Monday, June 15, 2015

THE 1920 SAN REMO CONFERENCE and Israel's borders


THE 1920 SAN REMO CONFERENCE and Israel's borders
A meeting to deal specifically with the unfinished business of
Palestine,
which was to be seen as an extension of the Paris Peace Conference was commenced on
April 19, 1920 in San Remo, Italy (confirmed by the 1920 Treaty of Sevres). It was attended by the four Principal Allied Powers of World War I who were represented by the prime ministers of Britain (David Lloyd George), France (Alexandre Millerand) and Italy (Francesco Nitti) and by Japan's Ambassador K.
Matsui. The San Remo Resolution adopted on
April 25, 1920 incorporated the
Balfour Declaration of 1917 issued by the British government. The
San Remo
resolution and Article 22 of the Covenant of the
League of Nations, which was adopted at the Paris Peace Conference on April 28, 1919, were the basic documents upon which the British Mandate for the stewardship of Palestine was constructed. It was at San Remo that the Balfour Declaration went from being just a statement of British foreign policy to international law.
The British Mandate was fully implemented upon approval by the Council of the
League of Nations on September 22, 1922. However, when the parties left
San Remo in April 1919 the future state of Israel was to be made up of what now
constitutes the
Kingdom of Jordan, as well as all the land West of the Jordan River. After September 22, 1922 what is now the Kingdom of Jordan was taken away from Palestine and became another Arab nation. This was the beginning of the trend still operative today that Israel needs to give up more land in order to be promised peace. The reality is that every time Israel gives up land, she experiences even less peace.
THE MANDATE
On July 1, 1920 the British military administration, which had controlled
Palestine since December 1917, was replaced by a British civil administration
covering all of Palestine on both sides of the Jordan River, with its headquarters in
Jerusalem. The Mandate instructed
Great Britain that she would oversee Palestine with the goal of the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. At the time of the issuance of the Mandate, it was believed that there were not enough Jews in the land to establish a nation. Thus, Great Britain was to oversee the immigration of Jews to the land and when there were enough then Palestine would become the national homeland for the Jewish people. However, normally, Britain obstructed the goal of developing a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
As the
League of Nations was dissolved in 1946, the United Nations, which was
founded in 1945, began to deal with the
Palestine issue. The UN General
Assembly passed a Partition Resolution (Resolution 181) on
November 29, 147. This UN resolution adopted the necessary legal status from the League of Nations
needed for
Israel to declare her independence on May 14, 1948. Under 181, the land of Palestine Page was partitioned again and another part of Palestine was given to the Arabs (in violation of International Treaties) and the rest was given to Israel, except Jerusalem was to become an international city. Gauthier tells us, “The special international regime for the corpus separatum which was to be established on or prior to October 1, 1948 was to remain in force for a period of ten years only.
At the end of that period, ‘the residents of the City shall be . . . free to express by
means of a referendum their wishes as to possible modifications of the regime of the
City.’”4 The Arabs rejected resolution 181 and attacked the Jews resulting in a larger
land area for Israel (but still short of the original borders as agreed upon by international treaties) when the fighting stopped in 1949.
Israel’s war for independence also prevented Jerusalem from becoming an international city. The promised election by October 1959 to determine to whom Jerusalem belonged never took place. There is no doubt that the city would have voted for Israel if an election had taken place. Thus, all of the legal rights to the Old City of Jerusalem belong to Israel and the Jews.
CONCLUSION
Gauthier’s work, which I have only provided a glimpse into, demonstrates
that both the
land of Israel and the Old City of Jerusalem belong to Israel and the
Jews based upon the standards of international law. When commentators appear on the media today and start talking about how
Israel is violating international law
with their occupation, they are absolutely without any basis in the truth. These
advocates for the Arab occupation of Jewish land have no legal basis to stand. However, that does not seem to bother them since they are lawless and many hope through jihad to take over
Israel. Most of these spokesmen really do not care about the law, international or otherwise.
The facts are that both the Bible and even international law says that the
land of Israel and Jerusalem belong to the Jewish people. The fact that many
within the international community know this information means nothing. Today the
Gentile nations are in an uproar, while increasingly clamoring for the
extermination of the nation and people of
Israel (Just like in WW2 when over 6 million Jews were exterminated and the World just watched and some even helped advance the extermination of the Jews . The World did not object when the Arab nations expelled over a million Jewish families from their countries, Jews who lived in those Arab countries for over 2,200 years, and made the Jews refugees, while confiscating all their assets). Yet, the hand of God’s providence has restored His people to their land while still primarily in unbelief. We increasingly see the lawless attitudes of the nations constantly on display as they certainly do not care about God’s Word, nor do they heed the clear mandates of man made international law. So it will be in the end, as at the beginning and throughout her history, that Israel will have to be saved by the actual hand of God as He interrupts history in order to save His people.
Today’s hatred toward
Israel is just a warm-up for the real heat of the furnace of the
tribulation, from which God will redeem the nation of
Israel through the coming of Messiah.
Since mankind does not recognize God and His law, nevertheless, He will impose
it upon humanity one day. Maranatha!

As Professor Stephen Schwebel, former judge on the Hague's International Court of Justice notes:

The Arab-Palestinian claim to sovereignty over east
Jerusalem under the principle of self-determination of peoples cannot supersede the Jewish right to self-determination in Jerusalem. While Arabs constituted an ethnic majority only in the artificial entity of "East Jerusalem" created by Jordan's illegal division of the city, the armistice lines forming this artificial entity were never intended to determine the borders of, or political sovereignty over, the city. Moreover, Jews constituted the majority ethnic group in unified Jerusalem both in the century before Jordan's invasion, and since 1967 (the exception being during Jordan's illegal occupation).

Sir Elihu Lauterpacht, an international legal expert, scholar and director emeritus of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law at the
University of Cambridge, details the legal justification for Israel's sovereignty in east Jerusalem. According to the scholar, "Jordan's occupation of the Old City–and indeed of the whole of the area west of the Jordan river entirely lacked legal justification" and was simply a "de facto occupation protected by the Armistice Agreement." This occupation ended as a result of "legitimate measures" of self defense by Israel, thereby opening the way for Israel as "a lawful occupant" to fill a sovereignty vacuum left by Britain's withdrawal from the territory in 1948.

furthermore:

A state acting in lawful exercise of its right of self-defense may seize and occupy foreign territory as long as such seizure and occupation are necessary to its self-defense......Where the prior holder of territory had seized that territory unlawfully, the state which subsequently takes that territory in the lawful exercise of self-defense has, against that prior holder, better title.

As Schwebel explains, "
Jordan's seizure [in 1948] and subsequent annexation of the West Bank and the old city of Jerusalem were unlawful," arising as they did from an aggressive act. Jordan therefore had no valid title to east Jerusalem. When Jordanian forces attacked Jerusalem in 1967, Israeli forces, acting in self defense, repelled Jordanian forces from territory Jordan was illegitimately occupying. Schwebel maintains that in comparison to Jordan, "Israeli title in old (east) Jerusalem is superior." And in comparison to the UN, which never asserted sovereignty over Jerusalem and allowed its recommendation of a corpus separatum to lapse and die, he sees Israel's claim to Jerusalem as similarly superior.

An Armistice line is a cease fire line and not borders. An agreement of terms has to be accepted by both parties to be valid.
The Arabs, in 1948, claimed three rights under the 1948 armistice
agreements. First, they held that the agreements did not terminate the
state of war with Israel and that they were therefore not precluded by international law from
denying Israel freedom of navigation, imposing an economic boycott
on it, and waging a propaganda campaign against it. Second, they insisted that
the armistice lines were only cease-fire lines and not international borders
and that Israel was therefore subject to restrictions on its rights
to develop the demilitarized zones and to exploit their water resources. Third,
they argued that the armistice agreements did not cancel the rights of the
displaced Palestinians to return to their lands and that Israel's use of that land was therefore not legitimate.
Moreover, they claimed, the Palestinians were entitled to struggle against the
occupation of their land, and the Arab states were under no obligation to curb
this struggle." The Arabs also ignored the Million Jewish families they
expelled from Arab countries those Jewish families have lived in those Arab
countries for over 2,200 and became refugees and all their assets and land
120,440 sq. km. confiscated.

U.N. resolutions are only a recommendation. They do not institute or decide and implement its decisions as International law - check the U.N. Charter..
Israel's borders in modern times were allocated after WW1 by the Allied powers who also assigned the borders for the Arab countries. Those treaties and allocations occurred after the Ottoman Empire conceded defeat and relinquished all its rights title and interest to the Allied powers. Read the San Remo Treaty and the confirmation by the treaty of Sevres and others in 1920. If you are to question those treaties than you might as well question all the borders of the Arab countries who were assigned at the same time by the same Allied powers.

2 comments:

  1. BLOGGER - YJ Draiman
    YJ Draiman
    YJ Draiman ran for Mayor of the city Los Angeles in 2013. He was sworn in as an elected member … [More]

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  2. Put all politics aside - fighting and quashing terrorism is a matter of world survival
    The world needs to put together immediately an International task forces to fight terrorism and Muslim extremists. It needs to be a well trained force with substantial resources and manpower as well as an International intelligence cooperation with no restriction. It has to be a unified and cohesive battle to abolish terrorism at all costs. Let the terrorists know that there is no hole they can hide in, that the world terrorist task force and other law enforcement agencies will get them wherever they are. We must shut off all their resources, financing, financial institutions and any source that supply them with any kind of support; weaponry, economic, information, etc. whatsoever.
    I urge the world powers at large to take these terrorist events seriously with utmost urgency. The situation is at a critical stage and if immediate all out action is not taken in all parts of the world, terror and mayhem will take over the world and we will not be able to stop it.
    Just imagine if one of those terrorist got a hold of a nuclear suitcase bomb. Do I need to describe it any further.
    Is there a leader today (please stand up) in the free world who can take the bull by the horn and initiate this global war on terrorism.
    YJ Draiman

    ReplyDelete