by Prof. Louis Rene Beres<\/p>\n\n
Today, as always, words matter. Over the years, a notably durable Arab\npatience in building “Palestine” upon whole mountains of Jewish\ncorpses has drawn directly upon a prior linguistic victory. Yet, the\nstill generally unchallenged language referring provocatively to an\nIsraeli “occupation” always overlooks the pertinent and logically\nincontestable history of West Bank (Judea\/Samaria) and Gaza.<\/p>\n\n
Perhaps the most evident omission still concerns the precise and\nunwitting manner in which these “territories” fell into Israel’s hands\nin the first place. Here it is \u201d\u201d simply and widely disregarded \u201d\u201d that\n“occupation” followed the multistate Arab state aggression of 1967.\nThis aggression, of course, was never disguised by Egypt,<\/p>\n\n
A sovereign state of Palestine did not exist before 1967 or 1948. Nor\nwas a state of Palestine ever promised by UN Security Council\nResolution 242. Contrary to popular understanding, a state of\nPalestine has never existed. Never.<\/p>\n\n
Even as a nonstate legal entity, “Palestine” ceased to exist in 1948,\nwhen Great Britain relinquished its League of Nations mandate. During\nthe 1948-49 Israeli War of Independence (a war of survival fought\nbecause the entire Arab world had rejected the authoritative United\nNations resolution creating a Jewish State), West Bank and Gaza came\nunder flagrantly illegal control of Jordan and Egypt respectively.\nThese Arab conquests did not put an end to an already-existing state\nor to an ongoing trust territory. What these aggressions did\naccomplish was the effective prevention, sui generis, of a state of\n“Palestine.”<\/p>\n\n
Let us return to an earlier history. From the Biblical Period (ca.\n1350 BCE to 586 BCE) to the British Mandate (1918-1948), the land \u201d\u201d\nnamed by the Romans after the ancient Philistines \u201d\u201d was controlled\nonly by non-Palestinian elements. Significantly, however, a continuous\nchain of Jewish possession of the land was legally recognized after\nWorld War I, at the San Remo Peace Conference of April 1920. There, a\nbinding treaty was signed in which Great Britain was given mandatory\nauthority over “Palestine” (the area had been ruled by the Ottoman\nTurks since 1516) to prepare it to become the “national home for the\nJewish People.” Palestine, according to the Treaty, comprised\nterritories encompassing what are now the states of Jordan and Israel,\nincluding West Bank and Gaza. Present day Israel comprises only\ntwenty-two percent of Palestine as defined and ratified at the San\nRemo Peace Conference.<\/p>\n\n
In 1922, Great Britain unilaterally \u201d\u201d and without any lawful authority\n\u201d\u201d split off 78 percent of the lands promised to the Jews \u201d\u201d all of\nPalestine east of the Jordan River \u201d\u201d and gave it to Abdullah, the\nnon-Palestinian son of the Sharif of Mecca. Eastern Palestine now took\nthe name “Transjordan,’ which it retained until April 1949, when it\nwas renamed as Jordan. From the moment of its creation, Transjordan\nwas closed to all Jewish migration and settlement \u201d\u201d a clear betrayal\nof the British promise in the Balfour Declaration of 1917, and a\npatent contravention of its Mandatory obligations under international\nlaw. On July 20, 1951, a “Palestinian” Arab assassinated King Abdullah\nfor the latter’s hostility to Palestinian aspirations and concerns.\nRegarding these aspirations, Jordan’s “moderate” King Hussein \u201d\u201d 19\nyears later, during September 1970 \u201d\u201d brutally murdered thousands of\ndefenseless Palestinians under his jurisdiction.<\/p>\n\n
In 1947, several years prior to Abdullah’s killing, the newly formed\nUnited Nations, rather than designate the entire land west of the\nJordan River as the long-promised Jewish national homeland, enacted a\nsecond partition. Curiously, because this second fission again gave\ncomplete advantage to Arab interests, Jewish leaders accepted the\npainful judgment. As readers of The Jewish Press already know all too\nwell, the Arab states did not accept it. On May 15, 1948, exactly 24\nhours after the State of Israel came into existence, Azzam Pasha,\nSecretary General of the Arab League, declared to a tiny new country\nfounded upon the ashes of the Holocaust: “This will be a war of\nextermination and a momentous massacre.”<\/p>\n\n
This unambiguous declaration of genocide has been at the core of all\nsubsequent Arab orientations toward Israel, including those of\n“moderate” Fatah. Even by the strict legal standards of the Convention\non the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Arab\nactions and attitudes toward the microscopic Jewish state in their\nmidst has remained patently annihilatory. For some reason, this\npersistence has repeatedly been made to appear benign. But President\nObama and Senator Mitchell now have a clear obligation to look behind\nthese propagandistic appearances.<\/p>\n\n
In 1967, almost 20 years after Israel’s entry into the community of\nstates, the Jewish state, as a result of its unexpected military\nvictory over Arab aggressor states, gained unintended control over\nWest Bank and Gaza. Although the inadmissibility of the acquisition of\nterritory by war is properly codified in the UN Charter, there existed\nno authoritative sovereign to whom the Territories could be\n“returned.” Israel could hardly have been expected to transfer them\nback to Jordan and Egypt, which had exercised unauthorized and\nterribly cruel control since the Arab-initiated war of “extermination”\nin 1948-49. Moreover, the idea of Palestinian “self-determination” had\nonly just begun to emerge after the Six Day War, and \u201d\u201d significantly \u201d\u201d\nhad not even been included in UN Security Council Resolution 242,\nwhich was adopted on November 22, 1967.<\/p>\n\n
For their part, the Arab states convened a summit in Khartoum in\nAugust 1967, concluding: “No peace with Israel, no recognition of\nIsrael, no negotiations with it….” The Palestine Liberation\nOrganization (PLO) was formed three years earlier, in 1964, before\nthere were any “Israeli Occupied Territories.” Exactly what was it,\ntherefore, that the PLO sought to “liberate” between 1964 and 1967?\nThis critical question should now be considered by Barack Obama’s\nspecial envoy to the region, Senator George Mitchell.<\/p>\n\n
This has been a very brief account of essential historic reasons why\nthe so-called “Palestinian Territories” are not occupied by Israel.\nSeveral other equally valid reasons stem from Israel’s intrinsic legal\nright to security and self-defense. As I have said so often in this\ncolumn, international law is not a suicide pact. Because a Palestinian\nstate would severely threaten the very existence of Israel \u201d\u201d a fact\nthat remains altogether unhidden even in Arab media and governments \u201d\u201d\nthe Jewish State is under no binding obligation to end a falsely\nalleged “occupation.” No state, not even a Jewish one, can ever be\nrequired to accept complicity in its own dismemberment.<\/p>\n\n
No doubt, both President Obama and Senator Mitchell want to be fair\nand evenhanded in their developing plans for the Middle East. To meet\nthis obligation, however, it is essential that they first build all\npertinent negotiations upon a firm foundation of historical accuracy\nand ethical truth. This means, at a minimum, that the aspiring U.S.\npeacemakers familiarize themselves with correct history, and not\nsimply allow themselves to be swallowed up with their many\npredecessors in ritualistic dogma and empty platitudes.<\/p>\n\n
Date 02-27-09<\/p>\n\n
The Question of the Applicability of the Fourth Geneva Convention\non Occupation to Judea, Samaria and Gaza (Part One) by Howard Grief<\/p><\/li>\n
Toss the Travaux? Application of the Fourth Geneva Convention to\nthe Middle East Conflict by David John Ball<\/p><\/li>\n
The Legal Foundation and Borders of Israel under International Law\nby Howard Grief [Preview is available on the MAZO Publishers website;\npurchase the book on Amazon]<\/p><\/li>\n
Which Came First \u201d\u201d Terrorism or “Occupation”? by the Israel\nMinistry of Foreign Affairs<\/p><\/li>\n
The Origin of the Occupation Myth by Howard Grief (Israel’s Borders\nand Legal Right to Eretz Israel) Date 03:03, 03-16, 09<\/p><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n
Louis Ren\u00c3\u00a9 Beres (Ph.D., Princeton, 1971) is the author of many books\nand articles dealing with military affairs and international law. He\nis a Strategic and Military Affairs columnist for The Jewish Press.<\/p>\n\n
This appeared in the Jewish Press, February 27, 2009.<\/p>\n\n
President Barack Obama has already placed the Middle East at the very\ntop of his foreign policy agenda. There is nothing inherently wrong\nwith this ordering; quite the contrary. The problem, however, is that\nthe new administration’s ambitious negotiations remain structured upon\naltogether erroneous assumptions. In this connection, the gravest\ncontinuing misrepresentation of all is that there are Arab lands under\nan Israeli “occupation.”<\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/israeldefender.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/israeldefender.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/israeldefender.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/israeldefender.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/israeldefender.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/israeldefender.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/israeldefender.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/israeldefender.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/israeldefender.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}