The Land of Israel and its uncontested Capital Jerusalem - YJ Draiman

The Land of Israel and its uncontested Capital Jerusalem

The Qur'an 17:104 - states the land belongs to the Jewish people.

If the historic documents, comments written by eyewitnesses and declarations by the most authoritative Arab scholars are still not enough, let us quote the most important source for Muslim Arabs:
"And thereafter we [Allah] said to the Children of Israel: 'Dwell securely in the Promised Land. And when the last warning will come to pass, we will gather you together in a mingled crowd'.".
017.104
YUSUFALI: And We said thereafter to the Children of Israel, "Dwell securely in the land (of promise)": but when the second of the warnings came to pass, We gathered you together in a mingled crowd.
PICKTHAL: And We said unto the Children of Israel after him: Dwell in the land; but when the promise of the Hereafter cometh to pass We shall bring you as a crowd gathered out of various nations.
SHAKIR: And We said to the Israelites after him: Dwell in the land: and when the promise of the next life shall come to pass, we will bring you both together in judgment.
- Qur'an 17:104 -
Any sincere Muslim must recognize the Land they call "Palestine" as the Jewish Homeland, according to the book considered by Muslims to be the most sacred word and Allah's ultimate revelation.

“The birthplace of the Jewish people is the Land of Israel (Eretz Yisrael). There, is a significant part of the nation's long history was enacted, of which the first thousand years are recorded in the Bible; there, its cultural, religious and national identity was formed; and there, its physical presence has been maintained through the centuries, even after the majority was forced into exile. During the many years of dispersion, the Jewish people never severed nor forgot its bond with the Land. The Jewish daily prayer recite the aspiration to return to Jerusalem and rebuilt the Temple and most Jewish holidays and fast days are observed in memory of Jerusalem and Israel. With the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Jewish independence and control of its country, which was lost two thousand years earlier, was renewed.”
If people of any nation were exiled to other country’s and than years later were able to reclaim their country, the world population as a whole would support such action and would not consider giving a piece of the country to the foreigners who are residing there, and under no circumstances would they consider parceling portions of the county to be set up as a separate State for the foreigners. As happened in other countries.
Why should anyone in the world consider doing this very same action with the land of Israel which is a Jewish land for thousands of years? Israel has been conquered over the years by various nations as occupied territory. Now that the Jewish people have returned and control Greater Israel, it is no longer occupied territory. Most of the Jewish families who settled in Greater Israel since 1948 are from the million Jewish families who were persecuted and expelled from Arab countries and their assets, businesses, homes and Real estate property of 120,440 sq. km. has been confiscated by the Arabs.
The Arabs living in the land of Israel have come from the surrounding Arab countries illegally; they have no right whatsoever to any part of the land of Israel.
In the past hundred years many Jews were ejected from Arab countries surrounding the land of Israel, their property taken and their homes and lands taken over is 5-6 times the size of Israel and valued in the trillions of dollars.
Let those Arabs who want to Claim the land of Israel as theirs go to those Arab countries and the confiscated homes and lands that the Jews were occupying.
Any part of the land of Israel is not occupied territory; it is legally a liberated Jewish land and has been for thousands of years, no Arab has any right to claim any rights to the land of Israel. The surrounding Arab countries compose of over 200 million people and millions of square miles, why do they have to bother little Israel with its territory about the size of the State of New Jersey.
Maybe the world should consider giving European countries or parts to the Italians, since the Romans occupied it for many years.

JERUSALEM
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem,
may my right hand forget its cunning.
May my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth,
if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy.
(Psalms 137:5-6)

Jerusalem, the uncontested and undivided capital of Israel, is located in the heart of the country, nestled among the Judean Hills. The city's ancient stones, imbued with millennia of history, and its numerous historical sites, shrines and places of worship attest to its meaning for Jews..

Jerusalem the "eternal and undivided capital" of the Jewish people,

Jerusalem is -- and must remain -- the uncontested, undivided capital of Israel.

Jerusalem is the only city that can prove the validity of Israeli-Jewish existence. No one should question Jewish historic claim and affinity to Jerusalem which dates back the Canaanite tribes period (3000-1200 BCE). The re-capture of the old city in 1967 was widely seen by the Israelis as nothing less than the renewal of God's covenant with the Jews. Jerusalem represents their past and present, a source of religious and cultural continuity without which Israel's very existence could unravel. The hope of returning to Jerusalem has sustained and inhibited the Jews throughout their dispersion, and centuries of exile have been unable to extinguish it.

Abraham, Isaac and Jacobs resided in the land of Israel and Jerusalem from the year 1948 from Creation (circa 1800 BCE).
King David made Jerusalem the capital of his kingdom, as well as the religious center of the Jewish people, in 1003 BCE. Some forty years later, his son Solomon built the Temple (the religious and national center of the people of Israel) and transformed the city into the prosperous capital of an empire extending from the Euphrates to Egypt.
The Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem in 586 BCE, destroyed the Temple, and exiled the people. Fifty years later, when Babylon was conquered by the Persians, King Cyrus allowed the Jews to return to their homeland and granted them autonomy. They built a Second Temple on the site of the First, and rebuilt the city and its walls.
Alexander the Great conquered Jerusalem in 332 BCE. After his death the city was ruled by the Ptolemies of Egypt and then by the Seleucids of Syria. The Hellenization of the city reached its peak under the Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV; the desecration of the Temple and attempts to suppress Jewish religious identity resulted in a revolt.
Led by Judah Maccabee, the Jews defeated the Seleucids, rededicated the Temple (164 BCE), and re-established Jewish independence under the Hasmonean dynasty, which lasted for more than a hundred years, until Pompey imposed Roman rule on Jerusalem. King Herod the Idumean, who was installed as ruler of Judah by the Romans (37 - 4 BCE), established cultural institutions in Jerusalem, erected magnificent public buildings and refashioned the Temple into an edifice of splendor.
Jewish revolt against Rome broke out in 66 CE, as Roman rule after Herod's death became increasingly oppressive. For a few years Jerusalem was free of foreign rule, until, in 70 CE, Roman legions under Titus conquered the city and destroyed the Temple. Jewish independence was briefly restored during the Bar Kochba revolt (132-135), but again the Romans prevailed. Jews were forbidden to enter the city, which was renamed Aelia Capitolina and rebuilt along the lines of a Roman city and Israel was renamed Palestina.
For the next century and a half, Jerusalem was a small provincial town. This changed radically when the Byzantine Emperor Constantine transformed Jerusalem into a Christian center. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher (335) was the first of numerous grandiose structures built in the City.
Muslim armies invaded the country in 634, and four years later Caliph Omar captured Jerusalem. Only during the reign of Abdul Malik, who built the Dome of the Rock (691), did Jerusalem briefly become the seat of a caliph. The century-long rule of the Umayvad Dynasty from Damascus was succeeded in 750 by the Abbasids from Baghdad, and with them Jerusalem began to decline.
The Crusaders conquered Jerusalem in 1099, massacred its Jewish and Muslim inhabitants, and established the city as the capital of the Crusader Kingdom. Under the Crusaders, synagogues were destroyed, old churches were rebuilt and many mosques were turned into Christian shrines. Crusader rule over Jerusalem ended in 1187, when the city fell to Saladin the Kurd.
The Mamluks, a military feudal aristocracy from Egypt, ruled Jerusalem from 1250. They constructed numerous graceful buildings, but treated the city solely as a Muslim theological center and ruined its economy through neglect and crippling taxes.
The Ottoman Turks, whose rule lasted for four centuries, conquered Jerusalem in 1517. Suleiman the Magnificent rebuilt the city walls (1537), constructed the Sultan's Pool, and placed public fountains throughout the city. After his death. The central authorities in Constantinople took little interest in Jerusalem. During the 17th and 18th centuries Jerusalem and Greater Israel sunk to one of its lowest ebbs and the land become arid and desolate barely resided by people.
Jerusalem began to thrive once more in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Growing numbers of Jews returning to their land, waning Ottoman power and revitalized European interest in the Holy Land led to renewed development of Jerusalem.
The British army led by General Allenby conquered Jerusalem in 1917. From 1922 to 1948 Jerusalem was the administrative seat of the British authorities in the Land of Israel (Palestine), which had been entrusted to Great Britain as trustee for the Jewish people by the 1920 San Remo Treaty and confirmed by the League of Nations following the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. The city developed rapidly, growing westward into what became known as the "New City."
Upon termination of the British Mandate on May 14, 1948, and in accordance with the UN resolution of November 29, 1947, Israel proclaimed its independence, based on the British who violated the 1920 San Remo Treaty with Jerusalem as its capital. Opposing its establishment, the Arab countries launched an all-out assault on the new re-established state, resulting in the 1948-49 War of Independence. The armistice lines drawn at the end of the war divided Jerusalem into two, with Jordan occupying the Old City and areas to the north and south, and Israel retaining the western and southern parts of the city.
Jerusalem was liberated and reunited in June 1967, as a result of a war initiated by Jordan which the Jordanians attempted to seize the western section of the city. The Jewish Quarter of the Old City, destroyed under Jordanian rule, has been restored, and Israeli citizens are again able to visit their holy places, which had been denied them during the years 1948-1967.
Conclusion, the land of Israel and Jerusalem as its undivided capital for the Jewish people is a historical fact for thousands of years and shall remain that way for eternity.

Rising in defense of our security, our liberty and our values.


Jacques Gauthier, a non-Jewish Canadian lawyer who spent 20 years researching the legal status of Jerusalem, has concluded: "Jerusalem belongs to the Jews, by international law."

Gauthier has written a doctoral dissertation on the topic of Jerusalem and its legal history, based on international treaties and resolutions of the past 90 years.  The dissertation runs some 1,300 pages, with 3,000 footnotes. Gauthier had to present his thesis to a world-famous Jewish historian and two leading international lawyers - the Jewish one of whom has represented the Palestinian Authority on numerous occasions.

Gauthier's main point, as summarized by Israpundit editor Ted Belman, is that a non-broken series of treaties and resolutions, as laid out by the San Remo Resolution, the League of Nations and the United Nations, gives the Jewish People title to the city of Jerusalem.  The process began at San Remo, Italy, when the four Principal Allied Powers of World War I - Great Britain, France, Italy and Japan - agreed to create a Jewish nationalhome in what is now the Land of Israel.  

San RemoThe relevant resolution reads as follows: "The High Contracting Parties agree to entrust... the administration of Palestine, within such boundaries as may be determined by the Principal Allied Powers, to a Mandatory [authority that] will be responsible for putting into effect the [Balfour]declaration... in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a nationalhome for the Jewish people."

Gauthier notes that the San Remo treaty specifically notes that "nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine" - but says nothing about any "political" rights of the Arabs living there. 

The San Remo Resolution also bases itself on Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, which declares that it is a "a sacred trust of civilization" to provide for the well-being and development of colonies and territories whose inhabitants are "not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world."  Specifically, a resolution was formulated to create a Mandate to form a Jewish nationalhome in Palestine.

League of NationsThe League of Nations' resolution creating the Palestine Mandate, included the following significant clause: “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." No such recognition of Arab rights in Palestine was granted.  

In 1945, the United Nations took over from the failed League of Nations - and assumed the latter's obligations.  Article 80 of the UN Charter states: "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."

UN Partition PlanHowever, in 1947, the General Assembly of the UN passed Resolution 181, known as the Partition Plan.  It violated the League of Nations' Mandate for Palestine in that it granted political rights to the Arabs in western Palestine - yet, ironically, the Arabs worked to thwart the plan's passage, while the Jews applauded it.  

Resolution 181 also provided for a Special regime for Jerusalem, with borders delineated in all four directions: The then-extant municipality of Jerusalem plus the surrounding villages and towns up to Abu Dis in the east, Bethlehem in the south, Ein Karem and Motza in the west, and Shuafat in the north.

Referendum Scheduled for JerusalemThe UN resolved that the City of Jerusalem shall be established as a separate entity under a special international regime and shall be administered by the United Nations.  The regime was to come into effect by October 1948, and was to remain in force for a period of ten years, unless the UN's Trusteeship Council decided otherwise.  After the tenyears, the residents of Jerusalem "shall be then free to express by means of a referendum their wishes as to possible modifications of regime of the City."

The resolution never took effect, because Jordan controlled eastern Jerusalem after the 1948 War of Independence and did not follow its provisions.  

After 1967After the Six Day War in 1967, Israel regained Jerusalem and other land west of Jordan.  Gauthier notes that the UN Security Council then passed Resolution 242 authorizing Israel to remain in possession of all the land until it had “secure and recognized boundaries.”  The resolution was notably silent on Jerusalem, and also referred to the "necessity for achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem,” with no distinction made between Jewish and Arab refugees.

Today Given Jerusalem's strong Jewish majority, Gauthier concludes, Israel should be demanding that the long-delayed city referendum on the city's future be held as soon as possible.  Not only should Israel be demanding that the referendum be held now, Jerusalem should be the first order of business. "Olmert is sloughing us off by saying [as he did before the Annapolis Conference two months ago], 'Jerusalem is not on the table yet,'" Gauthier concludes. "He should demand that the referendum take place before the balance of the land is negotiated. If the Arabs won’t agree to the referendum, there is nothing to talk about."

International Law and Jerusalem

Dr. Thomas Ice

Some of the HTML versions of the articles have errors. If you have view problems try reading the PDF version.

      The Bible teaches that God gave to the Jewish people the land of Israel.  This is repeated many times throughout the Bible.  God�s viewpoint on this matter is what ultimately matters since He will at some point in the future implement His will.  If God says something then that settles it, that decree will surely come to pass.  However, it is interesting to note that international law is and has always been on the side of the reestablishment of the modern state of Israel.  Furthermore, the law also supports the claim that Jerusalem belongs to the Jews and that the Arabs have no legitimate legal claim upon Judaism�s most holy location.

Jacques Paul Gauthier

      Canadian lawyer Jacques Paul Gauthier recently finished a twenty-year project in which this Gentile Christian researched at the University of Geneva political science department and international law school, the legal issues relating to the ownership of Israel and Jerusalem.  Gauthier�s PhD thesis was completed in 2007 and is entitled: �Sovereignty Over The Old City of Jerusalem.�[1]  Dr. Gauthier has demonstrated in painstaking detail in his thesis of over 1,200 pages the following conclusion:

After our examination of the principles of international law pertaining to belligerent occupation, we have concluded that Israel has the right to occupy the territories under its control since 1967, including East Jerusalem and its Old City, until a peace treaty is concluded.[2]

      Since Gauthier�s publication was a PhD thesis, he had to painstakingly document every opinion or conclusion with legal and historical facts.  Had the readers of his thesis not agreed with the information in his work they would not have accepted Gauthier�s thesis.  This means that Gauthier�s work is the most authoritative opinion covering the international status of the old city of Jerusalem and the land of Israel.  So what is Dr. Gauthier�s argument?

Great Britain�s Role

      Gauthier notes that the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917 did not have the status of international law, at least not when issued.  However, it did become the official policy of the British government that bound Great Britain to pursue the founding of a future state of Israel and granting them self-determination.  The United Kingdom took the next step toward founding the Jewish state when General Allenby captured Jerusalem on December 11, 1917 and then the rest of Palestine (Israel).

      On January 3, 1919 Chaim Weizmann, who was the leader and representative of the Zionist Organization on behalf of the Jewish people, met with Emir Feisal, who represented the Arab Kingdom of Hedjaz.  Included in an agreement that both parties agreed upon was that the Jewish people should get the land west of the Jordan River and that the old city of Jerusalem would be under Jewish control.

      The Paris Peace Conference began on January 18, 1919 and lasted about six months in which new borders were decided upon for parts of Europe and the Middle East and were given the force of international law.  The conference was made up of the victorious Allied powers from World War I.  The �Big Four� were made up of the United States, Great Britain, France, and Italy.  Lord Balfour represented Britain.  It was during the summer of 1919 that Arab opposition began to be voiced against the Feisal- Weizmann agreement.  As a result that aspect of the conference stalled and was never agreed upon.  Nevertheless, Balfour issued the following statement on August 11, 1919: �The four great powers are committed to Zionism.  And Zionism be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age long traditions, in present needs in future hopes of far profounder import than the desire and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.�[3]  The Paris Peace Conference ended without a final solution reached concerning the status of Palestine, even though there was much discussion about the matter.

The Audacity of the Arab-Palestinians and the Arab countries in demanding territory from the Jewish people in Palestine after they persecuted and expelled over a million Jewish families and their children who have lived in Arab land for over 2,500 years and after they confiscated all their assets and Real estate property 5-6 times the size of Israel (120,440 sq. km. - 75,000 sq. mi.), valued in the trillions of dollars. There was also Jewish property and land (totaling about 100,000 sq. km.) in Jordan, Gaza and across the Golan Heights under Syria's control.

Now the Arab nations are demanding more land and more compensation.

The Arab countries have chased the million Jewish families and their children and now they want to chase them away again, from their own historical land.

The San Remo Conference

      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.  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 was partitioned and part of Palestine was given to the Arabs 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.  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 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.  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 manmade 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!

ENDNOTES

---

[1] Jacques Paul Gauthier, �Sovereignty Over The Old City of Jerusalem: A Study of the Historical, Religious, Political and Legal Aspects of the Question of the Old City,� PhD Thesis, University of Geneva International Law School, 2007).

[2] Gauthier, �Sovereignty Over Jerusalem,� p. 848.

[3] Cited by Gauthier, �Sovereignty Over Jerusalem,� p. 356 from Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919–1939, vol. IV, No. 242, p. 345.

[4] Gauthier, �Sovereignty Over Jerusalem,� pp. 599–600.  Citation by Gauthier is from Article D, Part III of the Partition Resolution.