By Ted Belman
The high mark of the rights of the Jews to Palestine, formerly known as Judea for 1,000 years, was not the 1917 Balfour Declaration, it was just a declaration, but the San Remo Resolution of 1920.
In my article, Jordan is Palestine – A Legal Analysis, I wrote:
The San Remo Resolution is the subject of research of international law scholar and lawyer, Jacques Gauthier, Ph.D. Gauthier, who is Christian, spent a quarter-century researching and writing a 1,300-page thesis to investigate legal ownership rights of Jerusalem, the ancient-modern capital city.
Through San Remo, a legal document, Gauthier explained. “The Jewish people have been given the right to establish a home, based on the recognition of their historical connection and the grounds for reconstituting this national home,”.
The Palestine Mandate, passed in 1922 by the League of nations, included this recital. “Whereas recognition has thereby [i.e. by the Treaty of Sèvres] been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine, and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country”
I buttressed Gauthier’s opinion in Israel is the legal owner of all lands west of the Jordan R.
That’s it. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
Thus, to establish the basis for the Arab claim to the land, they claim to be the indigenous people. But are they?
The Palestinian “Indigenous Population” Argument – Myths and Facts by Danny the Digger,
Perhaps the most powerful argument of the Palestinian-Arabs in the conflict over the land is that they are a “native” or “indigenous population,” while the Jewish-Zionists are a foreign population, who colonized their land.
In line with their claim of having been a ‘native population’, in the past the Arab Palestinians claimed to be descendants of the Philistines. But are they? For one thing the Philistines themselves were immigrants from Greece. They spoke a dialect of Greek and worshipped Philistine and Canaanite gods. Moreover, in western cultures, the Philistines are perceived as barbarians.
Realizing this, in recent years the Arab Palestinians changed their claim, and argue to be descendants of the Canaanites. However, the Canaanites also did not speak Arabic nor did they worship Allah. They spoke a Canaanite, which is close to Hebrew, and worshipped a pantheon of Gods.
According to the United Nations,
Indigenous peoples are the holders of unique languages, knowledge systems and beliefs and possess invaluable knowledge of practices for the sustainable management of natural resources. They have a special relation to and use of their traditional land. Their ancestral land has a fundamental importance for their collective physical and cultural survival as peoples. Indigenous peoples hold their own diverse concepts of development, based on their traditional values, visions, needs and priorities.
Back to Danny the Digger:
The cultural roots of Arab Palestinians, most of which are Muslims, are in the Arabian Peninsula. It is the source both of their language, and their religion. They originate in the Arabian Peninsula, and that is the only place where they can claim to be an ‘Indigenous population’.
But the Jews fit this definition exactly.
In fact, the Palestine Mandate also recognized “the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine”
But what about their claim that the Jews are “occupiers” of Arab land? Such a claim is false on two accounts. It’s not “Arab land” and Jews are not in any way “occupiers”. It’s a myth.
How to defeat the Israel ‘occupation’ myth with facts
First, just because a preponderance of countries in the United Nations vote to condemn Israel’s “occupation” doesn’t make it illegal..
Second, citing the Fourth Geneva Convention (FGC) to prove Israel illegally “occupies” Judea and Samaria exposes equally serious flaws in the anti-Zionist argument.
But the FGC is not applicable here because the FGC only applies when a country takes over the sovereign territory of another country (Art 2). The land in question was never the land of another country. Jordan, nor any other country, ever had recognized sovereignty there.
The facts are otherwise. Jews have lived in the land continuously for at least 3000 years. The San Remo Resolution in 1920, gave the Jewish people legal title to the land and the Palestine Mandate of 1922 gave them the right to settle the land.
After the ’67 War, the United Nations Security Council passed Res 242. It made no mention of the Palestinian people, because there was no such people.
- Affirms that the fulfilment of Charter principles requires the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East which should include the application of both the following principles:
- i) “Withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict;(ii) Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force;
Thus the Security Council; gave Israel the right to stay in possession of “territories occupied in the recent conflict” until she had a peace agreement with all states in the area which provided for “secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force”. It did not require Israel to withdraw from “all territories” and allowed Israel to keep some of the land which it required for security. So far, no such agreement has been attained but Israel has already withdrawn from 91% of the territories.
Israel considers the Jordan River to be its secure boundary and will not withdraw from it.
Yet, since 1999, the UN, EU and the PA refer to the remaining land as “occupied Palestinian territory”. This was due to the fact that the Oslo Accords gave the Palestinians autonomy over Area A, partial autonomy over Area B and no autonomy over Area C as delineated by the Accords. But even they recognize that these lands are not sovereign Palestinian territory.
The preamble to the Accords provides;
“Recognizing that the aim of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations [..], leading to a permanent settlement based on Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338;
Reaffirming [..] that the negotiations on the permanent status, [..] will lead to the implementation of Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338,[,,]”
This is the bottom line. Res 242 rules, and the Oslo Accords is nothing more than a path to it.
And as I pointed out in “Israel should terminate the Oslo Accords”, such autonomy can be cancelled by Israel at any time.
In conclusion, these lands are not Palestinian lands and they are not illegally occupied by Israel.
Wrong thread.
@Edgar In the blissfully assimilated 80s, when I asked for anchovies on my slice of pizza in Philadelphia, the surly counterman snarled at me, “You from New York, aren’t you.” Could it have been all the routine circumcisions? 😀
@Reader A constitution with an American style presidential system was a good idea when Paul Eidelberg first suggested it decades ago to counter the Left but it makes no sense at this historical juncture when the Left is just grasping at straws to derail judicial reform. The Supreme Court doesn’t even feel bound by the Basic Laws they declared were “constitutional!” And the Left is in no mood for compromise. So why compromise? You can’t make peace with someone who just wants to destroy you. They will use your desire for peace to do just that, as we have seen over and over and over.
Debunking Palestinian lies is a waste of time. Claiming Israeli rights with strength is the only realistic and successful policy.
Better late than never Israel should put its IDF census return of the Shtachim of June 1967 through a computer and sort those 960 000 Arab names by TOPONYMS ie place name surnames so as to obtain the real percentages of how many of them are named Misri = Egyptian, Hijazi = Western Saudi; Yamani = from Yemen, Turki etc .
Then Israeli diplomats, journalists and letter writers to the press could brandish those percentages like drum rolls to book end speeches.
Both Peloni and Sabastien helped me with the research for this article.
Comment on Arutz Sheva.
@Ted Your article here is on the front page of today’s Arutz Sheva. Congrats, Ted. Great article.
The Arab narrative is an exercise in floccinaucinihilipilification!
@Raphael
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest_word_in_English
Let’s use it. 😀
As for the US determining what international law is, I would say yes and no. Last year, the UN voted to condemn Israel more often than all of the other countries in the world combined and the US was the only major country to side with Israel nearly all of the time
@Raphael
Yes and no, Where Israel is concerned, the US is the only major player that sides with Israel in the UN vote most of the time and last year, as every year, the UN passed more resolutions against Israel than all of the other countries in the world combined, though more countries abstained last year, which has been cited as progress.
the longst word is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis
I used too many words. There is no international law, only what the US wants, then it is cloaked in pseudo legality.
As always, Ted is right on. I would like to add a few comments, however, which, may help clarify some things.
In the article, I see mention made of “International Law”, the League of Nation mandates, United Nations resolutions, and even Geneva Conventions. All would probably agree that there should be international standards, which are unswervingly uniform and just. How else can countries and peoples co-exist without living in a state of constant war?
If we look around, however, we see that the entire world, (and Israel in particular) IS in a state of constant war, in spite of all the rules, laws, and agreements that are made. Why is that? Are the carefully crafted laws flawed in some way? Or is it because there are so many evil rulers and countries in the world, who choose to blatantly disregard the rules?
I submit that the perpetual state of war that exists, in spite of the international rules based order, is that the rules are NOT consistent and unchangeable, nor are they in most cases just. This is because the “rules based order” was created by those in power, to achieve their geopolitical aims, and to guarantee their place of power, not to bring peace to the world. When the rules suddenly become inconvenient, they are simply changed or ignored. The number and severity of conflicts in the world is a direct reflection of the degree to which the international order is being manipulated for the benefit of those in power.
These are generalities, but names need to be named, and fingers need to be pointed. The main culprit in the world has been “the West”, first, the English and the French, followed by the Americans. If you follow all of the world’s great conflicts back to their origin, you will find them there. You have only to look at Ukraine to see this plainly. In addition, in today’s palestinian – Israeli conflict, you will find the same thing. It is the United States that is at the heart of the matter. They find it useful to keep the conflict going, depriving Israel of both their right and the ability to secure their own peace and the rightful ownership of their ancestral land.
We are now witnessing the US dominated “rules-based order” crumbling, as power shifts to the east. It may be that the new power brokers will usher in a more stable (if not more just) order for countries to live under. We shall see.
The withdrawal from Sinai satisfied 242 which deliberately specified ‘territories” meaning some not all, subject to security considerations though Israel should never have agreed to withdraw from any land conquered in war. International Law has never required nations to return land taken in a defensive war. It began the slippery slope to where we are today.
Sadat understood this.
https://afsi.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/SadatsStrategy_Eidelberg1.pdf
If the Pals really were the descendants of the Canaanites, a literal reading of the (written) Torah would require us to wipe them out 😀
If Israel were a halachic state.
“16However, in the cities of the nations that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not leave alive anything that breathes. 17For you must devote them to complete destruction —the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites—as the LORD your God has commanded you, 18 so that they cannot teach you to do all the detestable things they do for their gods, and so cause you to sin against the LORD your God.”
I especially enjoy this line: “Are the trees of the field human, that you should besiege them? ” 😀
https://biblehub.com/deuteronomy/20.htmy
Can’t argue with the fact that the Pals do detestable things for their god(s).
@Ted, I wish I could figure out how to get in touch with the owner, this isn’t the first time I’ve wanted to help him with something. I can’t find a link for reader submissions, but I’ll let you know if I see an opening.
@Ketzel
Can you get me the email that should submit my articles to if I want CFP to link to them.
Most people, even people who support Israel, aren’t reading articles like this because the mainstream sites don’t link to them. I read Citizen Free Press every day, it’s a big MAGA site that is mostly pro Israel, so imagine my surprise when they linked yesterday to a garbage article on a garbage site about the Temple Mount. Smarmy, so much left out…This is the problem right there, Zionists write good articles but they aren’t being seen even by our supporters! I will provide the CFP link and the nasty article, just so people can glance at it and see the problem. The antidote is that we must be as clever as the Arabs and make sure the right wing sites link to better articles. Few people know what’s going on, but we can inform them by copying the Arab public relations machine.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/aqsa-mosque-jewish-worship-controversial-why-explained
The Citizen Free Press link goes directly to the above garbage, and this is absolutely not deliberate, the site owner is pro-Israel but not a historian. This is the type of person we have to reach.
Peterson
Joan – I think
From time immemorial..
Well researched classic
Newsmax and Amer Thinker have published it with many others to follow.
Excellent article Ted!