Consternation in Israel over the EU’s malicious decision to boycott individuals or institutions situated over the ‘Green Line’ between Israel and the disputed territories. This would presumably include boycotting, for example, the Hebrew University which is just over that line or, even more grotesquely, Jewish residents in Jerusalem’s Old City – where ancient Jewish settlement far predated the arrival of a single Arab, dating as it does since King David who built it as the capital of the kingdom of the Jewish people.
The EU says Israeli settlements beyond the Green Line are illegal under international law. Nothing new there – so do the UN and associated bodies say so. But they are simply wrong.
International law in general is known to be highly contentious and far from authoritative, since it is anchored in no single jurisdiction and arguably therefore constitutes nothing other than international politics by another name.
In any event, the charge that Jewish residence over the Green Line is illegal first rests on the application to this situation of the wrong treaty; and second, totally ignores the treaties which gave the Jews the right to settle anywhere in these territories.
To take the second point first. The San Remo Treaty of 1920, in which the victors of the First World War parcelled out the remnants of the defeated Ottoman Empire, created a geographical area called Palestine along both sides of the Jordan River.
Article 6 of the Palestine Mandate signed by the League of Nations in 1922 stipulated ‘close Jewish settlement’ on the land west of the Jordan River. The river served as the boundary because that year the UK created a new Arab country, today known as Jordan, by unilaterally bestowing the land east of the river onto the Hashemite dynasty and thus giving some three quarters of Palestine away.
That Mandate treaty obligation to settle the Jews in Palestine from the river to the sea has never been abrogated and endures today. The 1945 UN Charter, Chapter XII, Article 80 explicitly says than nothing within it shall ‘alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments to which Members of the United Nations may respectively be parties’.
Now to the main argument mounted by the ‘illegalisers’. This rests on their claim that the Israeli settlements breach Article 49 of the Geneva Convention. But this article does not apply to the settlements. Written in the shadow of the deportation of European Jews to their deaths in Nazi Europe, it prohibits
‘individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or that of any other country, occupied or not…The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.’
But none of the Israelis living beyond the Green Line has been transferred or deported, forcibly or not; they all chose voluntarily to live there. (The only force ever used against these residents was in fact when Israel forcibly transferred them from Gaza into Israel in 2005.)
Moreover, the Geneva Convention applies to actions carried out on the territory of a ‘High Contracting Party’ with a sovereign claim to that territory. But the areas in question over the ‘Green Line’ never belonged to any sovereign power. As remains the case to this day they merely constitute no-man’s land, having never been allocated to any ‘High Contracting’ sovereign state. The only treaty obligations ever made in respect of these areas was in fact to the Jews, who were promised ‘close settlement’ of the land in which they were included.
Furthermore, Israel’s ‘occupation’ of these areas is legal twice over – since it merely gained them in a war of self-defence in 1967, and is thus legally entitled to hold onto them until the belligerents stop waging war upon it. Which they still have not.
As for the ‘Green Line’ itself, this is not a legal border. It has no significance other than where the cease-fire line was drawn in the war of 1948-49 when the Arabs tried to destroy the newly restored State of Israel. Indeed, the Armistice Agreements of 1949 stated that the demarcation lines were ‘not to be construed in any sense’ as political or territorial boundaries’, and were not in any way to prejudice the parties’ claims in ‘the ultimate peaceful settlement of the Palestine problem.’
Which ‘prejudice’ is of course, precisely what the EU is now busily imposing. Indeed, by effectively corralling Israel behind the 1949 armistice line it is forcing it back behind what has been called the ‘Auschwitz border’, since this line leaves Israel militarily indefensible against attack.
This is an act of malevolence. But the fault in large measure surely lies with Israel. For although some may find this incomprehensible, Israel does not make to the world the one case that matters – why Israelis are fully entitled under international law to build their homes in these territories; and exactly how Britain, the EU and the UN have grossly mis-stated and misapplied that international law.
Instead, Israel merely protests that the EU move will inhibit a peace settlement. Which it undoubtedly will. But it will do so principally by upending law, truth and justice – a case Israel never makes in public, thus allowing the irrational hatred of Israel in the west, fed by racist lies and propaganda, to spread its poison unchecked.
The reason it does not properly make this case is partly through the epic dysfunctionality of the Israeli political class (which could fill many volumes). It is partly through Israel’s isolation in the face of the bully-boys of the western diplomatic world. But it is also through Israel’s bleak and despairing judgement that the international community, composed of those who historically and presently were and are driven by obsessive hatred of the Jewish people and which finds expression for that hatred through vehicles such as the UN and EU, will always do the bidding of those who wish to destroy the Jews and is therefore impervious to reason and morality.
News of the EU’s act of existential spite against Israel broke on the fast of Tisha b’Av, when Jews mourn the destruction of the Temple (you know, that Temple, the one that stood in Jerusalem all those centuries ago before any Arabs existed, let alone any Green Line) along with the seemingly never-ending list down through the ages of all those prosecuting their uniquely murderous and baseless hatred of the Jewish people.
Some coincidence. To that list of infamy, the EU can now add its name. For shame.
@ Salomon Benzimra: Mr. Benzimra,
You are right. I should have said instead of the ZOA the WZO. It still represents Zionists worldwide. But apparently it is no longer in NY and has moved to Jerusalem.
From Wikipedia:
“The ZO served as an umbrella organization for the Zionist movement, whose objective was the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine – at that time under the Ottoman Empire and following the First World War The British Mandate of Palestine. When the State of Israel was declared 51 years later on May 14, 1948, many of its new administrative institutions were already in place, having evolved during the regular Zionist Congresses of the previous decades. Some of these institutions remain to this day. The WZO today consists of the following institutions: The World Zionist Unions, international Zionist Federations; and international organizations that define themselves as Zionist, such as WIZO, Hadassah, Bnai-Brith, Maccabi, the International Sephardic Federation, the three streams of world Judaism (Orthodox, Conservative, Reform), delegation from the CIS – Commonwealth of Independent States (former Soviet Union), the World Union of Jewish Students (WUJS), and more. The WZO’s headquarters was permanently moved to Jerusalem, after being located over the years in capitals of Europe, including Berlin and London, and most recently in New York City, in the United States.”
Do you think it is possible to get a statement from the WZO on their position on annexation by Israel of Judea and Samaria? East Jerusalem has already been annexed to my understanding.
I wouldn’t think you would want the Government of Israel involved. Too many leftists. Would you want Neve Gordon, Illan Pappe and the like who are Israeli citizens having a say in the matter? They appear to be anti-Zionists.
@ Salomon Benzimra: Mr. Benzimra,
You are right. I should have said instead of the ZOA the WZO. It still represents Zionists worldwide. But apparently it is no longer in NY and has moved to Jerusalem.
From Wikipedia:
“The ZO served as an umbrella organization for the Zionist movement, whose objective was the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine – at that time under the Ottoman Empire and following the First World War The British Mandate of Palestine. When the State of Israel was declared 51 years later on May 14, 1948, many of its new administrative institutions were already in place, having evolved during the regular Zionist Congresses of the previous decades. Some of these institutions remain to this day. The WZO today consists of the following institutions: The World Zionist Unions, international Zionist Federations; and international organizations that define themselves as Zionist, such as WIZO, Hadassah, Bnai-Brith, Maccabi, the International Sephardic Federation, the three streams of world Judaism (Orthodox, Conservative, Reform), delegation from the CIS – Commonwealth of Independent States (former Soviet Union), the World Union of Jewish Students (WUJS), and more. The WZO’s headquarters was permanently moved to Jerusalem, after being located over the years in capitals of Europe, including Berlin and London, and most recently in New York City, in the United States.”
Do you think it is possible to get a statement from the WZO on their position on annexation by Israel of Judea and Samaria. East Jerusalem has already been annexed to my understanding?
I wouldn’t think you would want the Government of Israel involved. Too many leftists. Would you want Neve Gordon, Illan Pappe and the like who are Israeli citizens having a say in the matter. They appear to be anti-Zionists.
Melanie should blame the ZOA instead. They are the representatives of World Jewry. It is they who own the political rights to Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem. However they are dependent on an entity capable of exercising sovereignty such as the Government of Israel.
There are a few (minor) inaccuracies in Melani Phillips’s otherwise great article:
1. International law is not as “contentious” as she thinks. Whereas international customary law might be somewhat contentious, treaties between nations are also part of international law and are far less contentious. Had they been so “contentious,” no one would lend any credibility to any bilateral or multinational treaty! (think, for instance, of Free Trade Agreements, the European treaties that gave birth (or rebirth) to countries such as Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia, etc.)
2. San Remo was not a Treaty: simply a decision, or “resolution” adopted by an authorized judicial power (the Supreme Council of the Allied Powers) to re-allocate Middle East territories, Palestine being one of them. That decision led to the Mandate for Palestine which is akin to an international treaty drafted on behalf of the League of Nations and later approved by its full membership (52 countries).
3. The British did not “give away three quarters of Palestine to the Hashemites…in 1922.” That year, they only cut off the “East Bank” of Palestine, which was in itself a violation of their trustee obligations. Only three years later, in 1925, under a separate agreement with Ibn Saud, Churchill extended the eastern boundaries of Transjordan up to Mesopotamia, thus leading to what is the Kingdom of Jordan today.
4. She writes: “As remains the case to this day they [the territories over the Green Line] merely constitute no-man’s land, having never been allocated to any ‘High Contracting’ sovereign state.” This is “de facto” true because of the Israeli Government’s unwillingness to incorporate these territories to Israel in 1967, as the provisions of the Mandate allowed it to do, “de jure.” We have been living in the shadow of that misdirected decision to this day, which has nothing to show for, other than a trail of bloodshed amounting to thousands of casualties on both sides.
But to Melanie Phillips’s credit, she rightly blames the Gov. of Israel for its apathy in availing itself of its rights under international law.
In 1922 52 nations approved this two step recognition of the ownership of political rights, conferring on World Jewry sovereignty over at least Palestine west of the Jordan River. Recognition of these rights, recorded in the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine survived the demise of the League of Nations in Article 80 of the UN Charter and were also preserved by the doctrine of “Acquired Rights”, a legal doctrine applied in International Law. Another legal doctrine, the doctrine of Estoppel, says that the nation-states who formerly recognized the rights of World Jewry in Palestine cannot change their minds on this subject.
In 1924, with the adoption of a treaty between the US and the UK entitled the Anglo-American Convention, what was International Law also became enforceable under the domestic law of the United States as “treaty law”.
Melanie Phillips can find my legal opinion on the foregoing at: Brand, ROOTS OF ISRAEL’S SOVEREIGNTY AND BOUNDARIES IN INTERNATIONAL LAW: IN DEFENSE OF THE LEVY REPORT http://www.think-israel.org/brand.allegedoccupation.html
Melanie is correct but she does not make the best case for the San Remo resolution conferring recognition of the ownership of the political rights over the disputed area and who is the beneficiary.
1. The San Remo resolution created a trust.
2. The trust res was the political rights to Palestine.
3. The creator of the trust was the Principal Allied War Powers gathered in San Remo.
4. The beneficiary of the trust was World Jewry.
5. The San Remo decision gave World Jewry what it had asked for at the Paris Peace talks — namely, exactly the same things that had been promised to them by the British Balfour policy encompassed in the Balfour Declaration.
6. The Balfour policy proposed two steps toward a reconstituted Jewish state. The first step was a Jewish National Home during the time that World Jewry had only a beneficial interest in those political rights. The tacit standards for the second step — legal dominion of the political rights vesting in World Jewry — were two. a. The Jews in the area to be governed must have a population majority, and b. they must have a capability for exercising sovereignty equal or better than a modern European nation-state. Without fulfillment of these standards, a Jewish government would be antidemocratic. The standards are shown in a Memorandum of the British Foreign Office dated September 19, 1917 written by Arnold Toynbee and Lewis Namier. The are also shown in the briefing documents of the American Delegation to the Paris Peace Talks. They are confirmed by the discussion of David Lloyd-George at the Paris Peace Talks and by the Arab delegation to the UNSCOP hearings recounting a meeting with Winston Churchill following WWI
7. In 1947, in Resolution 181, the UN General Assembly found that the Jews had attained the capability of exercising sovereignty, althought their recommended partition had no continuing force or effect. The Jews had been willing to give up some of its political rights, but the Arabs did not accept the UN’s recommendation.
8. By 1950 the Jews had attained a population majority in the area inside the Armistice line.
The GOI is 100% to blame for never objecting to the libel that jewish settlement is illegal. The leadership lacks dignity and perpetuates the image of the subservient Jew. BS words and begging whines followed by nothing of consequence. Pathetic govts that cannot even raise their voice against the most despicable of libels nor bring themselves to the minimum of action. At the very least stop all eu projects in YS. This should have been disallowed even before this slap in the jews face.
Europe is an enemy, and it is time Israel and its people treat is as such. Even if Bibi is too gutless to break diplomatic relations (as he should have done with Poland, the minute it had that Nazi vote last Friday), are the Israelis themselves demonstrating in front of these embassies? Are they organizing travel and purchase boycotts of European goods (I personally never buy European products – ever, I don’t fly Airbus, and will never travel to Europe again – I even endangered a previous job when I refused to travel to Europe)? Are they sending vicious and obcene e-mails to the EU and to European publications? Are hotels and restaurants refusing to serve non-Jewish Europeans?
If the Israeli people show their hatred for Europe, they might put a little spine in this government.