After WWI The Allied Powers Divided the Land into 22 States
(21 Arab States and 1 Jewish State)
Israel for the past almost 2,000 years, since the destruction of Jewish Temple and sovereignty and the expulsion of most of its indigenous people, it remained an occupied and colonized outpost in the territory of many global and regional empires.
The re-establishment of the Jewish State. What needs to be appreciated is that Fifty-One member countries — the entire League of Nations — unanimously declared on July 24, 1922, “Whereas recognition has been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country”. In other words, as Winston Churchill informed in June, 1922, “It is essential that it [the Jewish people] should know that it is in Palestine as of right and not on sufferance”. This response to the Arab assertion that they are being penalized for the Holocaust sins of others [Germans, Poles etc.] extends well beyond rhetoric.
It is equally important to point out that political rights to self-determination as a polity for Arabs, was guaranteed by the same League of Nations in four other mandates — in Lebanon and Syria [The French Mandate], Iraq, and later Trans-Jordan [The British Mandate].
A summary of the key points issued at the conclusion of the commemoration follows:
Reaffirming the importance of the San Remo Resolution of April 25, 1920 — which included the Balfour declaration in its entirety — in shaping the map of the modern Middle East, as agreed upon by the Supreme Council of the principal Allied Powers [Britain, France, Italy, Japan, and the United States acting as an observer], and later approved unanimously by the League of nations; the resolution remains irrevocable, legally binding and valid to this day.
Emphasizing that the San Remo Resolution of 1920 recognized the exclusive national Jewish rights to the Land of Israel under international law, on the strength of the historical connection of the Jewish people to the territory previously known as Palestine.
Recalling that such a seminal event as the San Remo Conference of 1920 has been forgotten or ignored by the community of nations, and that the rights it conferred upon the Jewish people have been unlawfully dismissed, curtailed and denied.
Asserting that a just and lasting peace, leading to the acceptance of secure and recognized borders between all States in the region, can only be achieved by recognizing the long established rights of the Jewish people under international law.
The outcome of the San Remo declaration gave birth to the “Mandate for Palestine”, an historical League of Nations document that laid down the Jewish legal right to settle anywhere in western Palestine, 10,000 square miles, the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
Any attempt to negate the Jewish people’s right to Palestine-Eretz Israel, and to deny them access and control over the area designated for the Jewish people by the League of Nations is a serious infringement of international law.
Dr. Jacques Gauthier,[Note 2] a practicing international lawyer and scholar was one of many significant participants in the 90th anniversary conference. He is the author of “Whose Jerusalem is it? Exploring Sovereignty Claims to an Ancient City”. He is a Canadian Lawyer, who recently received a PhD following twenty years of research on the legal status of Jerusalem and the writing of the given dissertation of some 1300 pages with 3000 footnotes. He had to present his thesis to a panel of two leading international lawyers and one world famous Jewish historian. The reason for so many footnotes was to enable him to defend his thesis from intense attack by one of the lawyers who happened to be a Jewish anti-Zionist and who had represented the PA on numerous occasions. Gauthier is not Jewish. Although the work of Dr. Gauthier is focused on Jerusalem, much of what it contains is applicable to all of the Land of Israel. Ted Belman has provided a superb summation of the factual thesis as presented below:
The Balfour Declaration of 1917 started the whole process but it didn’t create international legal rights.
The San Remo decision made on 25 April 1920, incorporated the Balfour Declaration of 1917[2] and Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations. It was the basic decision upon which the Mandate for Palestine was constructed. While the decision made at San Remo created the Palestine Mandate de facto, the mandate document signed by Great Britain as the Mandatory and the League of Nations made it de jure. It thus became a binding treaty in international law.
The High Contracting Parties agree to entrust, by application of the provisions of Article 22, the administration of Palestine, within such boundaries as may be determined by the Principal Allied Powers, to a Mandatory, to be selected by the said Powers. The Mandatory will be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 8, 1917, by the British Government, and adopted by the other Allied Powers, in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, 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.
He pointed out that the Arabs weren’t even mentioned but that civil and religious rights only were accorded other inhabitants . This thereby excludes political rights.
Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations provides for the creation of mandates.
To those colonies and territories which as a consequence of the late war have ceased to be under the sovereignty of the States which formerly governed them and which are inhabited by peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world, there should be applied the principle that the well-being and development of such peoples form a sacred trust of civilization and that securities for the performance of this trust should be embodied in this Covenant.
The legal significance here is that “the well-being and development of such peoples form a sacred trust of civilization”. The Mandatory Power was the trustee of that trust.
The Palestine Mandate of the League of Nations, included the following significant recital,
“Whereas recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country;
This had never happened before in history. Palestine was to be held for the Jewish people wherever they lived. No such recognition had ever been according to anyone else, anywhere, ever.
ART. 2. The Mandatory shall be responsible for placing the country under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home, as laid down in the preamble, and the development of self-governing institutions, and also for safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion.
Thus the operative clause specifically referred to the preamble and reiterated that there were no political rights for other inhabitants.
ART. 5. The Mandatory shall be responsible for seeing that no Palestine territory shall be ceded or leased to, or in any way placed under the control of the Government of any foreign Power.
ART. 6. The Administration of Palestine, while ensuring that the rights and position of other sections of the population are not prejudiced, shall facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable conditions and shall encourage, in co-operation with the Jewish agency referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes.
The United Nations took over from the failed League of Nations in 1945 and its Charter included
Article: 80 .. nothing in this Chapter shall be construed in or of itself to alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments to which Members of the United Nations may respectively be parties.
Thus the Palestine Mandate continued without change.
In 1947, the General Assembly of the UN passed Res 181 which became known as the Partition Plan pursuant to which both Jews and Arabs could announce their state.
(21 Arab States and 1 Jewish State)
Israel for the past almost 2,000 years, since the destruction of Jewish Temple and sovereignty and the expulsion of most of its indigenous people, it remained an occupied and colonized outpost in the territory of many global and regional empires.
The re-establishment of the Jewish State. What needs to be appreciated is that Fifty-One member countries — the entire League of Nations — unanimously declared on July 24, 1922, “Whereas recognition has been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country”. In other words, as Winston Churchill informed in June, 1922, “It is essential that it [the Jewish people] should know that it is in Palestine as of right and not on sufferance”. This response to the Arab assertion that they are being penalized for the Holocaust sins of others [Germans, Poles etc.] extends well beyond rhetoric.
It is equally important to point out that political rights to self-determination as a polity for Arabs, was guaranteed by the same League of Nations in four other mandates — in Lebanon and Syria [The French Mandate], Iraq, and later Trans-Jordan [The British Mandate].
A summary of the key points issued at the conclusion of the commemoration follows:
Reaffirming the importance of the San Remo Resolution of April 25, 1920 — which included the Balfour declaration in its entirety — in shaping the map of the modern Middle East, as agreed upon by the Supreme Council of the principal Allied Powers [Britain, France, Italy, Japan, and the United States acting as an observer], and later approved unanimously by the League of nations; the resolution remains irrevocable, legally binding and valid to this day.
Emphasizing that the San Remo Resolution of 1920 recognized the exclusive national Jewish rights to the Land of Israel under international law, on the strength of the historical connection of the Jewish people to the territory previously known as Palestine.
Recalling that such a seminal event as the San Remo Conference of 1920 has been forgotten or ignored by the community of nations, and that the rights it conferred upon the Jewish people have been unlawfully dismissed, curtailed and denied.
Asserting that a just and lasting peace, leading to the acceptance of secure and recognized borders between all States in the region, can only be achieved by recognizing the long established rights of the Jewish people under international law.
The outcome of the San Remo declaration gave birth to the “Mandate for Palestine”, an historical League of Nations document that laid down the Jewish legal right to settle anywhere in western Palestine, 10,000 square miles, the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
Any attempt to negate the Jewish people’s right to Palestine-Eretz Israel, and to deny them access and control over the area designated for the Jewish people by the League of Nations is a serious infringement of international law.
Dr. Jacques Gauthier,[Note 2] a practicing international lawyer and scholar was one of many significant participants in the 90th anniversary conference. He is the author of “Whose Jerusalem is it? Exploring Sovereignty Claims to an Ancient City”. He is a Canadian Lawyer, who recently received a PhD following twenty years of research on the legal status of Jerusalem and the writing of the given dissertation of some 1300 pages with 3000 footnotes. He had to present his thesis to a panel of two leading international lawyers and one world famous Jewish historian. The reason for so many footnotes was to enable him to defend his thesis from intense attack by one of the lawyers who happened to be a Jewish anti-Zionist and who had represented the PA on numerous occasions. Gauthier is not Jewish. Although the work of Dr. Gauthier is focused on Jerusalem, much of what it contains is applicable to all of the Land of Israel. Ted Belman has provided a superb summation of the factual thesis as presented below:
The Balfour Declaration of 1917 started the whole process but it didn’t create international legal rights.
The San Remo decision made on 25 April 1920, incorporated the Balfour Declaration of 1917[2] and Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations. It was the basic decision upon which the Mandate for Palestine was constructed. While the decision made at San Remo created the Palestine Mandate de facto, the mandate document signed by Great Britain as the Mandatory and the League of Nations made it de jure. It thus became a binding treaty in international law.
The High Contracting Parties agree to entrust, by application of the provisions of Article 22, the administration of Palestine, within such boundaries as may be determined by the Principal Allied Powers, to a Mandatory, to be selected by the said Powers. The Mandatory will be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 8, 1917, by the British Government, and adopted by the other Allied Powers, in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, 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.
He pointed out that the Arabs weren’t even mentioned but that civil and religious rights only were accorded other inhabitants . This thereby excludes political rights.
Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations provides for the creation of mandates.
To those colonies and territories which as a consequence of the late war have ceased to be under the sovereignty of the States which formerly governed them and which are inhabited by peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world, there should be applied the principle that the well-being and development of such peoples form a sacred trust of civilization and that securities for the performance of this trust should be embodied in this Covenant.
The legal significance here is that “the well-being and development of such peoples form a sacred trust of civilization”. The Mandatory Power was the trustee of that trust.
The Palestine Mandate of the League of Nations, included the following significant recital,
“Whereas recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country;
This had never happened before in history. Palestine was to be held for the Jewish people wherever they lived. No such recognition had ever been according to anyone else, anywhere, ever.
ART. 2. The Mandatory shall be responsible for placing the country under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home, as laid down in the preamble, and the development of self-governing institutions, and also for safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion.
Thus the operative clause specifically referred to the preamble and reiterated that there were no political rights for other inhabitants.
ART. 5. The Mandatory shall be responsible for seeing that no Palestine territory shall be ceded or leased to, or in any way placed under the control of the Government of any foreign Power.
ART. 6. The Administration of Palestine, while ensuring that the rights and position of other sections of the population are not prejudiced, shall facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable conditions and shall encourage, in co-operation with the Jewish agency referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes.
The United Nations took over from the failed League of Nations in 1945 and its Charter included
Article: 80 .. nothing in this Chapter shall be construed in or of itself to alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments to which Members of the United Nations may respectively be parties.
Thus the Palestine Mandate continued without change.
In 1947, the General Assembly of the UN passed Res 181 which became known as the Partition Plan pursuant to which both Jews and Arabs could announce their state.
First it must be noted that the Charter of the UN specifically gave no power to the General Assembly because that would infringe on the sovereign power of individual members. So the GA could recommend only. Secondly, this recommendation was in violation of the terms of the Mandate. See Art 5 above.
This resolution also provided for a Special Regime for Jerusalem which had the following defined boundaries,
A. SPECIAL REGIME. The City of Jerusalem shall be established as a corpus separatum under a special international regime and shall be administered by the United Nations. The Trusteeship Council shall be designated to discharge the responsibilities of the Administering Authority on behalf of the United Nations.
B. BOUNDARIES OF THE CITY. The City of Jerusalem shall include the present municipality of Jerusalem plus the surrounding villages and towns, the most eastern of which shall be Abu Dis; the most southern, Bethlehem; the most western, ‘Ein Karim (including also the built-up area of Motsa); and the most northern Shu’fat, as indicated on the attached sketch-map (annex B).
But this regime was to be limited in time. It was not to be an “international city” for all time as we have been lead to believe.
The Statute elaborated by the Trusteeship Council
The aforementioned principles shall come into force not later than 1 October 1948. It shall remain in force in the first instance for a period of ten years, unless the Trusteeship Council finds it necessary to undertake a re-examination of these provisions at an earlier date. After the expiration of this period the whole scheme shall be subject to examination by the Trusteeship Council in the light of experience acquired with its functioning. The residents the City shall be then free to express by means of a referendum their wishes as to possible modifications of regime of the City.
This provision for a referendum was of critical importance to the acceptance of Res 181 by Ben Gurion. He knew that the Jews were in a majority within these boundaries and would be in 10 years when the referendum was to be held. Thus he was confident that Jerusalem would return to Jewish hands.
One should realize that the disposition of this area was to be determined not by Israel but by the residents of Jerusalem so defined. Currently the Jews have a 2:1 majority there.
Needless to say that after the Armistice Agreement of ’49, the Jordanians, who were in control of Jerusalem violated every provision of this resolution which among other things, specified respect for holy places. The referendum never took place.
After the ’67 war in which Israel regained the land to the Jordan including Jerusalem, Res 242 of the Security Council was passed authorizing Israel to remain in possession of all the land until they had “secure and recognized boundaries”. It did not require Israel to withdraw from all of the territories and it was silent on Jerusalem.
This resolution also provided for a Special Regime for Jerusalem which had the following defined boundaries,
A. SPECIAL REGIME. The City of Jerusalem shall be established as a corpus separatum under a special international regime and shall be administered by the United Nations. The Trusteeship Council shall be designated to discharge the responsibilities of the Administering Authority on behalf of the United Nations.
B. BOUNDARIES OF THE CITY. The City of Jerusalem shall include the present municipality of Jerusalem plus the surrounding villages and towns, the most eastern of which shall be Abu Dis; the most southern, Bethlehem; the most western, ‘Ein Karim (including also the built-up area of Motsa); and the most northern Shu’fat, as indicated on the attached sketch-map (annex B).
But this regime was to be limited in time. It was not to be an “international city” for all time as we have been lead to believe.
The Statute elaborated by the Trusteeship Council
The aforementioned principles shall come into force not later than 1 October 1948. It shall remain in force in the first instance for a period of ten years, unless the Trusteeship Council finds it necessary to undertake a re-examination of these provisions at an earlier date. After the expiration of this period the whole scheme shall be subject to examination by the Trusteeship Council in the light of experience acquired with its functioning. The residents the City shall be then free to express by means of a referendum their wishes as to possible modifications of regime of the City.
This provision for a referendum was of critical importance to the acceptance of Res 181 by Ben Gurion. He knew that the Jews were in a majority within these boundaries and would be in 10 years when the referendum was to be held. Thus he was confident that Jerusalem would return to Jewish hands.
One should realize that the disposition of this area was to be determined not by Israel but by the residents of Jerusalem so defined. Currently the Jews have a 2:1 majority there.
Needless to say that after the Armistice Agreement of ’49, the Jordanians, who were in control of Jerusalem violated every provision of this resolution which among other things, specified respect for holy places. The referendum never took place.
After the ’67 war in which Israel regained the land to the Jordan including Jerusalem, Res 242 of the Security Council was passed authorizing Israel to remain in possession of all the land until they had “secure and recognized boundaries”. It did not require Israel to withdraw from all of the territories and it was silent on Jerusalem.
No comments:
Post a Comment