A people are not “settlers” in their own ancestral land

By Victor Sharpe

Mandate for Palestine – AD 1923. (Image by Shuaaa2 – Own work, CC BY 4.0)

All such notions of “land for peace” and a “two state solution” erode the millennial and inalienable rights of one people alone to the land between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea – the Jewish people

Jewish communities, (villages and towns) do not consist of “settlers.” The Jewish population of Judea and Samaria (the so-called West Bank) consists of the descendants of the native and indigenous Jewish people who inhabit and redeem their own ancient land. These people are not “settlers” in what is already theirs by virtue of 4,000 years of physical and spiritual attachment. Indeed, many present-day Jewish villages, especially throughout Judea and Samaria, are built on the very sites upon which Biblical Jewish communities existed. On the Golan, for instance, numerous sites abound where ancient synagogues once existed.

Notice that Judea and Samaria have still not been annexed. Jerusalem and the Golan were liberated. The time to restore Judea and Samaria to all of Israel is well overdue. These lands are the very warp and woof, the very fabric and fiber of Jewish history, both during and since biblical times.

In 2003, Professor Talia Einhorn wrote about Judea, Samaria and Gaza, or as it is known by its Hebrew acronym, Yesha: meaning Yehuda, Shomron and Azza. In 2003, the homeland still included Gaza, but it was tragically abandoned in 2005 by the then Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, for the delusional sake of peace with the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians! And what a monumental disaster for the Jewish state that abandonment has become. Hamas, the junior branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, occupied Gaza and its malign charter still calls not only for the destruction of the Jewish state but for the extermination of all Jews worldwide.

Professor Einhorn stated clearly then that Israel, the Jewish state, is not an “occupying force” in its own homeland. This is what she said then and what I have explained for many years in my own numerous articles:

”Up until 1948, Judea, Samaria and Gaza were a part of the British Mandate. In the 1948 War of Independence, Egypt illegally grabbed the Gaza Strip and Jordan took Judea and Samaria and renamed it the ‘West Bank.’

“Egypt did not claim sovereignty in Gaza, but in 1950 Jordan illegally annexed Judea and Samaria. This annexation was not recognized by international law. The Arab nations objected to it, and only Britain and Pakistan recognized it –but Britain did not recognize the Jordanian annexation of eastern Jerusalem.

“In 1967, after the Six Day War, these territories – which were originally meant for the Jewish Nation’s National Home according to the Mandate Charter – were liberated and returned to Israeli control.”

Professor Einhorn added that, “according to international law, Israel has full right to populate the entire Land of Israel and thus actualize the principles set by the League of Nations in the original Mandate Charter of San Remo in 1920.

“At that time, the mandate to the Land of Israel was granted to the British and an introduction to the mandate charter states clearly that it is based on the international recognition of the historic ties between the Jewish People and the Land of Israel. Clause II of that mandate charged Britain with ‘ensuring the existence of political, administrative, and economic conditions that will guarantee the establishment of the Jewish national home in the Land of Israel.’”

We, of course, know how that turned out. Britain reneged on its promises and undertakings. Britain tore away 80% of the mandate territory east of the Jordan River in 1922 and gave it away to a Saudi prince, the Emir Abdullah. There is nothing, therefore, in international law that requires the creation of a Palestinian state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

Professor Einhorn pointed out that the UN Partition Resolution of November 29, 1947, merely recommended that a Jewish and Arab state in what was the geographical territory known as Palestine “shall come into existence.”

Though the Jewish leadership reluctantly accepted the partition plan, it was, as we all know, rejected utterly by the Arab states, which invaded Israel in 1948 thus voiding the UN’s recommendation of any legal basis.

The decision by the Jewish leadership to accept the UN Partition Plan was deeply painful for them. After all, the armistice lines where the invading Arab armies had been stopped left the Jewish state a mere nine to 15 miles wide, with Judea and Samaria (now the so-called West Bank) and half of Jerusalem occupied illegally by hostile Jordanian Arab Legion troops.

The assessment was also motivated by the desperate need to give sanctuary to the 800,000 Jewish refugees driven out of their ancient homes throughout the Arab world, and to provide a haven for the remnants of the Jewish survivors of the Holocaust.

Israel was forced to fight yet another war of survival against Arab genocidal aggression in the June 1967 Six Day War. It liberated the Arab occupied territories – Judea and Samaria – from Jordanian occupation and it therefore must be understood that this precious territory is empirically the very heart of the Land of Israel by all that is holy. And if that’s a dirty word to some, so be it.

Simply put: The Jewish people do not come as alien settlers to land that already belongs to them. The Jewish people cannot be called “settlers” in their very own ancestral, Biblical and native homeland.

Now if those facts are understood and hammered home again and again by every Israeli and pro-Israeli throughout the world, think of the power and the glory that will ensue. Finally, the world will hear about unassailable Jewish rights to the Land and not the fraudulent claims of an Arab people who call themselves Palestinians.

As the great Ted Belman and creator of Israpundit wrote about the Zionist leader, Theodore Herzl:

“Even though he was not religious, he realized that the only place for the Jewish state to exist was in Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel) which includes Judea, Samaria and Gaza, because it is to Eretz Yisrael and Jerusalem that the Jews prayed for two thousand years to return. Nowhere else would suffice.”

Victor Sharpe is a prolific freelance writer and author of several published books including the four volumes of Politicide: The attempted murder of the Jewish state.