Partition and The Law

P F Tinmore

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Dec 6, 2009
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In front of Congress on January 1918, US President Woodrow Wilson proposed 14 points for a Programme of Peace. The 5th and 12th points of this Programme related to territories which were placed under the Mandates systems.

In February of the same year, President Wilson addressed Congress thus: “Peoples and provinces are not to be bartered about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were chattels and pawns in a game. National aspirations must be respected; people may be dominated and governed ONLY by their consent. Self-determination is not a mere phrase. It is an imperative principle of action, which statesmen will henceforth ignore at their own peril”.

In July of the same year, he formulated the following: “The settlement of every question, whether of territory, of sovereignty, of economic arrangement or of political relationship, [must be] upon the basis of the free acceptance of that settlement by the people immediately concerned and not upon the basis of the material interest or advantage of any other nation or people which may desire a different settlement for the sake of its own exterior influence or mastery”.

After the end of WW1, at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 (PPC), the principles of nationality and self-determination of peoples was advocated by President Wilson with two dozen other world leaders marking the beginning of the end of Colonialism. It proclaimed that no new territories should be annexed by the victors, and that such territories should be administered solely for the benefit of their indigenous people and be placed under the trusteeship of the mandatories acting on behalf of the League of Nations, until the true wishes of the inhabitants of those territories could be ascertained.

Partition and the Law - 1948
 
The PPC decided to recognise the territories under the mandatory system as “provisionally independent nations subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand by themselves”. It follows from this phrase that the mandatory mission is not intended to be prolonged indefinitely, but only until the peoples under tutelage are capable of managing their own affairs.

Class A mandates (Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon and Transjordan) recognised the peoples of these territories to have reached advanced stage of development and their independence could be recognised once they have achieved a capacity to govern themselves. It is universally and legally accepted that sovereignty in the mandatory territories lie in the inhabitants of the territory in question (Article 22 of the Covenant of The League of Nations).

Under International Law, Palestine, throughout the Mandatory period, was to receive administrative assistance and advice from the Mandatory to help it set up its own government. Already, Palestine had its fixed boundaries, its government institutions, its own currency and, in 1934, its national anthem.

Palestine’s legal position under International Law was clear: it was a provisionally independent state receiving administrative assistance and advice from the Mandatory. The sovereignty was vested in the people of Palestine. It was a dormant sovereignty exercised by the Mandatory power on behalf of the people of Palestine.

Article 28 of the Mandate stipulated that at the end of the Mandate, the territory of Palestine would pass on to the control of ‘the Government of Palestine’. The termination of the Mandate on 15 May 1948 was to signal the birth of a free and sovereign Palestine in fulfilment of Paragraph 4 of Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations. It was supposed to pave the way for the establishment of an independent and sovereign government in Palestine without the intervention of either the United Nations or any other foreign government for that matter.

It was under the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 that Turkey finally renounced its administration of the Middle East territories after nearly 500 years of occupation. Britain was the Mandatory power in Palestine and the guardian and the trustee of Palestine. Its duty was to guarantee the interest and well-being of the country’s inhabitants until the termination of the Mandate and the assumption by Palestine of its independence as a sovereign nation. When that happens, the newly independent nation would then be admitted to the League of Nations. This was the case with Iraq, Lebanon and Syria. They became sovereign nations . Indeed, this was Britain’s intention in Palestine when it issued its White Paper in 1939.
 
And then the Partition Agreement was drafted and brought to resolution by Lester B. Pearson and offered to both Jews and Arabs. (no Palestinians then)

Jews accepted. Arabs declined and proposed war.

Then they attacked Israel. And again, and again.

Still the desire to push the Jews into the sea remains.

QUESTION:

What was Israel's War of Independence? Independence from whom?

ANSWER:

* On May 14, 1948, against all the odds, the modern state of Israel was reborn. At four o'clock that afternoon the members of the provisional national council, led by David Ben-Gurion, met in the Tel Aviv Art Museum. Ben-Gurion rose and read the following proclamation to the assembled guests:

The Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here there spiritual, religious and national identity was formed. Here they achieved independence and created a culture of national and universal significance. Here they wrote and gave the Bible to the world.

Exiled from Palestine, the Jewish people remained, faithful to it in all countries of their dispersion, never ceasing to pray and hope for their return and the restoration of their national freedom....

Accordingly we, the members of the National Council, representing the Jewish people in Palestine and the Zionist movement of the world, met together in solemn assemble today, the day of the termination of the British Mandate of Palestine, by virtue of the natural and historic right of the Jewish people and the Resolution of the General Assembly of the United Nations, hereby proclaim the establishment of the Jewish state in Palestine, to be called ISRAEL....

With trust in Almighty God, we set out hand to this declaration, at this session of the Provisional State Council, in the city of Tel Aviv, on this Sabbath eve, the fifth year of Iyar, 5708, the fourteenth day of May, 1948.

* The key to this question is reflected In the behavior Of the British In 1947. When, in that year, the Arabs rejected the partition of Palestine and refused to set up the projected Arab state, the British administration, then still governing Palestine under the Mandate, refused to carry out the recommendations of the United Nations to implement the partition plan. The British government made it plain that it would do all in its power to prevent the birth of the Jewish state. Britain announced that she would not -- and indeed, she did not -- carry out the orderly transfer of any functions to the Jewish authorities in the Interim before the end of the Mandate on May 15, 1948. Everything was left In a state of disorder. This was Britain's first contribution to the burden of the nascent state.

When, immediately after the United Nations Assembly decision, the Palestine Arabs launched their preliminary onslaught on the Jewish community, the Britlsh Army gave them considerable cover and aid. Itobstructed Jewish defense on the ground; it blocked the movement of Jewish reinforcements and supplies to outlying settlements; it opened the land frontiers for the entry of Arab soldiers from the neighboring Arab states; it maintained a blockade in the Mediterranean and sealed the coast and ports through which alone the outnumbered Jews could expect reinforcements; it handed over arms dumps to the Arabs. When Jaffa was on the point of falling to a Jewish counterattack, it sent in forces from Malta to bomb and shell the Jewish force. Meanwhile, it continued to supply the Arab states preparing to invade across the borders with all the they asked for and made no secret of it.

- Samuel Katz, Battleground: Fact and fantasy in Palestine

QUESTION:

Weren't both sides responsible for that war?

ANSWER:

* "We appeal ... to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the building-up of the state on the basis of full and equal citizenship and representation in all its ... institutions.

"We extend our hand to all neighbouring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and goodwill, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land."

- David Ben-Gurion in Israel's Proclamation of Independence, May 14, 1948

* How did protracted warfare first arise between Israel and the Arabs?. Not even militant Arab leaders or anti-Zionist historians could conceivably accept the view that the 1948-49 conflict was a war of Jewish origin. On February 16, 1948, the UN Palestine Commission reported to the Security Council: "Powerful Arab interests, both inside and outside Palestine, are defying the resolution of the General Assembly and are engaged in a deliberate effort to alter by force the settlement envisaged therein." The Arabs themselves were unambiguous in accepting responsibility for starting the war. Jamal Husseini informed the Security Council on April 16, 1948: "The representatives of the Jewish Agency told us yesterday they were not the attackers, that the Arabs had begun the fighting. We did not deny this. We told the whole world that we were going to fight." As for the British commander of Jordan's Arab Legion, John Bagot Glubb, he remarked candidly: "Early in January, the first detachments of the Arab Liberation Army began to infiltrate into Palestine from Syria. Some came through Jordan and even through Amman....They were in reality to strike the first blow in the ruin of the Arabs of Palestine." Israel came into being on May 14, 1948. The five Arab armies of Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, Lebanon and Iraq immediately invaded the new microstate. Their combined intention was expressed publicly by Azzam Pasha, Secretary General of the Arab League: "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades."
- Louis Rene Beres, Professor of International Law, Department of Political Science, Purdue University

* Damascus radio called on all Arabs to "undertake the liberation battle that will tear the hearts from the bodies of the hateful jews and trample them in the dust"
- quoted in TIME, June 2, p. 20

* "the surviving Jews would be helped to return to their native countries, but my estimation is that none will survive"
- Ahmed Shuqeiri (later to be PLO chief) quoted in Churchill and Churchill, p. 52

* "We were racists, admiring Nazism, reading its books and the source of its thought... Whoever lived during this period in Damascus would appreciate the inclination of the Arab people to Nazism, for Nazism was the power which could serve as its champion, and who is defeated will by nature love the victor".
- Sami al Jundi, leader of Syrian Baath party, "Al Baath" Beirut, 1961. From B. Lewis, "Semites and Anti-Semites" pp.147-148.

* "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacare which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacares and the crusades"
- Arab League Secretary General Azam Pasha, May 15, 1948 (quoted in "New Dimensions" Jan. 1991).
 
"Powerful Arab interests, both inside and outside Palestine, are defying the resolution of the General Assembly and are engaged in a deliberate effort to alter by force the settlement envisaged therein."

The UN Security Council decided to not implement resolution 181.
 
The UN had no right in 1947 to even debate the idea of partitioning the country or to dispose of any part of it, or deprive the majority of its indigenous population of their territory or to transfer it to the exclusive use of illegal immigrants. The General Assembly had no right or jurisdiction to destroy the territorial integrity of Palestine or to propose its partition. The British Government, perhaps under the weight of its guilt for abusing the trust the League of Nations had bestowed upon it to protect, guide and assist Palestine achieve its independence at the end of its mandatory period, opted, when it was time to vote, to abstain from voting.

The United Kingdom did not own Palestine and had no relationship whatsoever with it in 1916 when it agreed with Zionist leaders to issue the Balfour Declaration in November 1917. This Declaration remains illegal, invalid and inapplicable even though it was injected into the Mandate for Palestine through power politics.

The International Law Digest defines a state as “ a people permanently occupying a fixed territory, bound together by common law, habits, and customs into one body politic, exercising, through the medium of organised government, independent sovereignty and control over all persons and things within its boundaries”. In the area labelled Israel today, the majority of the people, at the time of the Balfour Declaration and later when Palestine was partitioned in 1947, were indigenous Palestinians. In International Law, the territory of any state must belong to the people of that state. The possession of the territory must be a legitimate possession and could not have been acquired by war, conquest or through annexation.
 
The UN had no right in 1947 to even debate the idea of partitioning the country or to dispose of any part of it, or deprive the majority of its indigenous population of their territory or to transfer it to the exclusive use of illegal immigrants. The General Assembly had no right or jurisdiction to destroy the territorial integrity of Palestine or to propose its partition. The British Government, perhaps under the weight of its guilt for abusing the trust the League of Nations had bestowed upon it to protect, guide and assist Palestine achieve its independence at the end of its mandatory period, opted, when it was time to vote, to abstain from voting.

The United Kingdom did not own Palestine and had no relationship whatsoever with it in 1916 when it agreed with Zionist leaders to issue the Balfour Declaration in November 1917. This Declaration remains illegal, invalid and inapplicable even though it was injected into the Mandate for Palestine through power politics.

The International Law Digest defines a state as “ a people permanently occupying a fixed territory, bound together by common law, habits, and customs into one body politic, exercising, through the medium of organised government, independent sovereignty and control over all persons and things within its boundaries”. In the area labelled Israel today, the majority of the people, at the time of the Balfour Declaration and later when Palestine was partitioned in 1947, were indigenous Palestinians. In International Law, the territory of any state must belong to the people of that state. The possession of the territory must be a legitimate possession and could not have been acquired by war, conquest or through annexation.

:bsflag:

Winston Churchill, 1921
It is manifestly right that the Jews should have a national centre and a National Home...And where else could that be but in this land of Palestine, with which for more than 3,000 years they have been intimately and profoundly associated?

Eminent Historian Andrew Roberts...
Jerusalem is the site of the Temple of Solomon and Herod. The stones of a palace erected by King David himself are even now being unearthed just outside the walls of Jerusalem. Everything that makes a nation state legitimate – bloodshed, soil tilled, two millennia of continuous residence, international agreements – argues for Israel’s right to exist,
Friends of Israel

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Writer Charles Krauthammer...
Israel is the very embodiment of Jewish continuity: It is the only nation on earth that inhabits the same land, bears the same name, speaks the same language, and worships the same God that it did 3,000 years ago. You dig the soil and you find pottery from Davidic times, coins from Bar Kokhba, and 2,000-year-old scrolls written in a script remarkably like the one that today advertises ice cream at the corner candy store.

Tel Dan Stele Verifying King David Dynasty 3000 years ago
The Tel Dan Stela and the Kings of Aram and Israel

Jewish Bar Kokhba Coins Minted 2000 Years Ago...
Bar Kochba Revolt coinage - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Judaea Capta Coins Minted By Romans against Jews 2000 years ago
Judaea Capta coinage - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jewish Dead Sea Scrolls 2000 years old.
Dead Sea Scrolls - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yale University Press: The Archaeology of Ancient Israel
In this lavishly illustrated book some of Israel's foremost archaeologists present a thorough, up-to-date, and readily accessible survey of early life in the land of the Bible, from the Neolithic era (eighth millennium B.C.E.) to the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the First Temple in 586 B.C.E. It will be a delightful and informative resource for anyone who has ever wanted to know more about the religious, scientific, or historical background of the region.
The Archaeology of Ancient Israel - Ben-Tor, Amnon; Greenberg, R. - Yale University Press

PBS Nova...
In the banks of the Nile in southern Egypt in 1896, British archaeologisit Flinders Petrie unearthed one of the most important discoveries in biblical archaeology known as the Merneptah Stele. Merneptah's stele announces the entrance on the world stage of a People named Israel.

The Merneptah Stele is powerful evidence that a People called the Israelites are living in Canaan over 3000 years ago

Dr. Donald Redford, Egyptologist and archaeologist: The Merneptah Stele is priceless evidence for the presence of an ethnical group called Israel in Canaan.
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yvg2EZAEw5c]1/13 The Bible's Buried Secrets (NOVA PBS) - YouTube[/ame]
 
Class A mandates (Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon and Transjordan)
And who made that up? Palestine was not a Class "A" mandate. Doh!

?

The A Mandates, which govern the British occupation of Palestine and the French occupation of Syria...

Eugene Rostow, Legal scholar, former Dean of the Yale Law School, Under Secretary of State in the Johnson administration, US State Dept Legal Advisor, Drafter of UN Res. 242 pertaining to Israeli land in the West Bank...
The British Mandate recognized the right of the Jewish people to "close settlement" in the whole of the Mandated territory [Palestine]. The Jewish right of settlement in Palestine west of the Jordan river, that is, in Israel, the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, was made unassailable. That right has never been terminated and cannot be terminated except by a recognized peace between Israel and its neighbors. And perhaps not even then, in view of Article 80 of the U.N. Charter, "the Palestine article," which provides that "nothing in the Charter shall be construed ... to alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments...."

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. There remains simply the theory that the Arab inhabitants of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have an inherent 'natural law' claim to the area. Neither customary international law nor the United Nations Charter acknowledges that every group of people claiming to be a nation has the right to a state of its own.
Resolved: are the settlements legal? Israeli West Bank policies
 
Winston Churchill

For hundreds of years Britain was stealing from natives all over the world. Why would they think differently about the native Palestinians.

Churchill was a crook.
 
Winston Churchill

For hundreds of years Britain was stealing from natives all over the world. Why would they think differently about the native Palestinians.

Churchill was a crook.

For 14 00 years, muslimes have been stealing others land http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_conquests

99.9 percent of the Middle East and north Africa has been stolen from the Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians....

 
Last edited:
Class A mandates (Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon and Transjordan)
And who made that up? Palestine was not a Class "A" mandate. Doh!
? nytimes.com
We, the learned elders know from time immemorial that reliance on the NYTimes may instill a belief earth is flat too. So, quoting the original text of the Peel Commission report - "The Mandate is of a different type from the Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon and the draft Mandate for Iraq. These latter, which were called for convenience "A" Mandates, accorded with with the fourth paragraph of Article 22. (blahblah). Article I of the Palestine Mandate, on the other hand, vests "full powers of legislation and of administration", within the limits of the Mandate, in the Mandatory." - we open to the general misguided public the secret fact that Palestine was not an "A" mandate. Cool, no?
 
The terms and conditions, indeed the SPIRIT of the Mandate system that came post WWI was to advance and support local sovereignty in those places where the former government was no more.

What is mostly ended up being, however, was European colonialism by another name.
 
Resolution 181 would have violated the UN charter so the Security Council would not implement it. Resolution 181 created no partition. It transfered no land. It defined no borders. It created no state.
 
The terms and conditions, indeed the SPIRIT of the Mandate system that came post WWI was to advance and support local sovereignty in those places where the former government was no more.

What is mostly ended up being, however, was European colonialism by another name.

Britain violated the League of Nations charter and violated the rights of the inhabitants. They attempted to correct and clarify the terms of the mandate in their 1939 white paper.

However, that was too little too late. They had already assisted the Zionists in creating an illegal state within a state (Something like a Hezbollah.) including a military. At the end of 1947, they moved their military across Palestine attacking and expelling its civilian population. Over 300,000 Palestinians became refugees before any Arab state entered Palestine to stop this attack.
 
Britain violated the League of Nations charter and violated the rights of the inhabitants. They attempted to correct and clarify the terms of the mandate in their 1939 white paper.
Drivel.
However, that was too little too late. They had already assisted the Zionists in creating an illegal state within a state (Something like a Hezbollah.) including a military. At the end of 1947, they moved their military across Palestine attacking and expelling its civilian population. Over 300,000 Palestinians became refugees before any Arab state entered Palestine to stop this attack.
  • The partition resolution was adopted on Nov. 29, 1947.
  • Arab attacks began on Nov. 29, 1947, and contunied until April 1, 1948.
  • Jews began returning the favor seriously on April, 1948, and in six weeks captured arab sections of Tiberias, Haifa and later also Safed and Acre.
So, why do arabs always have to lie like a pornstar?
 
The terms and conditions, indeed the SPIRIT of the Mandate system that came post WWI was to advance and support local sovereignty in those places where the former government was no more.

What is mostly ended up being, however, was European colonialism by another name.

Britain violated the League of Nations charter and violated the rights of the inhabitants. They attempted to correct and clarify the terms of the mandate in their 1939 white paper.

However, that was too little too late. They had already assisted the Zionists in creating an illegal state within a state (Something like a Hezbollah.) including a military. At the end of 1947, they moved their military across Palestine attacking and expelling its civilian population. Over 300,000 Palestinians became refugees before any Arab state entered Palestine to stop this attack.







Eugene Rostow, Legal scholar, Former Dean of the Yale Law School, Under Secretary of State in the Johnson administration, US State Dept Legal Advisor, Drafter of UN Res. 242 pertaining to Israeli land in the West Bank http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_V._Rostow
The British Mandate recognized the right of the Jewish people to "close settlement" in the whole of the Mandated territory [Palestine]. The Jewish right of settlement in Palestine west of the Jordan river, that is, in Israel, the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, was made unassailable. That right has never been terminated and cannot be terminated except by a recognized peace between Israel and its neighbors. And perhaps not even then, in view of Article 80 of the U.N. Charter, "the Palestine article," which provides that "nothing in the Charter shall be construed ... to alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments...."

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. There remains simply the theory that the Arab inhabitants of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have an inherent 'natural law' claim to the area. Neither customary international law nor the United Nations Charter acknowledges that every group of people claiming to be a nation has the right to a state of its own."
http://www.tzemachdovid.org/Facts/islegal1.shtml
 
It has been urged that the expression "a national home for the Jewish people" offered a prospect that Palestine might in due course become a Jewish State or Commonwealth. His Majesty's Government do not wish to contest the view, which was expressed by the Royal Commission, that the Zionist leaders at the time of the issue of the Balfour Declaration recognised that an ultimate Jewish State was not precluded by the terms of the Declaration. But, with the Royal Commission, His Majesty's Government believe that the framers of the Mandate in which the Balfour Declaration was embodied could not have intended that Palestine should be converted into a Jewish State against the will of the Arab population of the country. That Palestine was not to be converted into a Jewish State might be held to be implied in the passage from the Command Paper of 1922 which reads as follows

"Unauthorized statements have been made to the effect that the purpose in view is to create a wholly Jewish Palestine. Phrases have been used such as that `Palestine is to become as Jewish as England is English.' His Majesty's Government regard any such expectation as impracticable and have no such aim in view. Nor have they at any time contemplated .... the disappearance or the subordination of the Arabic population, language or culture in Palestine. They would draw attention to the fact that the terms of the (Balfour) Declaration referred to do not contemplate that Palestine as a whole should be converted into a Jewish National Home, but that such a Home should be founded IN PALESTINE."

But this statement has not removed doubts, and His Majesty's Government therefore now declare unequivocally that it is not part of their policy that Palestine should become a Jewish State. They would indeed regard it as contrary to their obligations to the Arabs under the Mandate, as well as to the assurances which have been given to the Arab people in the past, that the Arab population of Palestine should be made the subjects of a Jewish State against their will.

The Avalon Project : British White Paper of 1939
 

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