from the brutal grip of Boko Haram over the past decade has been a turbulent journey. The region was a tapestry of terror; towns like Baga, Bama, and Gwoza in 2014 and 2015 had become grim reminders of the country’s vulnerabilities. Yet, the Nigerian military, bolstered by regional allies in the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF), wrestled control of these towns, turning them from insurgent safe havens into battle-scarred victories.

The Sambisa Forest Offensive of 2016–2017 was a turning point, a brutal dance through a dense jungle of death, where Boko Haram’s leadership once thrived under a thick green ecological canopy. The military’s seizure of “Camp Zero,” the so-called fortress of terror, amounted to an audacious triumph. Hundreds of insurgents fell, their weapons seized, a testament to the military’s ability to breach even the most fortified sanctuaries of bloodshed.

Though what followed that victory was a cat-and-mouse race between the military, who could dislodge the insurgents, but do not have the numbers to stay back and lay the guard, and Boko Haram who employ a retreat strategy when faced with superior fire, only to return to the areas that the military has abandoned until the next fight.

In the years that followed, from 2019 to 2023, the military turned its focus on ISWAP, a more powerful splinter of Boko Haram, by surgically eliminating a lot of the group’s leaders and dismantling camps that once hummed with the machinery of war. In the North West, Operation Hadarin Daji, and in the North-central, Operations Safe Haven and Whirl Stroke, have pushed organised armed groups into retreat, forcing criminals to burrow deeper into the forests.

Even on the high seas, the navy has scored victories against oil thieves and pirates by destroying illegal refineries. These significant achievements are the result of the tireless efforts of soldiers who are committed to safeguarding Nigeria’s sovereignty; yet, this hard-won ground remains dangerously fragile.

The Dasukigate arms scandal robbed frontline troops of essential gear, turning the fight into a test of sheer will against an enemy armed not only with bullets but also with a government’s betrayal. HumAngle has also documented how corruption and a lack of accountability negatively impacted the welfare of security officials on the frontlines. These soldiers, who have prevented every Nigerian from becoming a refugee, live in some of the most deplorable conditions along with their families. 

Though the military itself didn’t do too well, reports of torture and extrajudicial killings cast long shadows, eroding public confidence and breeding a dangerous cynicism.

Corruption, the most persistent adversary, flourishes. According to a PwC report, if Nigeria’s kleptocratic elites continue to enrich themselves, the country’s GDP could plummet by 37 per cent by 2030. That’s $2,000 ripped from every Nigerian’s pocket, a future mortgaged by greed.

Nigeria has already lost over $550 billion to corruption since 1960, says the World Justice Project. In 2019 alone, Nigerians paid ₦675 billion in bribes. The theft of these monumental figures is as destructive as the acts of terrorism committed against innocent citizens by Boko Haram and other similar groups.

The adaptive enemy

Meanwhile, the insurgents continue to adapt and evolve, capitalising on the governance vacuum. Driven from urban centres, they’ve slithered into rural areas, away from the spotlights of many news platforms, to rule over these populations. The borders, a frayed edge where fighters dart in and out, are also important. Weapons from Libya’s collapse and Mali’s war zones bolster them. These ungoverned spaces are the oxygen that fuels the fires of terrorism across Nigeria.

In many rural communities, the only governance they have known is by a brutal armed group that leaves them with only one option: comply or die.

The free-for-all ransom economy 

Between May 2023 and April 2024, an estimated 2.2 million people were kidnapped across Nigeria, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). During this period, families and communities paid roughly ₦2.2 trillion in ransoms. The North West accounted for the highest payments, totalling ₦1.2 trillion, while the South-East recorded the lowest, with ₦85.4 billion. Rural areas bore the brunt of these abductions, with 1,668,104 reported cases compared to 567,850 in urban centres.

These ransom figures are conservative estimates, reflecting less than half of the total money that changes hands between families and non-state actors in grisly exchanges. Accurate data is scarce because there is no functional system in place to prevent abductions or to track and regulate ransom payments. Despite efforts to curb kidnappings, families, driven by desperation and love, often pay ransoms directly to secure the release of their loved ones.

The so-called “ransom economy” is not only vibrant and fast-growing but also an unchecked, chaotic, and lucrative sector that operates without oversight. This lack of regulation fuels the expansion of kidnappings and enables militant groups and criminal gangs to thrive. Given the military’s critical role in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency efforts, it is imperative that it track every ransom payment, every penny that ends up in the hands of its adversaries.

A dedicated, trained, and multi-agency unit should be established to track and monitor every ransom transaction. This unit must ensure that every negotiation is carefully aligned with the broader military and counterinsurgency strategy to avoid inadvertently strengthening the enemy or undermining ongoing security operations.

The accountability problem

Pre-trial detainees languish in Nigeria’s overcrowded cells, their fate suspended in a limbo that mocks the very notion of justice. High-profile cases of notorious terrorists and violent criminals, especially those who once sowed terror and death, remain unresolved, further deepening public despair. Worse still, many of these fighters are offered amnesty deals, returning to communities they once ravaged, where their victims now live with trauma and betrayal.

The Knifar Movement is a stirring example. HumAngle has tirelessly documented the plight of women whose husbands were whisked away by the military under vague suspicions of insurgency, many of them never to be seen or heard from again. Their demands for truth and justice highlight the release of a thousand of them with no compensation and further create a system that prides itself on “winning the war”, yet cannot even account for those it detains in the name of that victory.

Meanwhile, in places like Giwa Barracks in Maiduguri, disturbing allegations of torture and extrajudicial killings fester in the shadows. Human rights groups have decried the treatment of detainees, where beatings, starvation, and summary executions appear to be the grim tools of interrogation, a chilling echo of the very brutality the military claims to fight.

A broken justice system

Beyond the barracks, justice in rural Nigeria is too often a distant rumour. Communal disputes and cattle rustling, particularly in the North-central and North West regions, have become chronic afflictions. Villagers watch, disillusioned, as security forces fail to resolve their grievances. In the absence of real justice, people turn to self-help: vigilante groups rise from the ashes of neglect, meting out their brand of “law” with machetes and hunting rifles. 

The Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA) of 2015 was meant to reform these dismal realities — to inject some semblance of speed and fairness into a system that moves with all the urgency of a snail in a marathon. Yet, despite its lofty promises, the ACJA has struggled to take root, hampered by state-level inertia and a persistent culture of impunity.

In this climate, the real business of justice is still little more than a distant ideal. Without meaningful reform, these injustices will continue to fester, infecting every corner of the nation’s already fragile peace.

A fragile peace — and a stark choice

Nigeria’s National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, reported that military and intelligence operations have significantly advanced counter-terrorism efforts, killing 13,543 insurgents and criminals nationwide over the past two years. Ribadu added that at least 124,408 insurgents and their families have surrendered and are now in the government’s deradicalisation and reintegration program. 

The military works hard to recapture towns and forests, but fostering trust within the people remains a gap. Unfortunately, victory on the battlefield holds minimal significance if young people perceive their future solely through the lens of violence, if their sole option is to don a uniform, jeopardise their lives, and return to communities still plagued by hunger, fear, and injustice.

At the heart of this cycle lies a grim truth: bad governance and corruption are not just the enemies of good policy or a good fighting military force; they’re the quiet architects of endless war. 

The final battle, it seems, is not in Sambisa or the Lake Chad islands. The real enemies are corruption, indifference, and political expediency, all conspiring in the echoing halls of Abuja to mock every military triumph. Young men and women in uniform are traumatised and are merely pawns in an endless battle.

Without accountability at all levels, from the barracks to the boardrooms of government, these military victories risk being as fleeting as they are bloody, quickly undone by the same rot that has haunted Nigeria’s past. The choice, then, is stark: to demand more from those in power or to continue burying the hopes of a generation under the rubble of bad governance.

Developers who leave housing sites unfinished for years could see their land handed over to local councils under new rules aimed at getting new homes built faster.

Under government plans, housebuilders will have to commit to delivery time frames before they get planning permission, and will also have to submit annual reports to councils showing their progress.

The new rules form part of the government’s plan to address the housing crisis, with 1.5 million new homes in England by 2029.

The Conservative Party said it supported measures to speed up housebuilding, but accused the government of “adding so many burdens on builders” that its housing targets “already seem like a distant memory”.

As well as losing their land, the government said housebuilders who repeatedly fail to hit their targets could also be denied future permissions.

They may also face penalties worth thousands of pounds per unbuilt home, paid directly to local planning authorities.

Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner said the government was continuing to back “the builders not the blockers”, adding it was “time for developers to roll up their sleeves and play their part”.

Rayner, who also serves as housing secretary, said: “We’re going even further to get the homes we need. No more sites with planning permission gathering dust for decades while a generation struggle to get on the housing ladder.”

A Planning Reform Working Paper setting out the proposals will be published on Sunday.

Housing charity Shelter welcomed the plans.

Alicia Walker, the charity’s assistant director of advocacy and activism, said developers “drag their heels” when housebuilding “to keep prices high and make bigger profits”.

She accused them of “often dodging their responsibility to build social housing altogether”.

“Meanwhile, thousands of families who are bearing the brunt of the housing emergency, homeless in temporary accommodation or crushed by skyrocketing rents, cannot afford to wait.”

Ms Walker also said that while building housing faster was important, “the only way to end the housing emergency for good is to get councils and housing associations building social housing as well”.

The government says that 1.3 million families are on social housing waiting lists, while a record number – including 160,000 children – are in temporary accommodation. Millions of people also cannot afford to buy their first home.

The government’s aim is for 370,000 new homes to be built in England every year to hit its promise of 1.5 million by 2029. To aid this, local authorities are being told to give developers permission to build.

Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) figures released in March suggested housebuilding would fall short of the 1.5 million target, even with planning reforms previously outlined in the Spring Statement.

The government argued that further reforms not reflected in the OBR forecast would help it reach the number.

Separate OBR figures previously showed housebuilding was set to hit a 40-year high and boost the economy by £6.8bn by 2029.

The government said large housing developments, producing more than 2,000 homes, can take at least 14 years to build, but those with more affordable homes can be built twice as fast.

It said it would therefore test a new requirement for large developments to be mixed tenure – meaning a range of housing options – by default in an effort to build homes, including more affordable homes, quicker.

Shadow housing secretary Kevin Hollinrake claimed that “many hardworking Brits will be shut out of the housing market forever” as “Labour’s open door border policy” meant “many of these houses will end up going to migrants”.

He added: “In the same week that Angela Rayner has been caught red-handed plotting to raise everyone’s taxes, it’s clear she doesn’t have the interests of working people at heart.”