Part II: Israeli Sovereignty Over Judea and Samaria

Has the UN’s Partition Plan any remaining significance for either the Arabs or the Jews?

Wallace Edward Brand, JD, inn

Balfour resigned as foreign secretary following the Paris Conference in 1919, but continued in the Cabinet as lord president of the council. In a memorandum addressed to new Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon, he stated that the Balfour Declaration contradicted the letters of the covenant (referring to the League Covenant) the Anglo-French Declaration, and the instructions to the King-Crane Commission. All of the other engagements contained pledges that the Arab or Muslim populations could establish national governments of their own choosing according to the principle of self-determination. Balfour explained: “… in Palestine we do not propose to even go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present (majority) inhabitants of the country though the American [King-Crane] Commission is going through the form of asking what they are.

Balfour stated explicitly to Curzon:

“The Four Great Powers [Britain, France, Italy and the United States] are committed to Zionism. And Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, and future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land. In my opinion that is right.” * * * * *

Balfour continued:

“I do not think that Zionism will hurt the Arabs, but they will never say they want it. Whatever be the future of Palestine it is not now an ‘independent nation’, nor is it yet on the way to become one. Whatever deference should be paid to the views of those living there, the Powers in their selection of a mandatory do not propose, as I understand the matter, to consult them.”. . .”If Zionism is to influence the Jewish problem throughout the world, Palestine must be made available for the largest number of Jewish immigrants”

While the rights granted under the Trust restricted the Jews, when they did exercise sovereignty, from doing anything that would impair the civil or religious rights of the Arabs it was silent as to the political rights for the Arabs. The Mandate Law also became the domestic law of the UK and the US in 1924 as Treaty Law when, under a new American Administration, the Mandate became the subject of the Anglo American Convention of 1924.[24]

Perfidious Albion did not maintain the 1920 form of its proposed trust for very long. Circumstances changed, British interests changed, and the British Government also changed. President Wilson’s opposition had delayed the issuance of the mandate as proposed in the initial draft submitted to the WWI Allies at San Remo. In the meantime, England had installed Feisal as the King of Syria.[25] After the Battle of Maysalun, in which the French Armed Forces defeated the Syrian Army the French deposed Feisal.[25] Abdullah, Feisal’s brother, was furious. He marched his troops from their home in the Hejaz (in the Arabian Peninsula) to Eastern Palestine and made ready to attack the French in Syria.

Churchill did not want war between the Arabs and the French. In the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement, Syria was in the French sphere of influence. Churchill gave Feisal the Kingdom of Iraq as a consolation prize[26] and gave Abdullah and his Hashemite tribe from the Arabian Peninsula Eastern Palestine in violation of the British Mandate.[27] The Mandate at San Remo had prohibited the Mandatory from ceding any land to a foreign nation. In the 1922 change, with a new Article 25, it formally approved delaying organized settlement by the Jews East of the Jordan River and informally gave TransJordan to Abdullah and his Hashemite Tribe from the Hejaz.

Article 25 preserved the prohibition of the Mandatory Power from discriminating among races or religions.[28] The land East of the Jordan River became TransJordan and then Jordan and the Mandatory, despite the specific terms of the mandate, prohibited Jews, but not other ethnic groups, from settling there.

The British urging the League to adopt Article 25 was a breach of its fiduciary relationship as trustee with its beneficiary and as guardian, with its ward.[29] as were the policies in their White Papers of 1922, 1930 and the vicious White Paper of 1939 under the Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, of Munich fame, that blocked many Jews from fleeing from the Nazi Holocaust. A vicious enforcement of the blockade ensued and directly disobeyed the Mandate’s requirement to facilitate Jewish immigration.

During WWI the Hussein/McMahon correspondence with the Arabs in the Arabian Peninsula led to a British offer to all Arabs in the Caliphate of self-government free from Turkish rule if they helped the British in the war.[30]

CONTINUE