The True Status of the Territories - It belongs to Israel under International Law

The True Status of the Territories

- It belongs to Israel under International Law

The U.N. which can only issue a non-binding resolution with no legal standings did not create or re-establish the State of Israel

Shoshana Bryen • June 18, 2019 • The Washington Times

Mideast Status Illustration by Linas Garsys/The Washington Times

U.S. policy toward the Middle East swings substantially depending upon the occupant of the Oval Office, but some hoary myths persist year after year. One concerns the legal status of the territories.
U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman told The New York Times that, “Under certain circumstances, I think Israel has the right to retain some, but unlikely all, of the West Bank We really don’t have a view until we understand how much, on what terms, why does it make sense, why is it good for Israel, why is it good for the region, why does it not create more problems than it solves. These are all things that we’d want to understand, and I don’t want to prejudge. Certainly, Israel’s entitled to retain some portion of it.”
The Times account asserted that having Jews live beyond the 1949 Armistice line would be “illegal,” and that annexation of territory by Israel would be “compounding the crime.”
This is a misunderstanding. In fact, the creation of secure boundaries for Israel has been a hallmark of American diplomacy before Oslo, during the Oslo period, and now beyond.
The Clinton Parameters had Israel retaining the areas in which more than 80 percent of Israelis on the West Bank lived. It was presumed that Israel would annex that territory.
President Bush made U.S. support for the creation of a Palestinian state contingent on the Palestinian Authority meeting conditions, but said, the “borders and certain aspects of its sovereignty will be provisional until resolved as part of a final settlement in the Middle East.” It can be presumed that Israel would annex anything on its side of a final border.
President Obama explicitly called for a 1:1 swap of territory. It can be presumed that Israel would annex that territory.
Even Palestinian Authority strongman Mahmmoud Abbas was reported to have a plan in the early days of the Trump administration to trade 6.5 percent of West Bank to Israel, more than previously offered. It can be presumed that Israel would annex that territory.
Eugene V. Rostow was under-secretary of State for political affairs when he helped draft U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, the result of the Arab attacks on Israel in June 1967. In 1980, as dean of Yale Law School, Mr. Rostow wrote about land and peace, and about Israel and a potential state squeezed between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.
The legal assumption behind this frantic impulse [to create a Palestinian state] is that the territories in dispute are in some sense “Arab” territories held by Israel only as military occupant. Once that premise is accepted, it seems to follow that the natural path to peace would be for Israel to evacuate the area.
But the premise from which the familiar prescription derives is erroneous as a matter of history and international law. The only possible geographic, demographic and political definition of Palestine is that of the [U.N. authorized British] Mandate [for Palestine], which included what are now Israel and Jordan as well as the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
The term "Palestinian" applies to all the peoples who live or have a right to live in the territory — Jews, Christians and Muslims alike. Thus, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are not "Arab" territories in the legal sense, but territories of the Mandate that have never been recognized as belonging to Israel or to Jordan. For reasons that remain compelling, Security Council Resolution 242 prescribes that Israel is under no obligation to withdraw from the West Bank or the Gaza Strip until Jordan makes peace.
Resolution 242 also provided that when peace was made, the Israelis should withdraw to “secure and recognized” boundaries, which need not be the same as the Armistice Demarcation Lines of 1949, as the Armistice Agreements themselves had contemplated. The “secure and recognized” boundaries were to be reached by agreement.
Contrary to The New York Times, there is nothing “criminal” or “illegal” about finding secure boundaries for Israel, or Jews living beyond the 1949 Armistice Line. The question is where that final border goes and under what secure circumstances. Just as it was the question yesterday and the day before.
Ambassador Friedman’s careful probing will help the United States, Israel and any other partner for peaceful relations in the region find the answers.

I have people and family that were in Israel from the 1800’s to its reconstitution in 1920 and its declaration of sovereignty, and I have many there today. The British committed crimes against humanity. They allowed and turned a blind eye while hundreds of thousands of Arabs crossed into Israel attacked and killed Jewish people. The British supplied the Arabs with weapons and confiscated weapons from the local Jewish people who were trying to defend themselves. The League of Nations was going to bring charges against Britain for violating the terms of the Mandate for Palestine, but it was dissolved before charges were brought against the British. Ask the government in India about British atrocities in their country. I personally have spoken to the British about their crimes in Israel; they admitted that was the policy of the British government. You can read some of documents in the British archives. You can also read about British {Operation Embarrass).

I have copies of the Minutes of the 1918 Paris conference and the Minutes of the San Remo Conference of April 1920 confirmed by the August 1920 Treaty of Sevres Article 95. I also have the Faisal Weizmann Agreement of January 1919. It corresponds to the minutes of the 1918-1920 Allied Conferences in how to allocate the Ottoman territory. I know you are biased against Israel, but that does not matter to me. Israel is The Jewish country and we are holding it as ours. No matter what anyone else thinks or distorts history. Possession is nine tenths of the law.

Wallace Edward Brand · 

Harvard Law School

Memento Vivere --You ignore the proposal of the United States written by "The Inquiry" and presented on January 21, 1919 at the Paris Peace Talks. This was a group of some 150 academics established at the request of President Woodrow Wilson.
"It is recommended: 1) That there be established a separate state of Palestine. 2) That this state be placed under Great Britain as a mandatory of the League of Nations. 3) That the Jews be invited to return to Palestine aka The Land of Israel and settle there being assured by the Conference of a proper assistance in doing so doing that may be consistent with the protections of the personal (especially the religious) and the property rights of the non-Jewish population and being further assured that it will be the policy of the League of Nations to recognize Palestine (with no Arab state, the Arabs received over 13 million sq. km. of territory with a wealth of oil reserves) as a Jewish state without boundary restrictions as soon as it is a Jewish state in fact."
www.eretzyisroel.org/~samuel/americandraft.html

The U.N. which can only issue a non-binding resolution with no legal standings did not create or re-establish the State of Israel; it only followed the instructions and Agreements of “The Supreme Allied Powers” San Remo Conference of April 1920 after WWI – The U.N. can only issue non-binding resolutions which has no legal standings.                                                                                                          

The British Mandate for Palestine, April 1920 and its consequences                                                              

The British Mandate for Palestine (as trustee for the Jewish people), sometimes referred to as the Mandate of Palestine, was a League of Nations Mandate created after the First World War when the Ottoman Empire was split up by the Treaty of Sèvres and Lausanne.                                                                                  

At the April 1920 San Remo conference of the Allied Supreme Council, at which the Mandates were granted (and the 1917 Balfour Declaration was incorporated as part of the allocation, that gave it the force of International Law), and at which time the Arabs received over 13 million sq. km. of territory with a wealth of oil reserves, the precise boundaries of all territories, including that of the British Mandate of Palestine aka The Land of Israel, were specified, to “be determined by the Principal Allied Powers” and were completely finalized based on the Faisal Weizmann Agreement of January 1919 which specified all of Palestine for the Jewish National Home which is about 120,000 sq. km., (see the minutes of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference and the April 1920 San Remo Conference) and described four years later. However, it was clear that the boundary of Britain’s mandate for Palestine as trustee for the Jewish people was to extend eastward to the western boundary of its mandate for Mesopotamia.                                                                                

In 1921, following Churchill’s negotiations with Emir Abdullah Transjordan (later Jordan in 1946 was created in violation of Agreements, as the new Arab Palestinian State for the Arabs in Palestine/Israel) was part of the Mandate, but it was separated from the area on which a Jewish National Home had been reconstituted and to be re-established, a move formalized by the British in violation of treaties and agreements, by the addition of a September 1922 clause to the charter governing the Mandate for Palestine aka The Land of Israel, which allowed for postponement of all mandatory provisions which expressly included as part of the ‘Jewish National Home’ on lands which lay to the east of the Jordan River.                                                  YJ Draiman.                                                                                                  

P.S. The objective of the League of Nations Mandate system in the 1920’s was to administer parts of the recently defunct Ottoman Empire (which the Turks as occupiers controlled/owned over 90% of the land in Palestine aka The Land of Israel, some of the land was leased to the Arabs by the Ottoman Empire as sharecroppers. There was no Arab ownership of land in Palestine aka The Land of Israel – only some wealthy land owners from Lebanon and local Arab leaders. Much of the land claimed by the Arabs was given to them illegally by the British Mandate authorities who violated their fiduciary obligation and were going to be charged by the League of Nations for those violations; but the League was dismantled after WWII and taken over by the U.N.), which had been in control of the Middle East since the 16th century, “until such time as they are able to stand alone”.  The British had no authority to give away Jewish allocated territory and land to the Arabs,

In 1948 when the British regime as trustee abandoned their duty and commitment to help re-establish the Jewish National Home in Palestine aka The Land of Israel, the Historic Land of Israel as was established during King Solomon’s and King David’s reign.

Israel Jewish population became the Majority and as stated in the 1920 Agreement declared its Sovereignty over its Historic National territory.

The borders of the Mandate for Palestine extended from the Mediterranean Sea to the west including what is today Jordan, the British Mandate of Mesopotamia to the east, the French Mandate of Lebanon to the north, the French Mandate of Syria to the northeast, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Kingdom of Egypt to the southeast and southwest respectively.

The Arab-Palestinians in Greater Israel do not seek peace and co-existence, only terror and violence and the destruction of the Jewish State.

It is time to abandon the delusion of peace with Arab/Muslim terrorists and face reality, after almost 70 years of Jewish appeasement and concessions, with Arab/Muslim continued terror and violence. It is time for Israel to stand its ground and take the territory originally allocated to the Jewish National Home in Palestine without boundary restrictions. Protect its people at all costs with zero tolerance and no holds barred.

Any Agreements with The Arab-Palestinians are null and void including the Oslo Accords which the Arabs violated since day one and Mahmmoud Abbas aka Abu Mazen the Leader of the Arab-Palestinians declared in the U.N. speech in the summer of 2015 that he will not abide by its terms.

The only solution is to relocate all the Arabs to Jordan (which is historically and legally Jewish territory. Jordan forbids Jews to own and or reside in their country) or to the homes and the over 120,000 sq. km. (Jewish assets is valued in the trillions of dollars) the Arab countries confiscated from the over a million Jewish families that were expelled from the Arab countries and most of them were resettled in The Land of Israel. The Arabs received over 13 million sq. km. of territory with a wealth of oil reserves after WWI.

The world stood idle throughout history while Jews were persecuted, terrorized and killed by the millions. It is time to assert our rights without the bias and anti-Semitism of the world at large.

“A Unified Israel is a Strong Israel”.

YJ Draiman