Perfidious France, UK, Canada and Australia-Israel’s Sovereignty Cannot be Denied

Peloni:  Highly recommended article.  In the following essay, Leonard Grunstein reminds the world of the legal framework upon which the state of Israel was reconstituted with the consent and support of the world enshrined in international law, and which remain binding to this day.  Providing a highly granular description of the documents documents and covenants, Grunstein highlights the proper arguments which should be raised in recognition of Israel’s sovereignty and her integral international rights before the world.  In a single voice, this is what should be spoken of by PM Netanyahu, FM Sa’ar, Finance Minister Smotrich and others when both defending those rights, as well as implementing policies which secure those rights.  These are also the arguments which should be raised to challenge and defeat the illicitly illegal attempts to create a new Arab state the basis on which is entirely undone by the legal arguments, documents and treaties discussed in this essay below.  As the title states, Israel’s Sovereignty Cannot be Denied.  Please share widely.

By Leonard Grunstein

Delegates to the San Remo conference in Italy, 25 April 1920.  By Unknown author – eipa.eu.com, Public Domain, Wikipedia

France, the United Kingdom (UK), Canada and Australia (collectively, the Perfidious Quartet) would violate international agreements to which they are bound, if they unilaterally recognize a so-called Palestinian state within the area of Israel between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. These are boundaries delineated in the 1920 San Remo Resolution, unanimously confirmed by the League of Nations in 1922. In addition, the UK would be violating the 1924 Anglo-American Convention with the US.

It’s truly ironic that these colonial countries each have their own issues and infirmities, ranging from France’s Basque region to the UK’s Northern Ireland troubles, Canada’s issues with un-ceded land underlying Vancouver and claims against Australia by its Aboriginal people. Yet, the Perfidious Quartet are focused on dismantling Israel, homeland of the Jewish people, the genuinely indigenous people of the land. The history of France’s own relationship with Monaco is another example of its duplicitous pronouncements with regard to Israel. It is even more galling that the Perfidious Quartet seek to favor the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas, and their cadres of terrorist Islamist colonists seeking to steal land as a base for their heinous plan to eliminate the sovereign State of Israel. In this regard, France and the others in the Perfidious Quartet should take note of the decision of the French Court of Appeals of Versailles, in PLO et ano vs. Societe Alstom Transport SA et al. It decided against the claims asserted by Mahmoud Abbas, as representative of the PLO, relating to Jerusalem.

The Waqf’s own 1924 Brief Guide to the Temple Mount confirms its identity with the site of Solomon’s Temple is beyond dispute and that, in the year 637 CE, Omar occupied Jerusalem. Consider too, for example, the Mount of Olives Jewish Cemetery is more than 3,000 years old. There’s no comparable Arab cemetery in Israel; the oldest dates back only to the 11th century.

It is reported that Abbas, emboldened by the pronouncements of the Perfidious Quartet hopes to declare a Palestinian state at the UN. However, the UN did not create Israel. In point of fact, United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) Resolution 181, generally known as the Partition Plan, was never implemented. By its express terms, it was merely a recommendation. While it requested that the UN Security Council take measures to implement it, this never occurred.

The Partition Plan was unequivocally rejected by the Arab world, which sought by force of arms to eliminate any possibility of a Jewish state in any part of Israel (then referred to as the Mandate of Palestine). There was no real appetite by the permanent members of the Security Council to intervene militarily to effectuate the recommended Partition Plan in the face of Arab militant intransigence or to prevent the existing Arab nations from invading and overrunning the country. The Jews in Israel were left on their own to deal with the onslaught and invasion.

It is important to note that there is no reference in Resolution 181 to a so-called “Palestinian people”. The label was invented more than a decade and a half later. There was also no reference to a so-called “West Bank”. This was also an artificial construct by Jordan, which illegally annexed it, to distinguish it from Jordan proper on the eastern side of the Jordan River. Resolution 181 just referred to the area as the hill country of Samaria and Judea. The name given to the proposed partitioned area intended to house Arab residents of Israel was the “Arab State”, not the Palestinian State.

At the time and historically, Arab residents in Israel were viewed and, indeed, viewed themselves as a part of the Arab people. As Anwar Nusseibeh explained, Arabs, who happened to reside in the area assigned to the reestablished Jewish State of Israel, saw themselves as a part of the Arab nation, generally, and specifically as a part of Syria. There was no concept of a separate so-called “Palestinian people”, nor was there any distinct identity beyond being a part of pan-Arabism.

It is critical to appreciate that the UN Charter explicitly provides, in Article 80, as follows:

“… 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.”

Thus, the rights of the Jewish people to Israel, as described below, take precedence over any UN resolution, including Resolution 181.

The Supreme Council of Allied Powers, meeting at San Remo in 1920, recognized and resolved that the Land of Israel (then referred to as Palestine) belonged to the Jewish people. The 1920 San Remo Resolution was unanimously confirmed in 1922 by the League of Nations. It was also reconfirmed in the 1924 Anglo-American Convention. The law and history are a striking rebuttal to the false narrative of the PA and Hamas, mindlessly repeated by the Hamas caucus in the Perfidious Quartet.

The Supreme Council Minutes record the discussions at San Remo regarding the area denominated as Palestine and it being a national home for the Jews. In this regard, it is important to appreciate that presentations were made by Jewish, as well as Arab delegations, asserting claims as to Palestine.

Reference was made to the new area and borders of the new projected Jewish State, which, at a minimum stretched from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Consideration was also given to the civil and religious rights of the non-Jewish communities residing in Palestine. However, political rights were reserved only to the Jewish people.

The Supreme Council considered the claims of the various parties, deliberated, and decided title to Palestine was vested in the Jewish people.

In furtherance of the foregoing, the Supreme Council determined that Palestine would be reestablished as a national home for the Jews and a mandatory would be entrusted with implementing the foregoing under Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations. The terms of the mandate were to be formulated by the Principal Allied Powers, who constituted the Supreme Council and submitted to the Council of the League of Nations for approval. This occurred, and the terms of the mandate were approved. The effect was to confirm, as a matter of International Law, the re-establishment of Palestine as a national home for the Jewish People.

The Council of the League of Nations unanimously adopted the San Remo Resolution on Palestine. It thereby became an international agreement, binding on all of the member countries, which, in effect, confirmed title to Palestine (Israel) in the people of Israel, under International Law. It recited that recognition had been given to “the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country”.

There are a number of very important legal concepts embodied in this provision of the Council resolution. It effectively confirmed the Jewish people as the recognized indigenous people of Palestine for over three thousand five hundred years and, as noted above, rejected the claims of others. This absolutely demolishes the fallacious claim that Jews are just modern-day colonialists.

The Council resolution also did not purport to grant the Jewish people a newly minted right to Palestine; rather, it recorded that recognition had been given to the “grounds for” reconstituting their national home in that country. Thus, it was a pre-existing legal right that was recognized and acknowledged. Consistent with this principle, it called for “reconstituting” the Jewish people’s national home in their homeland of Palestine, not building a new national home there, which had no prior existence.

The use of the term ‘country’ in the Council resolution is also cogent. It was no longer referred to as a geographical territory in the former Ottoman Empire; rather, Palestine was now referred to as a country. The sovereignty and legal title to the country of Palestine was vested in the Jewish people.

Article 7 of the resolution expressly provided that the administration of Palestine be responsible for enacting a nationality law, which shall include provisions framed so as to facilitate the acquisition of Palestinian citizenship by Jews who take up their permanent residence in Palestine. In essence, International Law expressly provided for a law of return for Jews to their native homeland of Palestine [Israel]. No similar provision was made for anyone else.

As Eugene Rostow makes clear: By protecting Arab civil and religious rights,

“the mandate implicitly denies Arab claims to national political rights in the area in favor of the Jews; the mandated territory was, in effect, reserved to the Jewish people for their self-determination and political development, in acknowledgment of the historic connection of the Jewish people to the land.”

Lord Curzon, who was then the British Foreign Minister, made this reading of the mandate explicit.

Most importantly for this discussion, Article 5 of the Council’s resolution provided that:

“no Palestine territory shall be ceded or leased to or in any way placed under the control of the Government of any foreign Power”.

In essence, the title to the country of Palestine granted to the Jewish people at San Remo could not be revoked or granted to another authority or the League. This legally includes the UN as the successor to the League. Palestine belonged to the Jewish people.

The San Remo Resolution was also a part of the Treaty of Sevres with the Ottoman Empire and, in effect, ratified by the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923 with Turkey.

The Resolution of the Supreme Council of Allied Powers at San Remo was also endorsed in the Anglo-American Convention on Palestine noted above. It actually incorporated the text of the resolution of the Council of the League of Nations, referred to above. The Treaty was concluded and signed by the respective representatives of the US and UK in London on December 3, 1924. The US Senate ratified it, under its power to advise and consent, on February 20, 1925, and President Calvin Coolidge approved it on March 2, 1925. It was formally ratified by Great Britain on March 18, 1925. The respective ratifications were exchanged, and the Treaty was formally proclaimed on December 5, 1925.

The Treaties, thus, formally and legally recognized the right of the Jewish people to sovereignty over all of Palestine, between the Jordan River on the East and the Mediterranean Sea on the West, including, of course, Jerusalem.

Notwithstanding that the British Mandate over Palestine was terminated, nevertheless, the rights granted under the Treaties to the Jewish people survive, as confirmed by the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.

It is respectfully submitted that the UK and other members of the Perfidious Quartet, by virtue of the treaty obligations summarized above and International Law, may not promote a so-called Palestinian state in any part of Israel, between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea, including Judea and Samaria, which perforce includes Jerusalem.

Interestingly, when the British illegally adopted the White Paper in 1939, restricting immigration by Jews to then Mandatory Palestine, a bipartisan group of fifteen (out of the twenty-five) members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee urged the State Department to protest the British White Paper and advise the British Government that it would be regarded as a violation of the 1924 Anglo-American Treaty. The group declared that the British plan to limit Jewish immigration to the Holy Land and attempt to fix the Jews as a permanent minority was a clear repudiation of the Treaty. They also said it was the duty of the American Government to see to it that the treaty was carried out in good faith.

Yet, despite having title to and sovereignty over all of Israel, it is not the Jewish people seeking to disposes the invading Arabs, who in 1964 suddenly self-identified as “Palestinians”, a label contrived as part of an illegal effort to steal the Land of Israel, it’s the so-called Palestinian Arabs who are seeking to eliminate the Jews.

As an aside, after Jordan illegally conquered Judea and Samaria, including the eastern portion of Jerusalem in 1948, it sought to legitimize its conquest of these areas, which it proceeded to rename the West Bank of Jordan.

On December 1, 1948, it organized a conference in Jericho that was attended by representatives of numerous constituencies within these areas. In attendance were the Mayors of Hebron, Bethlehem and Ramallah and they together with the other attendees adopted what became known as the Jericho Resolutions. Among other things, the Jericho Resolutions confirmed the desire of the Arab residents of the so-called West Bank to be immediately annexed to Jordan. Subsequent conferences occurred in Ramallah and then Nablus, which declared their support for the Jericho Resolutions.

Thus, instead of seeking to have an independent state in these areas Jordan conquered and occupied, they ceded any rights they may have had to Jordan. The Arab (not Jewish) residents of these areas were granted Jordanian citizenship (including voting rights). Indeed, Jews were forcibly expelled form the areas conquered by Jordan and their homes were seized and synagogues demolished.

The Arab residents of the so-called West Bank participated in the Jordanian Parliamentary elections of April 1950 and were equally represented in the Jordanian Parliament. On April 24, 1950, the newly elected Parliament, noting it represented both the eastern bank of the Jordan, as well as, the western one (i.e. the so-called West Bank), formally approved annexation of the areas of Judea and Samaria conquered by Jordan, including the eastern part of Jerusalem. It unified them into the single state of Jordan, as confirmed by the King of Jordan.

The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) recognized Jordan’s sovereignty over the so-called West Bank. It expressly provided in Article 24 of its original Charter of 1964 that it exercised no sovereignty over the West Bank that belonged to Jordan. Interestingly, it also expressly declared it exercised no sovereignty over Gaza. Its professed twin goals were Arab unity and the destruction of Israel.

Therefore, whatever rights the Arab residents of Judea and Samaria, including the eastern part of Jerusalem, may have had to assert any claim to sovereignty over these areas, were fully vested in Jordan. Even the PLO acknowledged they were ceded to Jordan.

Like any other sovereign state, Jordan could negotiate and barter away sovereignty over any of its land. Thus, when it entered into a Treaty of Peace, dated October 26, 1994, with the State of Israel and, in Article 3, demarcated the international boundary between Israel and Jordan as the Jordan River, it effectively ceded sovereignty over its former West Bank to Israel. In this regard, the provisions of Article 2, Section 1, requiring that, in particular, each party recognize and respect each other’s sovereign territorial integrity and political independence are cogent. Jordan recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the land within its borders as demarcated by the Treaty. Section 2 of Article 3 of the Treaty declares the boundary noted above is the permanent secure and recognized international border between Israel and Jordan. There is no explicit carveout for any claim of sovereignty by so-called Palestinians to the West Bank. The Treaty, in Section 3 of Article 3, goes on to say the parties recognize the international boundary, as well as, each other’s territory, territorial waters and airspace, as inviolable, and will respect and comply with them. Furthermore, Section 6 of Article 3 provides each party is to deploy on its side of the international boundary, upon exchange of the instruments of ratification of the Treaty, which occurred during King Hussein’s first official visit to Israel on November 1, 1994 (after approval by Israel Knesset and ratification by Jordan’s Chamber of Deputies). These sovereign rights are not made subject to or otherwise expressly qualified by any claims of so-called Palestinians.

The Abraham Accords have shown the way forward. The Perfidious Quartet should not spoil the progress made or undermine the sovereign State of Israel. They would do better to follow the US example of promoting the Abraham Accords and supporting Israel in its defensive war to defeat the evil that is Hamas and to free the hostages.