By PAUL LUNGEN, Staff Reporter, Canadian Jewish News
The Jewish people’s historic and religious connection to Jerusalem and Israel are widely acknowledged, but what about their legal rights?
Opponents of Israel repeatedly refer to Israel’s “illegal occupation” of territories and to “Palestinian east Jerusalem,” but are these terms accurate in law?
A group of academics and legal scholars gathered in Basel, Switzerland, two weeks ago to discuss those issues and to affirm “their support for the recognition of the international legal rights of the State of Israel and the Jewish people in respect to the whole city of Jerusalem.” They issued a declaration stating just that, along with their support of “a unified Jerusalem” as the capital of Israel.
Organized by the Alliance for International Justice in Jerusalem, the conference met on dates corresponding to the first Zionist Congress in 1897 and in the same location, the Musiksaal.
The conference issued a declaration referring to the international legal documents that form the legal basis for Jews’ contemporary claim to Israel, which according to conference participant Jacques Gauthier, includes Judea and Samaria (the West Bank).
Gauthier, an international lawyer who addressed the conference, said his legal research over 25 years led him to the conclusion that Jews had a valid legal claim to all the territory west of the Jordan River, including Jerusalem.
“I came to the conclusion that the legal answer came out of key historical events,” he said.
The Basel Conference Declaration cites the legal documents that cumulatively gives the Jewish people title to the lands, including Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, the San Remo Resolution of the Supreme Council of the Principal Allied Powers of April 25, 1920, and the Mandate for Palestine approved by the Council of the League of Nations on July 24, 1922. “These were the foundational instruments for the establishment of the modern State of Israel,” the declaration stated.
It all goes back to the World War I and the defeat of the Ottoman Empire by Britain, France, the United States, Italy and Japan, Gauthier said.
The Ottomans had controlled most of the Middle East, including today’s Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and the Palestinian territories. Historically, victorious powers simply seize the losing power’s territories, but under the influence of U.S. president Woodrow Wilson, a much different approach was taken. The five victorious powers, meeting as the Supreme Council, heard claims to the territories from Arab and Jewish representatives.
Chaim Weizmann led the Jewish delegation.
“The Zionists asked for recognition over Palestine of their historical connection and the recognition of the Jewish People as a legal entity, along with the right to reconstitute what they had once had, enough territory to cover all historical links to the Holy Land,” Gauthier said.
The Arabs, “who had not been unified and had tribal territories but no states, presented their claims in Paris,” Gauthier said. Led by the Hashemite King Faisal, the Arabs asked for a single giant state that would have included Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, but not the area known as Palestine. They had agreed with the Jewish delegation beforehand that that territory would go to the Jews and that each side would support the others’ claim.
No decision was made in Paris in 1919, but in San Remo, the Supreme Council reconvened to determine the disposition of the Ottoman territories. “They said ‘yes’ to the Arabs and gave them Mesopotamia [Iraq] under a British Mandate [trust] and Syria and Lebanon under a French Mandate.”
As to Palestine, “they adopted the policy right out of the Balfour Declaration – all the political rights were given to the Jewish People,” Gauthier said.
The treaties of Sevres and Lausanne confirmed this and three subsequent treaties created the mandates.
“Those international instruments are binding on all the parties and recognized in international law,” Gauthier said.
“The Jewish People are in the city [of Jerusalem] by right. They are not trespassers, they are not there wrongfully,” he said.
In 1921, the British severed the east bank of the Jordan and handed it to the Hashemites. “Jews accepted that partition” on the basis that “the rest of Palestine would become a Jewish state.”
Asked about Palestinian claims – at the time the Jews were called Palestinians – Gauthier said the Allies dealt with the Jewish people and wouldn’t subsequently entertain claims from Jews who said they were excluded, as well as Arab representatives.
“The issue legally involves the Arabs as a whole and they were given rights which were satisfactory, as noted in the documents,” he said.
In other words, Gauthier continued, any Palestinian claims were included in the larger Arab claims and were satisfied at that time.
The Jews’ claim to Israel is as strong, in law, as those of Syrians, Iraqis and Lebanese to their countries, since all those sovereignties arose from the same documents, Gauthier said.
Israel has annexed Jerusalem, affirming its claim, but has not done the same with the West Bank. That leaves open the possibility of negotiations and ceding by Israel of its rights to some of the land as contemplated in UN Resolution 242, he added.
Can’t possibly win WHAT?
A General Assembly vote? — no, we can’t.
— So?
The General Assembly has no constituted authority to make anybody a state.
Resolutions of the General Assembly can only propose, suggest or exhort.
They have no power to command, demand, create or authorize ANYTHING.
Problem is with the declaration of a new Pal state, with majority of the world agreeing, and with a large number of Jews both in and outside of Israel in agreement-WE CAN’T POSSIBLY WIN.
If you can get a copy of _The Age of Faith_, you will see how blood curdling Abu Bakr’s speech to Muslim warriors was. I think it was a political coup when Abu Bakr lined up the older Muslims to vote for him and not Ali. It may be that Ali would never have led the Muslims on the warpath as Abu Bakr did, giving Islam a different direction from the beginning. The Muslim warriors wanted to fight. It was the only way they could improve their lot in life, by killing and looting. Muslim warriors could fight on empty stomachs (probably because they were half-starved anyway).
At the beginning of Islam there was a rule that warriors could not take any foreign land for themselves. That rule didn’t last long. The rules changed with each new caliphate. It’s been years since I read about Islam in _The Age of Faith_, so if you can get that book you can impart more on this subject. It really isn’t a lot of reading. Will Durant wrote at least a dozen books in his The Story of Civilization, and this is one of them.
It’s true that Abu Bakr became Mohammed’s immediate ‘successor,’ Catarin, but we’re speaking here of a brief, transitional period.
The “Messenger” died in 632, and by the time, four years later, that the newly-Muslim Arabs burst out of the Arabian peninsula & into the Levant, the “Saracens” were already commanded by Khalid bin al-Walid, the “Blade of Islam.” Abu-Bakr’s leadership was at most a short intermezzo.
The Islamic armies defeated (and then proceeded to massacre the surrendering forces of) the Byzantine [Eastern Roman] Empire that had “inherited” the Land of Israel from pre-Diocletal Rome [Battle of the Yarmuk, 636], thereby ending Byzantine rule south of the Anatolian Peninsula.
There may be an argument to be made for the proposition that Mohammed had no designs on territory beyond the peninsula. Khaleel Mohammed [Professor of Religious Studies at San Diego State University] certainly seems to take that view. However, the notion that any significant change of policy was not only introduced but also institutionalized — sufficiently so, within such a short time, as to remain in-perpetuity to this day — is, with all due respect, somewhat hard to square. Moreover, if the Companions chose Abu-Bakr, then THEY (and with them, all of Islam itself) share responsibility for the consequences of their choice; you can’t lay it all at Abu-Bakr’s door.
But beyond all this, it’s impossible to give “The Prophet” a pass for the atrociousness of either his personal deportment or his general policy during his lifetime. Moreover, what he did in both the conduct of his life and his treatment of the Jewish communities of the peninsula clearly set the pattern for what was done by Islam after it spread beyond the peninsula.
Y’know, Catarin, it was for decades a standard argumentary recourse among lots of leftists to blame the ills of Communism on Stalin’s takeover of the USSR. “If only Stalin hadn’t betrayed the Revolution. . . . blah, blah, blah. . . etc.”
Little-by-little, however, it’s been dawning on all-&-sundry that there could’ve been no Stalin without first a Lenin. . . .
You’re right, Dweller, I mixed up the father-in-law. Mohammed was dead when Abu Bakr declared holy war on the rest of the world. Will Durant reproduces his speech to the Muslim warriors with it’s very definite terms for the conquering of other countries. I don’t know if you read my other posts on Islam, but I came to the conclusion that Abu Bakr usurped Islam and bullied his way into the leadership of Islam by pushing Ali aside, when Mohammed had already appointed Abu Bakr to head the mosque. Mohammed died without choosing a successor (he was being pressured by both Ali and Bakr,) and the elderly companions, etc. chose Bakr over Ali and Ali refused to join the government for 6 months, he was so angry.
Yes. At the Versailles Conference, in the words of Daniel Doron, “a deal was struck whereby the Arabs received 99 percent of former Ottoman territories [i.e., of Turkey’s Asian possessions] with the understanding that 1 [one] percent would become a national Jewish home. The Arabs took the 99 percent, and then reneged on the deal.” [“Poisoning the American Mind,” Jerusalem Post, 10 Mar 04]
And what else is new?
Right from the get-go, a pattern of Arab behavior was set.
To this day, it has never changed.
You’d have a hard time making that case, Catarin, with (if they could talk) the Jewish communities on the Arabian peninsula that — on Mohammed’s orders, and even under his explicit direction — were wiped out by the edge of the sword. Typically (as in the cases of the Khaibar and Banu Qurayza communities), the men would be be-headed and the women raped —- and then the women (those not chosen to be kept as personal sex-slaves), together with the children, sold into slavery.
Further, for the record, Abu-Bakr was the father-in-law — and Mohammed, the son-in-law; not vice versa.
Abu Bakr’s daughter, A’isha, Muhammad’s “favorite wife,” shared the Messenger’s bed from the age of nine (having been given to him at six -— when he was in his 50’s).
A real prince of a guy, Mohammed.
And of Abu-Bakr, what shall we say about a slug who would GIVE his daughter to such a man under such circumstances?
I am so happy to finally have a document that shows legally our right as Jews to our homeland in Israel. Now how to convince those who continue to use their own stories/lies to devalue the truth. This article is so clear and beautifully written. Thank you.
Denise
All absolutely true BUT we Jews are still going to have to fight to keep it — and we will.
Right on! At some point logic has to win!
I like this thinking and I hope it wins out. New Jews coming to the state of Israel usually take up residence in the areas known as Jewish, but all the Arab Muslims who came from other Muslim countries after Israel was declared a state should not be eligible for any legal status. Of course they are still in the Holy Land and the requirement that they must live peacefully with Jews and Christians should be a requirement for remaining or they will be deported.
I believe Islam is at a crossroads in their beliefs that Muslims should be able to take any land they want through jihad. It doesn’t seem to be working anymore since the media is now broadcasting 24 hours a day and their efforts are thwarted. Who will begin to modernize the Quran? Will they begin to make rules that will enable them to live in peace with all people? Mohammed said Muslims should include the beliefs of Jews and Christians into Islam’s beliefs. I have said many times that it was not Mohammed but his son-in-law/companion Abu Bkr who first declared Holy war.
ITS TRUE WHAT THE ARTICAL SAYS THE PROBLEM IS THE ISRAELI POLTICIANS THEY SHOULD ANXEDJUDIA AND SUMIRIA LONG TIME AGO AND KICKED ALL THE ARABS OUT OF ISRAELINSTEAD THEY ARE FINDING MORE WAYS TO ACCOMADATE THEM AND TAKE CARE OF THEM THE REAL PROBLEM HERE NOT THE UN OR ANY BODY ELSE ITS ISRAEL CORRPET SYSTEM AND THE ISRAELI PEOPLE FOR NOYT DOING ANY THING ABOUT IT
I can’t believe my eyes!!!!!! Canadian Jewish News has finally published something this important. Thank you to Ted Belman for once again highlighting this critical issue. And thank you to Dr. Jacques Gauthier and all of the supporters of Israel’s legal rights for keeping at it until this is seen by the world.