The Mandate for Palestine aka Greater Israel as it Pertains to Jerusalem and the Old City:
The rights granted to the Jewish people in the 1920 San Remo Conference were confirmed by the 1920 Treaty of Sevres and Lausanne. Furthermore, said rights were adopted and incorporated by the Mandate for Palestine relating to the establishment of the Jewish national home, and were to be given effect in all parts and regions of the Palestine territory. No exception was made for Jerusalem and its Old City; nor were they singled out for special reference in either the Balfour Declaration, the 1920 San Remo Treaty, or the Mandate forPalestine, other than to call for the preservation of existing rights in the Holy Places. As concerns the Holy Places, including those located in the Old City, specific obligations and responsibilities were imposed on the (Mandatory?) Mandatory.
It follows that the legal rights of the claimants to sovereignty over the Old City of Jerusalem similarly derive from the decisions of the Principal Allied Powers in the 1920 San Remoconference, and from the terms of the Mandate for Palestine adopted and approved by the Council of the League of Nations. In evaluating the validity of the claims of Israel relating to the Old City, the Council decision is of great significance from the perspective of the rights and obligations that it created under international law which the UN cannot supersede or modify without the consent of the parties.
The League of Nations and the UN can only recommend a resolution. In order for a resolution to be binding it must be agreed to and executed by the parties concerned. Since the Arabs rejected outright the partition and most other resolutions, all those resolutions are void and have no standing whatsoever.
In the view of Oxford international law professor Ian Brownlie, “in many instances the rights of parties to a dispute derive from legally significant acts, or a treaty concluded very long ago”. As a result of these “legally significant acts”, there are legal as well as historical ties between the State of Israel and the Old City of Jerusalem. The Faisal Weitzmann agreement of January 3, 1919 stated and agreed that the Jews would have Jerusalem and that the Muslim places of worship would be protected.
The intellectual ties were further solidified by the official opening of the Hebrew University on 1 April 1925 in Jerusalem. It must be noted said opening was attended by many dignitaries, including the University’s founding father, Dr. Chaim Weizmann, Field Marshall Allenby, Lord Balfour, Professor William Rappard and Sir Herbert Samuel, and many other distinguished guests. According to Dr. Weizmann, addressing the dignitaries and some twelve thousand other attendees at this memorable event, the opening of the University inJerusalem was “the distinctive symbol, as it is destined to be the crowning glory, of the National Home of the Jewish people which we are seeking to rebuild”.
In addition to the legal, historical and intellectual heritage, in the words of Canadian scholar Dr. Jacques Paul Gauthier: “To attempt to solve the Jerusalem / Old City problem without taking into consideration the historical and religious facts is like trying to put together a ten thousand piece puzzle without the most strategic pieces of that puzzle”. In his monumental work entitled "Sovereignty Over the Old City of Jerusalem: A Study of the Historical, Religious, Political and Legal Aspects of the Question of the Old City", Dr. Gauthier offers an exhaustive review of these historical/spiritual/
Indeed, with respect to the question of the Old City, the historical facts and the res religiosae (or things involving religion) are rendered legally relevant by the decisions taken at the 1920 San Remo sessions of the Paris Peace Conference, together with the terms of the Mandate for Greater Israel aka Palestine. Notwithstanding the fact that historical, religious or other non-legal considerations may not be considered relevant or sufficient to support a legal claim normally in international law cases, these aspects of the issue of the city of Jerusalem are relevant in evaluating the claims of Israel and the Arab-Palestinians relating to sovereignty over the Old City, just as much or perhaps even more than over the entire State of Israel and the Holy Land, as noted.
YJ Draiman
“Peace is harder to make than war."
ReplyDeleteIf you know how to make peace in your home, with your families (your aunts, your uncles, even distant cousins), and with all of the Jewish people, you will know how to do it with your Arab neighbor. Once we learn peace with each other as Jews we can and will teach it to the rest of the world.
BRAINSTORMING QUESTIONS TO PONDER
Question 1: Which peace is more important, inner peace, peace in the home, or peace with enemies?
Question 2: Which kind of war is worse: between enemies or between friends and family?
The “Mandate” Defined Where Jews Are and Are Not Permitted to Settle
ReplyDeleteThe “Mandate for Palestine” document did not set final borders. It left this for
the Mandatory to stipulate in a binding appendix to the final document in the
form of a memorandum. However, Article 6 of the “Mandate” clearly states:
“The Administration of Palestine, while ensuring that the rights and position of other sections of the population are not prejudiced, the Jewish people have exclusive political rights and the Mandate with the British as trustee shall facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable conditions and shall encourage, in co-operation with the Jewish agency referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes.”
“It should be remembered that in 1918, with the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Britain and France were handed more than 5,000,000 square miles to divvy up and 99% was given to the Arabs to create countries that did not exist previously. Less than 1% was given as a Mandate for the re-establishment of a state for the Jews on both banks of the Jordan River. In 1921, to appease the Arabs once again, another
three quarters of that less than 1% was given to a fictitious state called
Trans-Jordan.” (Jack Berger, May 31, 2004.)
The total for all the 22 Arab League countries is 6,145,389 square miles (SM). By comparison, all 50 states of the United States have a total of 3,787,318 SM. Israel has 8,463 SM, about one-sixth of that of the State of Michigan. Iran, Turkey,
Pakistan and Afghanistan are Muslim but not Arab and are not included.
World Arab population: 300 million; World Jewish population: 13.6 million; Israel’s Jewish population: 5.4 million. (Dr. Wilbert Simkovitz, http://dehai.org/archives/deha…
“… during the late 1940s, more than 40 million refuges around the world were resettled, except for one people. They [Palestinian Arabs] remain defined as refugees, wallowing over 60 years later in 59 UNRWA refugee camps, financed by $400 million contributed annually by nations of the world. Add insult to injury The Arab countries persecuted and expelled over a million Jewish families who lived there over 2,500 years, from their countries and confiscated all their assets, businesses, homes and 120,440 sq. km. of real estate property valued in the trillions of dollars.
Now they want to eject them again from their own ancestral land.