tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1681760633145942228.post1722325252790740248..comments2023-10-02T04:00:16.340-07:00Comments on Middle East Facts: And the Jewish People shall return to their homelandYJ Draiman Articleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01649666996973434531noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1681760633145942228.post-75625050086145617922015-06-18T17:51:34.590-07:002015-06-18T17:51:34.590-07:00As Professor Stephen Schwebel, former judge on the...As Professor Stephen Schwebel, former judge on the Hague's International Court of Justice notes:<br /><br />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).<br /><br />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.<br /><br />furthermore:<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br />YJ Draiman Articleshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01649666996973434531noreply@blogger.com