WHY IS THE SAN REMO CONFERENCE SO IMPORTANT? - Israel's Legal Rights

WHY IS THE SAN REMO CONFERENCE SO IMPORTANT?

by: Canadians for Israel's Legal Rights

The San Remo Conference of 1920 was built upon a series of events which occurred before, during and immediately after World War One, and which are summarized below:

• The birth of modern Zionism under Theodor Herzl in 1897.
• The Balfour Declaration of 1917, where Britain "views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." (expression of British foreign policy).
• The defeat of the Turks in Palestine, in 1917
• The Fourteen Points of U.S. President Wilson (1918), which called for an end to secret treaties between nations; emphasized the interests of the populations concerned; and advocated for the creation of a "general association of nations."
• The Paris Peace Conference and the birth of the League of Nations, in 1919.
• The adoption of Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, instituting the Mandates System in the post-war period.

The adoption of a legal mechanism for the dispossession of Turkey of their formerly held lands in the Middle East.

This sequence of events led to the San Remo Conference (April, 1920) where the map of the Middle East was redrawn, and a major Resolution was adopted by the Supreme Council of the Principal Allied Powers (Britain, France, Italy, Japan), with the United States acting as an observer[*]:

• For the first time in history, Palestine became a legal entity.
• All prior agreements concerning the region were terminated, including the Sykes-Picot Agreement between France and Britain.
• The Balfour Declaration was incorporated in the Resolution and its implementation was required; it became an act of international law.
• Palestine was placed under a British Mandate, with Britain acting as a trustee, and required to put into force the provisions of the Balfour Declaration.
• The legal title to Palestine was transferred from the Allied Powers to the Jewish people. The title on Palestine is non-revocable.
• The Jewish people became the national beneficiary of the Mandate for Palestine, on the grounds of their historical connection to the land. The de jure sovereignty of Palestine was vested in the Jewish people.
• The San Remo Resolution was adopted and later included in the Treaty of Sèvres (Art. 94-97). These provisions remain in force, even though the Treaty of Sèvres was not ratified by the later Turkish government of Kemal Ataturk.
• The Arabs received equivalent national rights in Syria/Lebanon, Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq). For different reasons, Jordan became also an exclusively Arab country.
• The San Remo Conference also marks the end of the longest period of foreign occupation/colonization in history (1,850 years of dispossession of the Jewish people in their ancestral Land of Israel).

[*] The United States was not a member, hence had no voting power. It did endorse the Mandate for Palestine. As Eli E. Hertz writes:

On June 30, 1922, a joint resolution of both Houses of Congress of the United States 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. [... On September 21, 1922, the then President Warren G. Harding signed the joint resolution of approval to establish a Jewish National Home in Palestine. 
(http://www.mythsandfacts.com/article_view.asp?articleID=100)

This article was produced by Canadians for Israel's Legal Rights (CILR). Contact them at www.cilr.org. It appeared on the Israel Unity Coalition (UCI) website August 10th, 2011, and is archived at 
http://www.israelunitycoalition.org/news/?p=7052