A pro-Palestinian group took two sculptures of Israel’s first president from a University of Great Britain in a protest marking the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, with police confirming on Sunday they were investigating reports of a break-in.

“Today, Palestine Action marked 107 years since the Balfour Declaration by removing two sculptures of Israel’s first president, Chaim Weizmann, from its shop window at the University of Manchester,” the protest group said in a press release.

Greater Manchester Police said AFP in a statement that it received a report of a burglary at the university in northwest England at around 11.55pm (2355 GMT) on Friday.

In The Balfour DeclarationBritish Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour outlined controversial plans to form “a national home for the Jewish people” in a 1917 letter to Walter Rothschild, a British politician and proponent of a Jewish homeland in Palestine .

The declaration is seen as a significant moment in the run-up to the creation of Israel in 1948, which led to the forced displacement and ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland – in an event called the Nakba, or catastrophe.

The letter was approved and published by the government on November 2, 1917.

Many descendants of the 1948 Palestinian refugees live in Gaza, currently under an Israeli military attack that has been ongoing for over a year.

At least 43,341 have been killed since October 7 last year, with almost the entire population displaced. The Balfour Declaration was linked to the ongoing atrocities in the Gaza Strip, with experts drawing parallels between the two events.

Palestine Action also sprayed the London office of the pro-Israel Jewish National Fund (JNF) with red paint and staged a similar protest at the headquarters of the Britain Israel Research and Communications Center (BICOM) lobby group in London.

He also worked with students at the University of Cambridge, where Balfour was educated, to spray paint the university’s Institute of Manufacturing and Senate House in protest of the event, which dates back more than 100 years.

Over the years, The Palestinians have called on the UK to apologize for the Balfour Declaration.