This policy
paper is the introduction of a forthcoming book to be published 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
exclusively for the Jewish people as the Jewish National Home, in recognition
of their historical connection with that country, 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.
