The Mandate system was designed to help states that had been subject to Ottoman occupation for 400 years, to become independent

The Mandate system was designed to help states that had been subject to Ottoman occupation for 400 years, to become independent after they learned democratic principles, formed political parties and were able to self govern.
An exception was the Mandate for Israel where the Jewish People who had been driven out of Palestine and dispersed by the Romans, were recognized as the owners of the political rights. There the tacit standard for ending the
Mandate was the attainment of a Jewish population majority in the area they were to govern and their capability to exercise sovereignty. [41 --43] Before enacting the Partition Resolution of 1947, the UN in effect found the Jews were capable of exercising sovereignty. The resolution itself was only a failed recommendation and the partition had no continuing force and effect. When the trustee for the Jews, Britain, abandoned its trust in May, 1948, the beneficiary of the trust, World Jewry, was the logical entity to get legal dominion of the political rights that theretofore had been held in trust for the Jewish people. Had the UN thought the Jews were still incapable of the exercise of sovereignty, in 1948 they would have appointed another trustee. In any event, just three years later, by 1950 the Jews had attained a majority of the population of the area within the Armistice line. Politics and the Jewish political rights to Palestine Under the left wing Labor government, Israel has never directly made a claim under the political or national rights that its principal, World Jewry, had under International Law that had been recognized, first by the Principal War Powers in 1920, and then by states. Even with the change of Paragraph 25 in violation of the treaties, suspending the right of the Jews to settle in East Palestine - East of the Jordan river, which is now called Jordan, which is the country for the Arabs, it took away 3/4 of the land allocated to the Jewish people there remained for World Jewry a right to Palestine west of the Jordan approved by the 51 countries in the League of Nations and by the US, who had declined membership — a total of 52 countries. But the thrust of the Labor Government claim was not the San Remo Agreement confirmed by the 1920 Treaty of Sevres and Lausanne which allocated Palestine as the Jewish State, but under facts occurring in 1948 and thereafter. The Israeli Government said that Jordan's aggression in 1948 resulted in Jordan never obtaining sovereignty over Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem. So when in 1967 in a defensive war, it drove the Jordanians out of that area, it was thereafter not engaged in a belligerent occupation. Jordan was not a legitimate sovereign but was illegally occupying an area that was disputed and in which the Jews had the better claim. The Government of Israel never directly made the claim based on the competing Arab and Jewish claims made at the Paris Peace talks and the disposition of them in the Treaty of Sevres, the San Remo Resolution and the Mandate for Palestine. It confirmed it in Article 95. **

Now, Douglas Feith, Jacques Gauthier, Howard Grief, Salomon Benzimra, Cynthia Wallace, former Israel Supreme Court Justice Levy and his two distinguished colleagues, Alan Baker, Tshia Shapira, the late Julius Stone and I are directly making that claim. By now it should be perfectly clear that the claim is not based on the UN General Assembly partition resolution of 1947, nor is it based only on facts occurring in 1948 and thereafter. It is based on facts commencing as early as 1917 when the British adopted its Balfour policy and it became International Law on the agreement of the Principal War Powers at San Remo in 1920 after consideration of both the claims of the Arabs and that of the Jews to the political and or national rights to Palestine-Israel. It was confirmed by the League's action on at least Palestine-Israel West of the Jordan River by the 51 nations that were its members. It is based on the presentation of the competing claims of the Arabs and Jews submitted to the Principal War Powers at the Paris 43 Peace Conference and the adjudication and ruling on those claims at San Remo in detail in the order that was called the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine for the Jewish people. It is based on the legal doctrines of "acquired rights" and "estoppel" that prohibits any state from denying what it previously admitted or recognized in a treaty or other international agreement. It is based on Article 80 of the UN Charter that preserves political rights that had been recognized by the United States and Principal Allied Powers in the 1920s.

While Chaim Weizmann and some of the Zionist Organization had been willing to give up those rights, many had never agreed to it and split off into another organization headed by Jabotinsky. Even despite accepting the later loss of trans-Jordan, Chaim Weizmann, instrumental in obtaining the Balfour Declaration, was delighted with what was left. Gauthier has paraphrased [37] Weizmann's reactions to the San Remo decision, which gave Jews their rights to Palestine-Israel under international law: "This is the most momentous political event in the whole history of the Zionist movement, and it's no exaggeration to say, in the whole history of our people since the Exile." What importance do the Arabs place on the Balfour Declaration? A reviewer of "The Iron Cage: The Story of the Arab-Palestinian Struggle for Statehood" [38] a book by Columbia Professor Rashid Khalidi who formerly was a spokesman for the PLO, says "Khalidi has his own set of external culprits, beyond the blame he is willing to accept for the Arabs for the nakba or catastrophe as they call it." The very first of the three listed is "British colonial 44 masters like Lord Balfour, who refused to recognize the national [political] rights of non--Jews; ..." [39] What then is the rule under International Law? It is "There is no legal claim to national self--determination for Palestinian Arabs west of the Jordan River other than as peaceful citizens in a democratic structure covering the area as a whole." [40]
Israel's Legitimacy in Law and History, note #12 supra, pp. 55,56.

**Treaty of Sevres 1920

ARTICLE 95.

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 Balfour declaration originally made on November 2, 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 and grant exclusive political rights in Palestine to the Jewish people.

The Mandatory undertakes to appoint as soon as possible a special Commission to study and regulate all questions and claims relating to the different religious communities. In the composition of this Commission the religious interests concerned will be taken into account. The Chairman of the Commission will be appointed by the Council of the League of Nations.