INTERNATIONAL LAW AND THE
JEWISH PEOPLE’S COLLECTIVE RIGHTS OF SETTLEMENT AND SELF-DETERMINATION IN THE
“Bereshit bara Elohim et HaShamayim v'et HaAretz.” (“In the Beginning
of [Time], God created the Heavens and the Earth.”) -- Genesis 1:1. In his
famous commentary on the very first phrase of the Torah, namely, “Bereshit” (“In the Beginning of”), Rashi
(Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, b.
1040 - d. 1105) states: “Rabbi Yitzchak said that it was not necessary for the
Torah to begin except with [the Commandment]: 'This month shall be for you [the
beginning of months.' -- Exodus 12:2], since this Commandment is the first
Commandment that Israel was commanded [to observe as a nation]. And what is the
reason that [instead] it [the Torah] begins with [the phrase]: ‘In the
Beginning of’? [This is] because of [the verse]: 'The Strength of His Deeds He
declared to His People, [in order] to give them the heritage of the nations.'
(Psalms 111:6). For, if the nations of the World should say to
For most nations, the claim of an illegal Jewish occupation of “Palestinian”
Arab territories is limited to the post-1967 districts of Judea,
In 1917 -- towards the end of World War I -- Great
Article 22 of the Covenant of the
ARTICLE 22
To those colonies and territories which as a consequence of the late war have ceased to be under the sovereignty of the States which formerly governed them and which are inhabited by peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world, there should be applied the principle that the well-being and development of such peoples form a sacred trust of civilisation and that securities for the performance of this trust should be embodied in this Covenant.
The best method of giving practical effect to this principle is that the tutelage of such peoples should be entrusted to advanced nations who by reason of their resources, their experience or their geographical position can best undertake this responsibility, and who are willing to accept it, and that this tutelage should be exercised by them as Mandatories on behalf of the League.
The character of the mandate must differ according to the stage of the development of the people, the geographical situation of the territory, its economic conditions, and other similar circumstances.
Certain communities formerly belonging to the Turkish Empire have reached a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognised subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone. The wishes of these communities must be a principal consideration in the selection of the Mandatory.
Other peoples, especially those of Central Africa, are at such a stage that the Mandatory must be responsible for the administration of the territory under conditions which will guarantee freedom of conscience and religion, subject only to the maintenance of public order and morals, the prohibition of abuses such as the slave trade, the arms traffic, and the liquor traffic, and the prevention of the establishment of fortifications or military and naval bases and of military training of the natives for other than police purposes and the defence of territory, and will also secure equal opportunities for the trade and commerce of other Members of the League.
There are territories, such as South-West Africa and certain of the South Pacific Islands, which, owing to the sparseness of their population, or their small size, or their remoteness from the centres of civilisation, or their geographical contiguity to the territory of the Mandatory, and other circumstances, can be best administered under the laws of the Mandatory as integral portions of its territory, subject to the safeguards above mentioned in the interests of the indigenous population.
In every case of mandate, the Mandatory shall render to the Council an annual report in reference to the territory committed to its charge.
The degree of authority, control, or administration to be exercised by the Mandatory shall, if not previously agreed upon by the Members of the League, be explicitly defined in each case by the Council.
A permanent Commission shall be constituted to receive and examine the annual reports of the Mandatories and to advise the Council on all matters relating to the observance of the mandates.
At the
Prior to its conquest by Great Britain during World War I, the non-sovereign territory of Palestine had been occupied, with brief interruptions, by the Ottoman Empire since 1517 and, before that, by an unbroken line of empires stretching back in History to imperial Rome which, after crushing the third and final revolt of the Jewish people against its hated Occupation in 135, had changed the Land's name from Judea, the Latin-language word for which was Iudaea, meaning Land of the Jews, to Palestine, the Latin-language word for which was Palaestina, meaning Land of the Philistines (a long-extinct Aegean people who had disappeared from History more than 700 years earlier after being extirpated by the Babylonian Empire), as part of an unabashed effort to delegitimize any further national Jewish claims to the Land. Although, as further punishment for the uprising, the Romans also massacred and expelled much of the Land's Jewish population, the remainder thereof continued to reside throughout the Land (including the areas of Galilee, Negev, Arava, Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem, Gaza and Golan Heights) under the Roman and all successive Occupations -- including that of the colonialist Islamic Arab Empire commencing in the 7th Century -- through the advent of the Mandate for Palestine.
The Mandate for
The Mandate for
MANDATE FOR
Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have agreed, for the purpose of giving effect to the provisions of Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, to entrust to a Mandatory selected by the said Powers the administration of the territory of Palestine, which formerly belonged to the Turkish Empire, within such boundaries as may be fixed by them; and
Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country; and
Whereas recognition has thereby been given to the
historical connection of the Jewish people with
Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have selected
His Britannic Majesty as the Mandatory for
Whereas the mandate in respect of
Whereas His Britannic Majesty has accepted the mandate in respect of Palestine and undertaken to exercise it on behalf of the League of Nations in conformity with the following provisions; and
Whereas by the aforementioned Article 22 (paragraph 8), it is provided that the degree of authority, control or administration to be exercised by the Mandatory, not having been previously agreed upon by the Members of the League, shall be explicitly defined by the Council of the League Of Nations;
Confirming the said Mandate, defines its terms as follows:
ARTICLE 1 The Mandatory shall have full powers of legislation and of administration, save as they may be limited by the terms of this Mandate.
ARTICLE 2
The Mandatory shall be responsible for placing the country under such
political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the
establishment of the Jewish national home, as laid down in the Preamble, and
the development of self-governing institutions, and also for safeguarding the
civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of
ARTICLE 3 The Mandatory shall, so far as circumstances permit, encourage local autonomy.
ARTICLE 4 An appropriate Jewish agency shall be recognized as a public body for the purpose of advising and cooperating with the Administration of Palestine in such economic, social and other matters as may affect the establishment of the Jewish national home and the interests of the Jewish population in Palestine, and, subject always to the control of the Administration, to assist and take part in the development of the country.
The Zionist organization, so long as its organization and constitution are, in the opinion of the Mandatory, appropriate, shall be recognized as such agency. It shall take steps in consultation with His Britannic Majesty's Government to secure the cooperation of all Jews who are willing to assist in the establishment of the Jewish national home.
ARTICLE 5
The Mandatory shall be responsible for seeing that no
ARTICLE 6 The Administration of Palestine, while ensuring that the rights and position of other sections of the population are not prejudiced, shall facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable conditions and shall encourage, in cooperation with the Jewish agency referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews on the Land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes.
ARTICLE 7
The Administration of Palestine shall be responsible for enacting a nationality
law. There shall be included in this law provisions framed so as to facilitate
the acquisition of Palestinian citizenship by Jews who take up their permanent
residence in
. . .
In sum, except as set forth in Article 25 of the Mandate for Palestine (discussed below), although the Arabs and other non-Jews residing in Mandatory Palestine were to retain their individual rights therein, the Jews thereof were to be accorded exclusive national rights thereto (i.e., collective sovereignty over the Land upon its independence) as a measure of restorative justice for the Jewish people.
Per the second paragraph of the Preamble, the League of Nations, in formally issuing its Mandate For Palestine, chose to explicitly incorporate therein the principles set forth in the letter of November 2, 1917 from British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to Zionist leader Lionel Walter Rothschild, commonly known as the Balfour Declaration, thereby elevating these principles from a mere statement of British policy with respect to the final disposition of the non-sovereign territory of Palestine to a foundation of international law with respect thereto. That letter states, in full, as follows:
November 2nd, 1917
Dear Lord Rothschild,
I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.
"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."
I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.
Yours sincerely,
Arthur James Balfour
Although, from 1915 onwards, diplomatic representatives of Great Britain had also made various written declarations to foreign Arab leaders (such as the 1915 - 1916 letters from Henry McMahon, British High Commissioner of Egypt, to Hussein ibn Ali, Sherif of Mecca and ruler of the Hejaz region of Arabia) which, to a greater or lesser degree, contradicted the principles set forth in the 1917 Balfour Declaration, thereby negating the concept of eventual Jewish sovereignty over the Land of Israel, and although, in June 1922, the British government even issued an official White Paper (known as the Command Paper of 1922) explicitly stating that the reestablishment of the Jewish national home in Mandatory Palestine was not intended to result in Jewish sovereignty over any portion of the Land, the subsequent formal issuance by the League of Nations of its Mandate for Palestine necessarily superseded all such declarations. This is especially so because, unlike the League of Nations which was internationally authorized pursuant to Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations of the Treaty of Versailles to establish a legal mandate for the temporary governance of the non-sovereign territory of Palestine until its independence as a sovereign Jewish state, the country of Great Britain possessed no international authority to legally effect, whether by means of anti-Zionist or philo-Zionist pronouncements, the post-World War I status or final disposition of that territory.
The Land governed by the Mandate for Palestine, consisting of 120,450 square kilometers, included territory lying west of the Jordan River, comprising 26,990 square kilometers (22% of the Land) and described as cis-Jordania (consisting of the districts of Judea, Samaria, the eastern portion of Jerusalem and Gaza, comprising 6,220 square kilometers (5% of the Land), and territory which later became modern Israel within its 1949 armistice demarcation lines, comprising 20,770 square kilometers (17% of the Land)), as well as territory lying east of the Jordan River, comprising 93,460 square kilometers (78% of the Land) and described as trans-Jordania (consisting of the Golan Heights, comprising 1,160 square kilometers (1% of the Land), and territory which later became Transjordan, precursor to modern Jordan, comprising 92,300 square kilometers (77% of the Land)). This data is restated in the following table:
|
cis-Jordania portion of Mandatory Palestine |
Land Area by Square Kilometer |
Land Area by Square Mile |
Percentage of Mandatory |
|
Judea & Samaria & eastern portion of |
6,220 sq. km. |
2,402 sq. miles |
5% |
|
|
20,770 sq. km. |
8,019 sq. miles |
17% |
|
Total for cis-Jordania (western portion of Mandatory Palestine) |
26,990 sq. km. |
10,421 sq. miles |
22% |
|
trans-Jordania portion of Mandatory Palestine |
Land Area by Square Kilometer |
Land Area by Square Mile |
Percentage of Mandatory |
|
|
1,160 sq. km. |
448 sq. miles |
1% |
|
|
92,300 sq. km. |
35,637 sq. miles |
77% |
|
Total for trans-Jordania (eastern portion of Mandatory Palestine) |
93,460 sq. km. |
36,085 sq. miles |
78% |
|
GRAND TOTAL |
120,450 sq. km. |
46,506 sq. miles |
100% |
Later in 1922, Great Britain, as Mandatory of the Mandate for Palestine, severed
from the Jewish national home virtually all of the lands of the trans-Jordania portion of Mandatory Palestine, namely, that
large portion thereof situated between the Jordan River and the Iraqi-Arabian
frontiers, by barring all Jewish immigration thereto and land
purchases therein and by creating therefrom
the semi-autonomous Emirate of Transjordan, as a possession under
British tutelage for Abdullah ibn Hussein and his
Hashemite and allied clans after the Hashemite dynasty began losing the civil
war launched against it by Abd el-Aziz ibn Saud and his Wahhabist clans
for control over Arabia. Subsequently, in 1946,
Article 25 thereof states, in full, as follows:
In the territories lying between the Jordan and the eastern boundary of Palestine as ultimately determined, the Mandatory shall be entitled, with the consent of the Council of the League of Nations, to postpone or withhold application of such provisions of this Mandate as he may consider inapplicable to the existing local conditions, and to make such provision for the administration of the territories as he may consider suitable to those conditions, provided that no action shall be taken which is inconsistent with the provisions of Articles 15, 16 and 18.
Article 15 thereof states, in full, as follows:
The Mandatory shall see that complete freedom of
conscience and the free exercise of all forms of worship, subject only to the
maintenance of public order and morals, are ensured to all. No discrimination
of any kind shall be made between the inhabitants of
After
Yet opponents of Jewish sovereignty in any portion of Mandatory Palestine often
claim that the Mandate for
The first response to this claim is that the entirety of Mandatory Palestine was intended to become independent. It will be recalled that, pursuant to the fourth paragraph of Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations of the Treaty of Versailles, and by virtue of being designated as a Class A mandate by the League of Nations, the entirety of Mandatory Palestine was officially recognized as being among those former Ottoman-occupied lands which “... have reached a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognised subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone.”
The second response to this claim is that, except as set forth in Article 25 of the Mandate for Palestine, the Jews of Mandatory Palestine were granted national rights thereto in the form of a “Jewish national home” (Mandate for Palestine, Preamble, Paragraphs 2 & 3; and Articles 2 & 4), while the Gentiles of Mandatory Palestine were accorded only “civil and religious rights” therein (Mandate for Palestine, Preamble, Paragraph 2; and Article 2). It necessarily follows that whenever Mandatory Palestine attained independence its Jewish population would continue to be the repository of exclusive national rights therein. If it were otherwise, then Article 25 of the Mandate would have been completely superfluous. Article 25, which authorized the legal separation of (virtually all of) the eastern portion of Mandatory Palestine from the western portion of Mandatory Palestine, was created and subsequently executed precisely because, otherwise, the entirety of Mandatory Palestine would have become independent as a Jewish state only. Accordingly, Article 25 constituted the Mandate’s only legal mechanism for creating from Mandatory Palestine an independent Arab state; and Article 25 applied, by its terms, only to the eastern Mandatory lands that eventually became the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
Consequently, in light of Article 25 of the Mandate, the entirety of
the
However, very soon,
Around the time of the announcement of the Mandate, the Arabs of the cis-Jordania portion of Mandatory Palestine had begun a
campaign of terror attacks (via bombings, knifings and shootings) and riots
against the Jewish population thereof.
For example, in March 1920, the Arabs destroyed the nascent Jewish
These assaults, punctuated by periods of calm, culminated in the coordinated atrocities of August 1929 during which the Arabs of Hebron massacred 67 of their Jewish neighbors -- leading the British Mandatory authorities, not to arrest the perpetrators of the massacre, but rather to expel the remainder of Hebron's ancient Jewish community -- and during which the Arabs of Tulkarm, Jenin, Nablus, Gaza and other Arab-dominated localities also murdered and expelled the Jewish communities within their midst.
In 1933, as Jewish immigration increased in the wake of Adolf Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor of Germany, Arab violence again exploded, not only against the Jewish population of the western portion of Mandatory Palestine, but, for the first time, also against British Mandatory authorities.
These periodic assaults again spiked in April 1936 when the leadership of the Arabs of the cis-Jordania portion of Mandatory Palestine launched a series of terror attacks (again via bombings, knifings and shootings) and riots against Jewish population centers and British Mandatory authorities, which jihad the Arab world denominated as “The Great Arab Revolt”.
Alarmed by the continuing Arab violence, the British government impaneled a Palestine Royal Commission in August 1936 to determine the causes of the Arab unrest and the means by which it might be ameliorated. In July 1937, the Commission issued its report, commonly known as the Peel Commission Report, to the British Parliament, which report stated, in Chapter IV thereof (entitled “The Disturbances of 1936”), as follows:
The underlying causes of the disturbances of 1936
were --
(1) The desire of the Arabs for national independence;
(2) their hatred and fear of the establishment of the Jewish National Home.
Consequently, the Peel Commission Report concluded that, despite the express
terms of the Mandate for
The Arab jihad continued to rage over the next 3 years due, in large part, to the support that it received from Nazi Germany. The Nazis, in addition to providing clandestine funding and armaments to the leadership of the jihad, also infiltrated its agents into the western portion of Mandatory Palestine in order to provide tactical advice in aid of the jihad.
The leader of the Arab jihad was Haj Amin al-Husseini. As the British-appointed Grand Mufti of
Jerusalem (also head of the Supreme Muslim Council) and as the Arab-appointed
Chairman of the Arab Higher Committee, al-Husseini was the paramount spiritual
and political leader of the Arabs of the cis-Jordania portion of Mandatory
Palestine. However, in 1937, he fled
Mandatory Palestine for Nazi Germany, later helping to establish several Muslim
Nazi battalions in Bosnia (which participated in the deportation and transit of
Jews to various death camps), assisting in the creation of an Arab Nazi
government in Iraq (which, at that time, had a substantial Jewish population),
and becoming one of German Chancellor Adolf Hitler’s personal advisors on the
annihilation of the Jewish people during World War II. After the War, he was given asylum in
Declassified information from British and German archives reveals the close relationship that developed between Nazi Germany and the “Palestinian” Arabs during the jihad of 1936 - 1939.
Republished below, in full, is an article from ynetnew.com, the English-language website of the Israeli newspaper Yediot Achronot, published on May 7, 2006, that summarizes and excerpts this information:
Nazis ‘shipped arms to Palestinians’
British National Archives unveil presence of
Nazi S.S. agents in Mandatory Palestine, working closely with Palestinian
leaders
By: Yaakov Lappin, ynetnew.com, 05.07.06
Historical documents in
A British Foreign Office report from 1939 reports
of “news of a consignment of arms from
British documents from the same period, and German records photographed by an American spy and sent to the British government, said that a number of Nazi agents were sent to Mandatory Palestine, in order to forge alliances with Palestinian leaders, and urge them to reject a partition of the land between the Jewish and Arab populations.
One Nazi agent, Adam Vollhardt,
arrived in
“
German documents photographed and sent to
‘Arabs admire our Fuhrer’
“The Palestinian Arabs show on all levels a great
sympathy for the new
A second Nazi agent, Dr. Franz Reichart,
was reported to be actively working with Palestinian Arabs by the British
Criminal Investigation Division “to help coordinate Arab and German
propaganda.” Reichart was also head of the German
Telegraphic Agency in
German records show that the Nazis viewed the establishment of a Jewish state with great concern. A 1937 report from German General Consulate in Palestine said: “The formation of a Jewish state… is not in Germany’s interest because a (Jewish) Palestinian state would create additional national power bases for international Jewry such as for example the Vatican State for political Catholicism or Moscow for the Communists. Therefore, there is a German interest in strengthening the Arabs as a counterweight against such possible power growth of the Jews.”
Jewish refugees abandoned
The records also show that the news of increased Nazi-Arab cooperation panicked the British government, and caused it to cancel a plan in 1938 to bring to Palestine 20,000 German Jewish refugees, half of them children, facing danger from the Nazis.
Documents show that after deciding that the move
would upset Arab opinion,
“His Majesty’s Government asked His Majesty’s
Representatives in
“If war were to break out, no trouble that the Jews could occasion us, in Palestine or elsewhere, could weigh for a moment against the importance of winning Muslim opinion to our side,” Britain’s Minister for Coordination of Defence, Lord Chatfield, told the British cabinet in 1939, shortly before Britain reversed its decision to partition its mandate, promising instead all of the land to the Palestinian Arabs.
Although Great Britain’s decision to curry favor with the belligerent Arab population of the cis-Jordania portion of Mandatory Palestine, as well as with the larger Arab and (non-Arab) Muslim worlds, by impeding mass Jewish flight from Nazi Germany to the western portion of Mandatory Palestine constituted yet another serious breach of its Mandatory obligations to the Jewish people, such informal ad hoc decision-making did not yet represent a formal and absolute bar to further Jewish immigration.
However, in 1939, as its official response to the sustained Arab violence
of the preceding three years, and in an effort -- largely unsuccessful -- to
wean the Arab populations of Mandatory Palestine and the larger Middle East
away from their open support of Nazi Germany (as the latter was beginning its
conquest of Europe), Great Britain, with the support of the United States, further
violated the provisions of the Mandate for Palestine by issuing an
infamous manifesto, commonly known as the Palestine White Paper of 1939. The White Paper, while ostensibly asserting fealty
to the stated goals of the Mandate, in fact subverted the Mandate's
raison d'être by essentially declaring that, no later than 1949, an Arab-dominated
state -- the Jewish component of which was to be limited to one third
of the population thereof in order to assuage expressed Arab fears regarding
eventual Jewish preeminence therein -- would be established in the remaining
territory of Mandatory Palestine (i.e., the entirety of the western portion of
Mandatory Palestine, namely, the districts of Judea, Samaria, the eastern
portion of Jerusalem and Gaza, as well as the territory that would later become
modern Israel within its 1949 armistice demarcation lines). Specifically, the White Paper declared that,
for the period from April 1, 1939 to March 31, 1944 (a period virtually
coetaneous with the Holocaust), total Jewish immigration thereto would
be limited to a maximum of 75,000 (i.e., a maximum of 10,000
immigrants per year for 5 years with the possible aggregate addition of another
25,000 immigrants meeting special criteria, subject to the proviso that Great
Britain would reduce even this paltry annual “legal” Jewish
immigration by its estimate of the number of “illegal” Jewish immigrants); and
that, commencing April 1, 1944, absent the prior consent of the Arab
leadership of the cis-Jordania portion of Mandatory
Palestine, any Jewish immigration thereto would be absolutely prohibited.
Moreover, the White Paper also declared that, henceforth, even
“legal” Jewish residents would be severely restricted in their ability to
purchase land in the cis-Jordania portion of
Mandatory Palestine. In contrast to the White Paper's restrictions on Jewish
immigration and land purchases, British policy otherwise permitted unrestricted
Arab immigration to the cis-Jordania portion of
Mandatory Palestine -- mostly from the surrounding Arab lands which now
comprise the modern states of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt -- and
placed no restrictions on their ability to acquire land
there. For example, the Bedouin Arab
tribes presently residing in northern
In addition to the British policy of responding to Arab terrorism by barring further Jewish land purchases and by instituting a graduated ban on Jewish immigration, the Mandatory authorities, in a further effort to appease the hostile Arab population, and at the behest of the local Muslim religious authorities, also humiliated the Jewish population by hobbling the latter’s prayer services at the Western Wall of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount by means of such measures as prohibiting the use of chairs and benches for worshippers’ comfort, prohibiting the use of even a portable mechitza (the prayer partition placed between the genders, as required by Jewish tradition), prohibiting “loud” public prayer, and prohibiting the blowing of the shofar (the ram’s horn) during Rosh HaShana (as required by the Torah) and at the end of Yom Kippur services (as required by Jewish tradition).
And, while the fires of the Holocaust consumed Europe's Jewry, Great Britain
-- in abject contravention of the dictates of Morality and every fiduciary
obligation to the Jewish people imposed upon it by the Mandate for Palestine --
ruthlessly implemented its illegal White Paper, this despite the fact that the League
of Nations had refused to approve it. In furtherance thereof,
So it was that, at the malevolent hands of
By the end of 1943, it had become clear that Nazi Germany would eventually
be vanquished, but not before millions more Jews would be annihilated as part
of its death throes. It was also clear
that
In 1946, the
This crisis resulted in the passage of United Nations General Assembly Resolution no. 181 (II) on November 29, 1947, commonly known as the Palestine Partition Plan, which called for the termination of the Mandate for Palestine and for the division of its remaining territory -- namely, the western portion thereof, consisting of 22% of original Mandatory Palestine -- into three separate entities: (1) an independent Jewish state (comprised of 3 small barely-adjoined cantons, constituting slightly less than 11% of original Mandatory Palestine), (2) an independent Arab state (comprised of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, as well as significant portions of what would later comprise Israel within its 1949 armistice demarcation lines, constituting slightly less than 11% of original Mandatory Palestine), and (3) a U.N.-administered Special International Regime comprised of Jerusalem and certain of its environs (including Bethlehem), all of which would, however, be joined together in a supranational economic union.
Although, under the United Nations Charter of 1945 (per Chapter IV thereof, entitled “The General Assembly”, encompassing Articles 10 through 22 thereof), General Assembly resolutions merely constitute the informed recommendations of the international community (and are, consequently, not legally binding upon the parties to any dispute), and although this Resolution actually violated international law, namely, Article 5 of the Mandate for Palestine (which Mandate provision forbade ceding any portion of the Jewish national home to a foreign Power, and which Mandate provision was made binding upon the nascent United Nations per Article 80 of the U.N. Charter (discussed below)), the Jewish leadership of the cis-Jordania portion of Mandatory Palestine nevertheless accepted this non-binding and transgressive Resolution, subject, of course, to the Resolution's acceptance, as well, by the Arab leadership of the cis-Jordania portion of Mandatory Palestine.
In legal terminology, the Jewish leadership of the cis-Jordania portion of Mandatory Palestine offered to enter into an implied interdependent bilateral contract with the Arab leadership of the cis-Jordania portion of Mandatory Palestine, pursuant to the provisions of the Palestine Partition Plan, for the peaceful division of the western portion of Mandatory Palestine into a Jewish state, an Arab state and an internationalized greater Jerusalem.
However, despite the fact that the Resolution’s implementation would have carved out from original Mandatory Palestine a second Arab state after Transjordan, the Arab leadership -- both Muslim and Christian -- of the cis-Jordania portion of Mandatory Palestine, as well as the leaders of Transjordan and all the Arab and (non-Arab) Muslim countries which were then members of the U.N. (namely, Afghanistan, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey and Yemen), rejected the Resolution by both declaration and conduct. Not surprisingly, Great Britain, which -- despite the annihilation wreaked upon the Jewish people by the Holocaust -- had long-devolved from being a proponent to being an opponent of Jewish settlement and self-determination in the biblical Land of Israel (in rank violation of its express fiduciary obligations under the Mandate for Palestine), refused to vote in favor of the Palestine Partition Plan; rather, it abstained.
Immediately after the Palestine Partition Plan’s passage on November 29,
1947, as a result of their rejection of any Jewish sovereignty in any portion
of Mandatory Palestine, local Arab militias drawn from villages, towns and
cities throughout the biblical Land of Israel, as well as hundreds of foreign
Arabs and (non-Arab) Muslims who began to infiltrate the Land as part of the
League of Arab States’ “Arab Liberation Army” commanded by Fawzi
el-Kaukji, commenced a sustained jihad against the
Jewish communities there with little interference -- and, sometimes,
even with overt assistance -- from Great Britain, representing an
exponential increase in the anti-Jewish violence that had periodically swept
through the Land since the announcement of the Mandate in 1920. In fact, from December 1947 through March
1948, almost 1,000 Jews were murdered by Arab militias who attacked both
isolated Jewish villages and Jewish neighborhoods of mixed cities, regardless
of whether they were situated inside or outside of the Partition
Plan lines. At the outset of this
period, in an effort to isolate and starve the Jewish neighborhoods of
Finally, in early April 1948 -- in response to these ongoing atrocities and
to British indifference and, at times, hostility to the plight of the
victimized Jewish population -- the Hagana militia
began to counterattack and to capture hostile Arab villages as well as hostile
Arab neighborhoods of mixed cities.
Eventually, many Arab villages were razed to the ground, and some mixed
cities, such as Tiberias and Safed,
became all-Jewish cities. For example,
in early April 1948, the Arab residents of Tiberias
-- a town situated on the western shores of
On May 14, 1948, as British occupation forces were completing their withdrawal from the cis-Jordania portion of Mandatory Palestine, and as Arabs continued to attack Jewish-populated areas both outside and inside of the Partition Plan lines, the Jewish leadership thereof nonetheless announced the creation of the State of Israel (effective May 15, 1948) within the U.N.-recommended Palestine Partition Plan lines -- within which boundaries Jews then constituted approximately 60% of the population -- declaring, in part: “The State of Israel is prepared to cooperate with the agencies and representatives of the United Nations in implementing the resolution of the General Assembly of the 29th of November, 1947; and will take steps to bring about the economic union of the whole of the Land of Israel” (Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, Paragraph 14). The next day, the local Arab militias and foreign infiltrators which had been conducting a jihad against the Jewish communities in the western portion of Mandatory Palestine since the issuance of the Palestine Partition Plan were joined by the invading armies of six Arab countries (-- Lebanon, Syria, Transjordan, Egypt, Iraq and Saudi Arabia --), all of which attempted to annihilate the Jewish State within its nonviable 1947 Partition Plan lines, and to thereby illegally effect the retroactive nullification of the internationally-sanctioned Mandatory enterprise.
Many of the Transjordanian and Egyptian forces
which attacked the nascent State of Israel were trained and led by British
officers. In addition, while
In legal terminology, the Arab leadership of the cis-Jordania portion of Mandatory Palestine (with the substantial assistance of their many allies, including Great Britain) repudiated the existence of any implied contract with the Jewish leadership of the cis-Jordania portion of Mandatory Palestine for the peaceful division of the western portion of Mandatory Palestine, thereby absolving the Jewish leadership from any further legal obligation to comply with the repudiated Palestine Partition Plan.
Consequently, since the repudiated Palestine Partition Plan was never implemented, the Mandate was not terminated thereby. However, the earlier creation by Great Britain, as Mandatory, of the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan in 1946 and the subsequent establishment, by the resident Jewish population thereof, of the State of Israel in 1948 did legally remove those newly-independent areas from the Mandate's ambit, thereafter leaving only the districts of Judea, Samaria, the eastern portion of Jerusalem and Gaza, then illegally-occupied by Transjordan and Egypt (as well as the Golan Heights, then illegally-occupied by Syria) still subject to the provisions of the Mandate.
During Israel’s War of Independence, approximately 600,000 Arab
belligerents, constituting approximately 80% of the Arabs residing upon the
lands which would become Israel within its 1949 armistice demarcation lines,
fled or were expelled therefrom, while the remaining
150,000 Arabs thereof (who, while generally hostile to the creation of the
Jewish State, did not actively participate in the war to destroy it) were not
only permitted to remain within the State of Israel but were granted full
citizenship rights therein, including national voting rights, in addition to
which they were granted a blanket exemption from compulsory military service
therein. Nevertheless,
In the aftermath of their unsuccessful effort to destroy
Yet, despite Israel’s territorial gains during its War of Independence, the
Jewish State was, nonetheless, a tenuous creation, being a mere 18
kilometers (approximately 11 miles) wide opposite the western edge
of the coastal city of Tel Aviv (i.e., the Mediterranean Sea), and a miniscule 15
kilometers (approximately 9 miles) wide at its narrowest point opposite the
western edge of the coastal city of Netanya
(i.e., the Mediterranean Sea), with the Transjordanian
army encircling the Jewish-controlled western portion of Jerusalem and
its environs on three sides, with that same Arab army controlling a
territorial salient at Latrun overlooking, and
consequently capable of blocking, the Tel Aviv – Jerusalem highway (this still
being, at that time, the sole road linking the western portion of Jerusalem
with the remainder of Israel), and with the Syrian army stationed on the peaks
of the hills which dominate the entire Upper Galilee region of
Israel, including Israel’s largest body of fresh water -- Lake Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) -- which constitutes 40%
of the Jewish State’s water supply, thereby setting the stage for the
next pan-Arab onslaught that would be launched against Israel nearly two
decades later, namely, the 1967 Six Day War.
Meanwhile, in the process of their illegal conquest of the cis-Jordania portion of Mandatory Palestine, the invading Arab armies, together with their local Arab allies, destroyed all of the extant Jewish communities in the newly Arab-occupied areas -- both those which were created under the authority of the Mandate (such as the Gush Etzion grouping of villages in Judea, the Kfar Darom and Nitzanim villages in Gaza, and the Atarot and Neve Yaakov villages in the Jerusalem area) and those which had existed from time immemorial (such as the ancient Jewish neighborhoods situated in the eastern portion of Jerusalem which now thereby joined the ancient Jewish neighborhoods of Hebron as well as other Arab-dominated cities which had been destroyed almost two decades earlier); and these aggressors massacred and expelled all of the Jewish inhabitants thereof. Moreover, not being content with having extirpated the entire Jewish population from the newly Arab-occupied Old City of Jerusalem, the victorious Arabs also desecrated and razed all 58 synagogues in the Old City and vandalized 75% of the Jewish gravestones on the nearby Mount of Olives cemetery. Nevertheless, Transjordan's illegal military occupation, from 1948 to 1967, of Judea, Samaria and the eastern portion of Jerusalem (as a result of which the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan, now occupying lands on both banks of the Jordan River, thereupon renamed itself the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan) and Egypt's illegal military occupation, from 1948 to 1967 of Gaza, as well as both countries' concomitant destruction of all preexisting Jewish communities there, did not remove these now Judenrein (cleansed of Jews) areas from the lawful authority of the Mandate. Accordingly, the internationally-authorized Mandatory rights inhering in the Jewish people to effect “... close settlement by Jews on the Land ...” (Mandate for Palestine, Article 6) and to reconstitute therein “... the Jewish national home ...” (Mandate for Palestine, Articles 2 & 4) have continued to apply to Judea, Samaria, the eastern portion of Jerusalem, and Gaza (and, as well, to the Golan Heights) until this very Day.
This seldom-acknowledged truth of international law is reinforced by the
fact that the 1949 Armistice Agreements -- which were negotiated under
supervision of the United Nations and which ostensibly terminated Israel's War
of Independence -- essentially declared that the armistice demarcation lines
that encompassed Israel at the end of that war were not to be deemed its
lawful international boundaries but only military
separation-of-forces lines determined without prejudice to the combatant
parties’ “... rights, claims and positions ... in the ultimate peaceful
settlement of the Palestine question ...” (Israel-Egypt Armistice Agreement,
Article XI; Israel-Lebanon Armistice Agreement, Article II, Paragraph 2;
Israel-Jordan Armistice Agreement, Article II, Paragraph 2; and Israel-Syria
Armistice Agreement, Article II, Paragraph 2); and, amazingly, this same
juridical formulation was applied to Israel's armistice demarcation line with
Lebanon even though that line was identical to the former
international boundary between the cis-Jordania
portion of Mandatory Palestine and Lebanon. Yet, how did
The four Armistice Agreements, operatively state, in salient part, as follows:
Israel-Egypt Armistice Agreement dated February 24, 1949
. . .
Article IV
With specific reference to the implementation of the resolutions of the Security Council of 4 and 16 November 1948, the following principles and purposes are affirmed:
1. The principle that no military or political advantage should be gained under the truce ordered by the Security Council is recognized.
2. It is also recognized that the basic purposes and spirit of the Armistice would not be served by the restoration of previously held military positions, changes from those now held other than as specifically provided for in this Agreement, or by the advance of the military forces of either side beyond positions held at the time this Armistice Agreement is signed.
3. It is further recognized that rights, claims or interests of a non-military character in the area of Palestine covered by this Agreement may be asserted by either Party, and that these, by mutual agreement being excluded from the Armistice negotiations, shall be, at the discretion of the Parties, the subject of later settlement. It is emphasized that it is not the purpose of this Agreement to establish, to recognize, to strengthen, or to weaken or nullify, in any way, any territorial, custodial or other rights, claims or interests which may be asserted by either Party in the area of Palestine or any part or locality thereof covered by this Agreement, whether such asserted rights, claims or interests derive from Security Council resolutions, including the resolution of 4 November 1948 and the Memorandum of 13 November 1948 for its implementation, or from any other source. The provisions of this Agreement are dictated exclusively by military considerations and are valid only for the period of the Armistice.
Article V
1. The line described in Article VI of this Agreement shall be designated as the Armistice Demarcation Line and is delineated in pursuance of the purpose and intent of the resolutions of the Security Council of 4 and 16 November 1948.
2. The Armistice Demarcation Line is not to be
construed in any sense as a political or territorial boundary, and is
delineated without prejudice to rights, claims and positions of either Party to
the Armistice as regards ultimate settlement of the
3. The basic purpose of the Armistice Demarcation Line is to delineate the line beyond which the armed forces of the respective Parties shall not move except as provided in Article III of this Agreement.
. . .
Article XI
No provision of this Agreement shall in any way
prejudice the rights, claims and positions of either Party hereto in the
ultimate peaceful settlement of the
. . .
Israel-Lebanon Armistice Agreement, dated March 23, 1949
. . .
Article II
With a specific view to the implementation of the resolution of the Security Council of 16 November 1948, the following principles and purposes are affirmed:
1. The principle that no military or political advantage should be gained under the truce ordered by the Security Council is recognized.
2. It is also recognized that no provision of this
Agreement shall in any way prejudice the rights, claims and positions of either
Party hereto in the ultimate peaceful settlement of the
. . .
Article IV
1. The line described in Article V of this Agreement shall be designated as the Armistice Demarcation Line and is delineated in pursuance of the purpose and intent of the resolution of the Security Council of 16 November 1948.
2. The basic purpose of the Armistice Demarcation Line is to delineate the line beyond which the armed forces of the respective Parties shall not move.
. . .
Article V
1. The Armistice Demarcation Line shall follow the
international boundary between the
. . .
Israel-Jordan Armistice Agreement, dated April 3, 1949
. . .
Article II
With a specific view to the implementation of the resolution of the Security Council of 16 November 1948, the following principles and purposes are affirmed:
1. The principle that no military or political advantage should be gained under the truce ordered by the Security Council is recognized;
2. It is also recognized that no provision of this
Agreement shall in any way prejudice the rights, claims and positions of either
Party hereto in the ultimate peaceful settlement of the
. . .
Article IV
1. The lines described in articles V and VI of this Agreement shall be designated as the Armistice Demarcation Lines and are delineated in pursuance of the purpose and intent of the resolution of the Security Council of 16 November 1948.
2. The basic purpose of the Armistice Demarcation Lines is to delineate the lines beyond which the armed forces of the respective Parties shall not move.
. . .
Israel-Syria Armistice Agreement, dated July 20, 1949
. . .
Article II
With a specific view to the implementation of the resolution of the Security Council of 16 November 1948, the following principles and purposes are affirmed:
1. The principle that no military or political advantage should be gained under the truce ordered by the Security Council is recognized.
2. It is also recognized that no provision of this
Agreement shall in any way prejudice the rights, claims and positions of either
Party hereto in the ultimate peaceful settlement of the
. . .
Article IV
1. The line described in Article V of this Agreement shall be designated as the Armistice Demarcation Line and is delineated in pursuance of the purpose and intent of the resolution of the Security Council of 16 November 1948.
2. The basic purpose of the Armistice Demarcation Line is to delineate the line beyond which the armed forces of the respective Parties shall not move.
. . .
Article V
1. It is emphasized that the following arrangements for the Armistice Demarcation Line between the Israeli and Syrian armed forces and for the Demilitarized Zone are not to be interpreted as having any relation whatsoever to ultimate territorial arrangements affecting the two Parties to this Agreement.
2. In pursuance of the spirit of the Security Council resolution of 16 November 1948, the Armistice Demarcation Line and the Demilitarized Zone have been defined with a view toward separating the armed forces of the two Parties in such manner as to minimize the possibility of friction and incident, while providing for the gradual restoration of normal civilian life in the area of the Demilitarized Zone, without prejudice to the ultimate settlement.
. . .
It is clear that, although the Armistice Agreements explicitly acknowledged,
as de facto, the Arabs’ possession of lands over which the Jewish
people had acquired exclusive national rights by virtue of the Mandate for
Incredibly, even decades later -- despite the constant terrorist
infiltrations emanating from
In fact, absent
“Except as may be agreed upon in individual trusteeship agreements, made under Articles 77, 79, and 81, placing each territory under the trusteeship system, and until such agreements have been concluded, nothing in this Chapter shall be construed in or of itself to 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.”
For this reason, United Nations Security Council Resolution no. 242 --
issued in the aftermath of
The authoritative and laboriously-negotiated English-language text of the Resolution reflected an implicit international acknowledgment that, although the State of Israel had enlarged itself as a result of the 1967 Six Day War, inter alia, expanding its sovereignty over original Mandatory Palestine from 17% to 23% thereof, the Jewish State had nevertheless been the victim of genocidal Arab aggression in that war due, in part, to the wholly untenable military separation-of-forces lines of 1949 which had rendered Israel an inviting target for invasion and destruction.
It will be recalled that, for almost two decades prior to June 1967,
Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and Jordan -- in rank violation of their 1949 Armistice
Agreements with Israel -- had continuously permitted the various components of
the Palestine Liberation Organization and its fedayeen
precursors to mount terror attacks against Israel from southern Lebanon, from
the Golan Heights, from Sinai and Gaza, and from Judea, Samaria and the eastern
portion of Jerusalem, respectively. In addition, the Syrian army regularly
employed mortars and snipers against the Jewish communities of northern
It must be emphasized that the ongoing violations by
However, it should be noted that, although the U.N. Security Council implicitly conceded the undeniable fact that Israel had been the victim and the surrounding Arab countries the aggressors in the Six Day War, that deliberative body was nonetheless unwilling to explicitly elucidate this Truth in the Resolution. In fact, the text thereof is so “evenhanded” as between victim and aggressor that it neither identifies the participants in the war nor otherwise utters the name “Israel”, except in its call for “withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict” -- a call from which, ironically, an ignorant person might readily infer that Israel had been the aggressor in the war. This exhibition of diplomatic cowardice by the U.N. Security Council was motivated both by its aversion to angering the Arab and larger Muslim worlds by officially labeling, by name or even by general description, some of their number as aggressors and by its understanding that these countries would never acquiesce to a non-condemnatory resolution which made excessive reference, by name, to the State of Israel, the existence of which sovereign entity they refused to accept or even acknowledge.
U.N. Security Council Resolution no. 242 states, in full, as follows:
United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 (22 November 1967).
The Security Council,
Expressing its continuing concern with the grave
situation in the
Emphasizing the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in which every State in the area can live in security,
Emphasizing further that all Member States in their acceptance of the Charter of the United Nations have undertaken a commitment to act in accordance with Article 2 of the Charter:
1. Affirms that the fulfillment of Charter
principles requires the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the
(i) Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict;
(ii) Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force;
2. Affirms further the necessity:
(a) For guaranteeing freedom of navigation through international waterways in the area;
(b) For achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem;
(c) For guaranteeing the territorial inviolability and political independence of every State in the area, through measures including the establishment of demilitarized zones;
3. Requests the Secretary-General to designate a Special Representative to proceed to them Middle East to establish and maintain contacts with the States concerned in order to promote agreement and assist efforts to achieve a peaceful and accepted settlement in accordance with the provisions and principles in this resolution;
4. Requests the Secretary-General to report to the Security Council on the progress of the efforts of the Special Representative as soon as possible.
That Israel is not required by the issued Resolution to withdraw to the military separation-of-forces lines of 1949 is further proven by the refusal of the U.N. Security Council to insert either the words “all” or “the” into the authoritative English-language text of the draft Resolution as a grammatical qualifier before the word “territories” therein -- despite a 5 month pre-passage diplomatic onslaught by the Arab nations and their allies to so modify the language thereof.
As stated on January 19, 1970 by George Brown, Foreign Secretary of
“I have been asked over and over again to clarify,
modify or improve the wording, but I do not intend to do that. The phrasing of
the Resolution was very carefully worked out, and it was a difficult and
complicated exercise to get it accepted by the U.N. Security Council. I
formulated the Security Council Resolution. Before we submitted it to the
Council, we showed it to Arab leaders. The proposal said '
This view was reiterated on July 12, 1970 by Joseph Sisco,
Assistant Secretary of State of the
“That Resolution did not say 'withdrawal to the pre-June 5 lines'. The Resolution said that the parties must negotiate to achieve agreement on the so-called final secure and recognized borders. In other words, the question of the final borders is a matter of negotiations between the parties.” (NBC Television, Meet The Press, July 12, 1970).
Moreover, the Resolution's explicit call for negotiations between “the States concerned” (i.e., Israel, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon) to establish for Israel “secure and recognized boundaries” constituted an acknowledgment by the international community that the 1949 armistice demarcation lines were neither “secure” (-- i.e., although Israel had prevailed in the 1967 Six Day War, the 1949 separation-of-forces lines were not militarily defensible --) nor “recognized” (-- i.e., the 1949 separation-of-forces lines did not constitute internationally-recognized boundaries --).
As stated on September 10, 1968 by United States President Lyndon Johnson:
“We are not the ones to say where other nations should draw lines between them that will assure each the greatest security. It is clear, however, that a return to the situation of 4 June 1967 will not bring peace. There must be secure -- and there must be recognized -- borders. Some such lines must be agreed to by the neighbors involved.”
Yet, disingenuously -- despite the fact that the members of the U.N. Security Council debated the provisions of, and voted to pass, only the English-language version of the Resolution (the draft of which was submitted by Great Britain to the Security Council as document no. S/8247), and despite the fact that British and American diplomats have publicly stated that the omission of the definite article “the” before the noun “territories” in the text thereof was intentional -- some polemicists claim fealty only to the French-language translation of the English-language Resolution which employs the phrase “des territoires” (which literally re-translates into the English language as “from the territories” but which idiomatically re-translates into the English language as either “from the territories” or “from territories”). However, due to the fact that this apparent ambiguity in meaning occurs only because the grammatical rules of the French language do not permit the employment of the preposition “from” together with its intended object without the interpolation of the definite article “the” (i.e., the English-language phrase “from territories” cannot grammatically be rendered into the French language except as “des territoires”), France declared -- soon after the Resolution was issued -- that the French-language version thereof was intended to be an exact translation of the English-language text thereof, and that, consequently, its version did not cause the Resolution to have any different meaning in the French language than it had in the English language.
Of course, since the Resolution is merely directory and, consequently, non-binding, any linguistic argument over the withdrawal component thereof is only of academic interest. Yet, even if the Resolution were mandatory rather than directory, since the Resolution does not, in fact, demand withdrawal from all of the territories, Israel's relinquishment, in the aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, to Egypt of the district of Sinai (plus all of the additional lands captured by Israel in that War beyond Sinai towards Cairo) and to Syria of the district of Kuneitra on the Golan Heights (plus all of the additional lands captured by Israel in that War beyond the Golan Heights towards Damascus) -- constituting in excess of 90% of the territory acquired by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War (plus 100% of the territory acquired by Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War) -- has, arguably, already satisfied the Resolution's nonspecific withdrawal component. At any rate, by having launched a coordinated invasion against Israel in 1973 without provocation, Egypt and Syria thereby attempted by military means to deprive Israel of the benefits of the Resolution's recommendation of negotiations leading to “secure and recognized boundaries” for the Jewish State, as a consequence of which it may be argued that the aggressors thereby forfeited their recommended benefits under the Resolution. Moreov