Palestinian officials are planning to sue Britain over the Balfour Declaration of 1917 which laid out a framework for the future state of Israel.

The lawsuit will be filed in an international court, according to Riyad al-Maliki, the Palestinian foreign minister.

Mr al-Maliki blamed the document for mass Jewish immigration to British Mandate Palestine "at the expense of our Palestinian people".

Israeli independence was declared in 1948, a year after the mandate expired.

Speaking to the Arab League summit in Mauritania this week, Mr al-Maliki went on to say the UK was therefore responsible for all “Israeli crimes” since 1948. He was talking on behalf of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who was unable to attend because of the recent death of his brother.

No further details of the lawsuit were given, but the Palestinian Wafa news agency reported Mr al-Maliki as saying: "Nearly a century has passed since the issuance of the Balfour Declaration in 1917.

"And based on this ill-omened promise hundreds of thousands of Jews were moved from Europe and elsewhere to Palestine at the expense of our Palestinian people whose parents and grandparents had lived for thousands of years on the soil of their homeland."

He added: "We request that the Secretary General of the Arab League assist us in prosecuting the British government for publishing the Balfour Declaration which caused this catastrophe against the Palestinian people.”

The Balfour Declaration was written by British Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour and sent to leading British Jew, Walter Rothschild.

The text of the statement read: "His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."

There has been no official response from the British government.

Gilad Erdan, Israeli public security minister, told the Haaretz newspaper that the aim of the announcement was to “de-legitimise Israel”

"Palestinian leaders haven't been interested in peace for some time already," he added.

Paul Charney, the chairman of the Zionist Federation, condemned Mr Abbas for threatening legal action.

He said: “As the official recipients of the Balfour Declaration, the Zionist Federation is saddened by the news that Mahmoud Abbas plans to sue the British Government on the 100 year anniversary of this seminal document."

He added that the Palestinian leader seemed again "to be more interested in denigrating the creation of a Jewish state than supporting the creation of a Palestinian one; more concerned with vacuous gestures than concrete proposals; more committed to unilateral actions that drive the two sides apart than direct negotiations that would bring them together.

"If he really wants to hold someone to account for the lack of a Palestinian state, perhaps he should sue his Arab co-nationalists who rejected the UN Partition Plan that would have created one in 1947.”