This paper is the introduction of
a forthcoming book on the legal rights and title of sovereignty of the
Jewish people to the Land of Israel and Palestine under international
law. These rights were recognized as inhering in the Jewish people
when the highest representatives of the Great Powers that had defeated
Germany and Turkey in World War I met at the Paris and San Remo Peace
Conferences in 1919 and 1920. Their purpose was to design a global
political and legal settlement to dispose of the conquered territories
that formerly belonged to the dissolved German and Turkish Empires.
Under this settlement, the whole of Palestine on both sides of the
Jordan was reserved, if not exclusively, for the Jewish people as the
Jewish national home, in recognition of their historical connection
with thatarea, dating from the Patriarchal period. Its boundaries were
to be delineated in accordance with the historical and Biblical
formula “from Dan to Beersheba” which denoted the entire Land of
Israel. The Arabs were accorded national rights in Syria, Mesopotamia
and Arabia, but not in Palestine. The British government as Mandatory,
Trustee and Tutor was charged with the obligation to create an
eventual independent Jewish state in Palestine, and for this purpose
only it could exercise the attributes of sovereignty vested in the
Jewish people.
The Palestine aspect of the
global settlement was recorded in three basic documents that led to
the founding of the modern State of Israel: the San Remo Resolution of
April 25, 1920, combining the Balfour Declaration with the general
provisions of Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations; the
Mandate for Palestine confirmed on July 24, 1922 and the
Franco-British Boundary Convention of December 23, 1920, supplemented
by the Anglo-American Convention of December 3, 1924 respecting the
Mandate for Palestine.
The British Government repudiated
the solemn obligation it undertook to develop Palestine gradually into
an independent Jewish state. This began with the Churchill White Paper
of June 3, 1922, and culminated with the MacDonald White Paper of May
17, 1939. The US aided and abetted the British betrayal of the Jewish
people by its abject failure to act decisively against the 1939 White
Paper despite its own legal obligation to do so under the 1924 treaty.
The UN Partition Resolution of November 29, 1947 illegally recommended
the restriction of Jewish legal rights to a truncated part of
Palestine. Astonishingly, the State of Israel has contributed to the
denial of Jewish legal rights to the entire country by illegally
transferring substantial areas of Judea, Samaria and Gaza to the PLO,
representing a mythical Arabic-speaking Gentile nation called
“Palestinians” who falsely pretend to hold the real title of
sovereignty over the country.
Despite all the subversive
actions to smother and destroy Jewish legal rights and title of
sovereignty to the entire Land of Israel, they still remain in full
force by virtue of the Principle of Acquired Rights and the Doctrine
of Estoppel that apply in all legal systems of the democratic world.