This paper discusses the
establishment of Israel, the state of the Jewish people, and the
rights of Jews to settle Palestine/the Land of Israel under public
international law. It explains why the Arab claim that there is a
legal right to a separate Arab state to be established in Judea,
Samaria and the Gaza Strip (“Yesha”), and the further claim that
Jewish settlement of Yesha is forbidden, have no basis in
international law.
Nonetheless, Israel has come
under incessant international pressure to recognize the “rights” of
the Arab people and to uproot the Jewish settlements in Yesha by
deporting hundreds of thousands of Jews and transferring them to tiny,
pre-1967 Israel. The international pressure has been supplemented by
internal pressure, exerted by Israeli Jewish citizens brought up to
prefer the comradeship among nations and universal values – even when
those were shattered by reality – to the basic needs of Jewish
national existence. The pressures from within and without made a part
of Israel’s Jewish population lose heart and start doubting the
justifiability of the Zionist endeavor itself. The Oslo agreements and
the Arab violence which has become part and parcel of the so-called
“peace process” since its inception, bear ample testimony to that.
It is submitted, however, that
international law does not compel Israel to agree to the establishment
of a sovereign Arab state west of the Jordan river. Neither is Israel
obliged to undo nor freeze the Jewish settlement of Yesha. Indeed, the
dangers emanating from an Arab terrorist state should make all lovers
and pursuers of true peace – not just a “peace process” – wary of such
a “solution” to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
