RE:
The Balfour Declaration
※→ P F Tinmore, et al,
Well, this is not at all what we were talking about. The facts pertaining to the political considerations given the inhabitance under the former Occupied Enemy Territory Administration (OETA) of the Allied Powers
(particularly France and the British Government), has nothing to do with the actual rights
(whether we suggest they be national/political or civil/religious) afford the inhabitance. It may sound odd, but that was generally how things were done a century ago. A century ago, such rights
(national/political or civil/religious), if they were considered at all, were thought of completely different from how they are viewed today.
Clearly, you have no knowledge of Palestine beyond Israeli propaganda.The first thing Britain did was to shove the Palestinians aside like they have been doing to natives for hundreds of years. Mandate was a mere euphemism for military occupation. Laws and policies were imposed on Palestine at the point of a gun. Any attempt to exercise their right to self-determination was violently put down by the British. Their leaders were arrested, exiled, or even killed.
Britain destroyed a functioning society. What rights were not violated?
(COMMENT)
I was going to say
(as the saying goes) - I've never been to Timbuktu, but I know what a desert is.
(But actually I have been to Timbuktu; my grandmother (Minorcan) took me there when I was a boy.)
Contrary to the Islamic popular belief, the Israelis are NOT the sole source for history. In fact, while there are undoubtedly a few Jewish
Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, I'm sure that a century ago, they did not control the knowledge base for most of the English Speaking world.
Self-determination, is a peremptory norm derived from modern customary international law
(jus cogens...) from a time when it was first promoted as a political theory in the nineteenth century. However, it has no real definition.
Graham E Fuller said:
• First, Fuller maintained that existing borders between internationally recognized nation-states are “artificial, arbitrary, and accidental.” Furthermore, they are not permanent.
• Second, although some states, mostly in the West, are a reflection of the congruence of ethnic and territorial boundaries, most are not so constituted. These other states are typically “mini-empires” or even greater empires of ethnically distinct peoples who find themselves arbitrarily forced to live within the same borders.
• Third, the current concern over self-determination is not merely a “post-Soviet blip”; that is, the dilemma is not just a regional, short-term phase following the breakup of the Soviet Union. Many peoples around the globe are going through their own process of self-discovery. More than ever before, these peoples seek liberation to “get back to their history.”
Professor Ralph Steinhardt said:
• Self-determination has little legal meaning but is nevertheless a tremendously powerful political principle.
• International law is not “univocal” on the subject. Self-determination has never been defined; hence, its mere mention conjures up several different meanings at once.
• The third basic proposition about the legal context of self-determination is that it is not a “suicide pact” in that it does not oblige any state to subjugate its own self-interest. Law is basically an expression of self-interest and has evolved accordingly over time.
• The fourth proposition is that law is constantly changing. After several distinct eras, Steinhardt maintained, the self-determination norm is at a legislative turning point. There are several new meanings or “clusters of principles” that should be included in the right to self-determination, just as there are new ways in which the right should be interpreted.
Each state, or nation has three competing self-interests: territorial integrity, the rights to self-determination, and secession. But again, Self-Determination is NOT a "suicide pact." Israel does NOT have to give up a limb or dissolve just to appease Arab Palestinian political and military failures to achieve their confused nationalist objectives.
Most Respectfully,
R
