The Middle East faced a unique and very rare situation in the aftermath of World War I. The defeated Ottoman Empire,
The Middle East faced a unique and
very rare situation in the aftermath of World War I. The defeated Ottoman Empire, following
centuries of rule, was forced to surrender its sovereignty over the entire
region, except for Turkey.
On April 19, 1920, the victorious Allied Powers convened in
San-Remo to determine the fate of territories Turkey had
surrendered. The newly created League of Nations submitted a
document to the conference, “The Mandate on Palestine,” which was adopted
with minor modifications.
The third
paragraph of this document’s preamble read: “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;”
The
document protected the civil rights of all but granted no recognition of Arabs’
political rights; its primary objective was to grant political rights
exclusively to the Jews.
Political
right to self-determination as a polity for Arabs had already been 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].
On the
second day of the San Remo conference the
Arabs launched their first violent murderous attack on the Jews. They have
stuck to this tactic until today and Obama’s speech has rewarded them.
However,
despite the violence, the League of Nations unanimously adopted
the document on July 24, 1922, with all 51 member
nations voting in favor. It now constitutes international law.
On June 30,
1922, a joint resolution of both Houses of Congress unanimously endorsed the
“Mandate for Palestine,” confirming the irrevocable right of Jews to settle in
the area of Palestine – anywhere between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean
Sea (U.S. Resolution 322 – Lodge-Fish joint resolution). President Warren G.
Harding signed the joint resolution on September
21, 1922.
A
convention between the United States and Great Britain in respect to
British rights in Palestine was signed by U.S.
President Calvin Coolidge on March 2, 1925, after being
ratified by the U.S. Senate on February 20, 1925. The convention’s
text incorporated the “Mandate for Palestine” text, including
the preamble. By doing so, the U.S. and the British
governments recognized and confirmed the irrevocable right of Jews to settle in
the area of Palestine – anywhere between
the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea as is spelled out
in the Mandate document.
Therefore,
the partition of Palestine to Jordan and Palestine (from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River), unilaterally
granted by the British in 1946, was illegal. This act gave 77% of the territory
allocated for the Jews by the international community, including Britain itself, to the
Arabs.
With the League of Nations’ dissolution in 1946 and subsequent
establishment of the United Nations, this new body was empowered by –and
confined to – its Charter.
In Article 80 of the U.N. Charter, the UN
practically adopted all League
of Nations’ decisions
concerning Mandates it created. It prohibited any modification of decisions
taken by the League of
Nations pertaining to
territories under Mandate regime except by unanimous consent of all parties
involved.
Therefore, Resolution 181, which was
adopted on November 29, 1947 in the General Assembly, a non-binding
recommendation to partition Palestine, whose implementation hinged on
acceptance by both parties, Arabs and Jews, contradicted article 80 of the U.N.
Charter because the Arab nations, including Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Saudi
Arabia denounced the plan on the General Assembly floor and voted as a bloc
against it promising to defy its implementation by force.
Moreover, recognition of a Palestinian
state by the General Assembly of the U.N. is not valid.
Furthermore, sovereignty can be recognized
to countries, not organizations. No sovereign state today has any claim to any
territory in the western part of Palestine, not even to Judea, Samaria or the Gaza strip. No sovereign state except Israel has the right to sovereignty in this territory, as
previously explained. Neither the U.N. nor anybody else has legal right
to deprive the Jewish people of its legal rights to sovereignty over the whole
of the western part of Palestine.
If the U.N. and other nations go along
with the Palestinian Initiative they will be acting in contradiction to the
international law and to the U.N. Charter. Therefore, such an act shall be
overridden by the League of
Nations’ decision legally
and unanimously voted for on July 24, 1922.
The Arabs have defied the implementation
of the international community’s decision to grant Palestine to the Jewish people. They have done so by
provoking violence since 1920.
It is incumbent upon the international
community to bring into renewed focus the prescient vision of the San-Remo
Conference and prevent intractable, hostile enemies from plunging the State of
Israel and its environs into irreversible anarchy.
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