What Harvard Didn’t Want to Hear: Part I

A succinct exposition of facts and law in support of Israel’s lawful exercise of sovereignty over East Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria that Harvard and UCLA don’t want to hear.

Wallace Edward Brand, JD

Background (part of letter written by the author, a Harvard and UCLA alumnus, to UCLA):

On March 3,4 there was a conference held at Harvard on a one state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. In effect it was a “one Arab majority state” solution. The panel consisted of Arab academics and Israel post modern revisionist who are apologists for terrorism. The other side or sides were completely missing. Harvard would not accept our request to be part of a panel or make a presentation.

A similar conference was held or is soon to be held at UCLA. A second conference is likely at Harvard sponsored by Professor Alan Dershowitz of the Harvard Law School on a “two state solution” to the Arab Israeli conflict.

There are in fact three sides. That last would be “a one lawful state West of the Jordan River” solution. These three sides are akin to a three legged stool. When only one or two sides is presented it makes for a strong presentation but not a very balanced one.

I have been trying to find out how this third side could be presented at UCLA and I have been told by all my contacts at UCLA that it is impossible. They tell me that UCLA is just too politically correct. So I am making a last effort. I have published information on the three sides in an on-line blog entitled “Middle East and Terrorism” and a conservative Israeli newspaper called “Arutz Sheva”, and I hope, at the very least, that you will make the links available to students at UCLA so they have access to a balanced presentation to a solution for the Arab Israeli conflict.

At least three nation-states, the UK, the US and Canada allow evidence of legislative purpose to be admitted to show the meaning of a statute that is ambiguous.

What follows is a necessary minimum of that evidence to show the purpose of the Balfour Declaration that was adopted by the WWI Allies at San Remo that established the International Law provided by that Agreement and the British Mandate for Palestine.

It is widely accepted, but not correct, that the West Bank belongs to the local Arabs in Palestine who in 1964, at the suggestion of the Soviet dezinformatsia, decided to call themselves “Palestinians.” [1]

These “invented people” [2] also pretend they had long had a passion for self government. [3] The full extent of Israel’s claim of sovereignty has not recently been stated. At most, it is said by the Israeli government that no one has sovereignty over the West Bank, but that Israel has the better claim. [4]

A better view is that the Jews obtained a beneficial interest in sovereignty over all of Palestine in the 1922 enactment of the British Mandate for Palestine, that entrusted exclusive political or national rights in Palestine to Britain in trust for the benefit of the Jews that later matured into a legal interest on the abandonment of the trusteeship by Britain and the attainment of the Jews of a majority population.

The trusts or guardianships were to be called “mandates”.

It was in 1919 that Jan Smuts submitted a memorandum to the League, which later became Article 22. The Council of Ten drafted for the League of Nations as Part I of the Treaty of Versailles [5], an Article 22 providing for trusts and guardianships for the areas in The Middle East and North Africa captured by the WWI Allies from the Ottoman Empire. This concept was later applied to other areas. Article 22’s first two paragraphs provided a reasonably clear showing that a mandate was based on the longstanding British legal concepts of trusts and guardianships.

In 1917, in advance of the end of WWI, the British had drafted and published a policy for the disposition of the captured Ottoman lands in Palestine. [6] Britain and France were at that time following the “secret’ Sykes-Picot Agreement in their disposition of Ottoman Lands. But in recognition of the historic association of the Jews with Palestine, the Balfour Declaration, a British Policy approved it its Cabinet, provided for exclusive political or national rights in Palestine to be granted to the Jews.

The 1920 agreement of the WWI Allies at San Remo, on the terms of the Mandate turned what had been only a British Policy approved by the Cabinet, into International Law. Under Article 22 of the League of Nations Covenant, the rights were to be provided in trust, [7].

We know this because the Balfour policy had been attacked as antidemocratic, as giving sovereignty to the Jewish people who constituted only 60,000 of the total population of 600,000 in Palestine as of 1917.

In Jerusalem, the Jews had had a plurality of the population since 1845 and a majority since 1863, but in all of Palestine, in 1917 they constituted only 10% of the population. Even US President Woodrow Wilson was advancing that argument that award of sovereignty to a minority population was inconsistent with his 14 points that provided, among other things, for majority control.

To counter this argument, which they conceded was a good one, Arnold Toynbee and James Namier in the British Foreign Office, in a memorandum of September 19, 1917 [8] said the problem of control by a minority was “imaginary” because they predicted that the grant would be placed in trust and would not vest sovereignty in the Jews until the Jews fit to govern it on modern European state.

In my view these included attainment of a majority population, defined boundaries, unified control over all within the boundaries, etc.. Providing a National Home for Jews in Palestine with the British running the government until the Jews could attain a majority status based on favored immigration from the Jews in the Diaspora would be a temporary measure and not antidemocratic. [9]

The statement of the purpose of the British Mandate for Palestine in its Preamble and Article 2 is entirely consistent with this view although not express. [10]

What was the National Home, a reconstituted state? No, it was a place for the Jewish people to feel at home while the immigration was going on that would ultimately give the Jews a majority of the population and a reconstituted state. So that the staff of the British Mandatory Power, will know how to do that: Article 4 provides for the Zionist Organization to advise the mandate government staff. Part of Article 6 requires the staff of the Mandatory Power for The Administration of Palestine, to facilitate immigration of Jews. The Mandate does NOT provide that immigration of any other peoples is to be facilitated. (emphasis added) Article 5 provides that none of the land is to be ceded to a foreign power.

Who were the beneficiaries of the trust? Only the Jews, both those already in Palestine and many more scattered worldwide in the Diaspora since the time of the Roman Empire conquest of Palestine.

Howard Grief, who has provided the seminal work on the legal foundations of Israel under International Law, says one can conclude this because they are the only people mentioned to be dealt with specially. [11]The non-Jews are referred to only to ensure their civil and religious rights are to be protected.

CONTINUE