How the Balfour Declaration gave rise to the State of Israel Howard Grief - Israel's Legal Right to Samaria is enshrined in International Law!

THE BALFOUR DECLARATION

How the Balfour Declaration gave rise to the State of Israel

Howard Grief

By: Howard Grief, (a Canadian trained lawyer who made aliyah, explains Legal Rights and Title of Sovereignty of the Jewish People to the Land of Israel and Palestine under International Law

[..] The San Remo Resolution converted the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917 from a mere statement of British policy expressing sympathy with the goal of the Zionist movement to create a Jewish state into a binding act of international law that required specific fulfillment by Britain of this object in active cooperation with the Jewish people.

Under the Balfour Declaration as originally issued by the British government, the latter only promised to use their best endeavors to facilitate the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people. But under the San Remo Resolution of April 24-25, 1920 confirmed by the 1920 Treaty of Sevres and Lausanne, the Principal Allied Powers as a cohesive group charged the British government with the responsibility or legal obligation of putting into effect the Balfour Declaration. A legal onus was thus placed on Britain to ensure that the Jewish National Home would be duly established. This onus the British Government willingly accepted because at the time the Balfour Declaration was issued and adopted at the San Remo Peace Conference, Palestine was considered a valuable strategic asset and communications center, and so a vital necessity for protecting far-flung British imperial interests extending from Egypt to India. Britain was fearful of having any major country or power other than itself, especially France or Germany, positioned alongside the Suez Canal.

The term “Jewish National Home” was defined to mean a state by the British government at the Cabinet session which approved the Balfour Declaration on October 31, 1917. That was also the meaning originally given to this phrase by the program committee which drafted the Basel Program at the first Zionist Congress in August 1897 and by Theodore Herzl, the founder of the Zionist Organization. The word “home” as used in the Balfour Declaration and subsequently in the San Remo Resolution was simply the euphemism for a state originally adopted by the Zionist Organization when the territory of Palestine was subject to the rule of the Ottoman Empire, so as not to arouse the sharp opposition of the Sultan and his government to the Zionist aim, which involved a potential loss of this territory by the Empire.

There was no doubt in the minds of the authors of the Basel Program and the Balfour Declaration regarding the true meaning of this word, a meaning reinforced by the addition of the adjective “national” to “home”. However, as a result of not using the word “state” directly and proclaiming that meaning openly or even attempting to hide its true meaning when it was first used to denote the aim of Zionism, ammunition was provided to those who sought to prevent the emergence of a Jewish state or who saw the Home only in cultural terms.

The phrase “in Palestine”, another expression found in the Balfour Declaration that generated much controversy, referred to the whole country, including both Cisjordan and Transjordan. It was absurd to imagine that this phrase could be used to indicate that only a part of Palestine was reserved for the future Jewish National Home, since both were created simultaneously and used interchangeably, with the term “Palestine” pointing out the geographical location of the future independent Jewish state. Had “Palestine” meant a partitioned country with certain areas of it set aside for Jews and others for Arabs, that intention would have been stated explicitly at the time the Balfour Declaration was drafted and approved and later adopted by the Principal Allied Powers. No such allusion was ever made in the prolonged discussions that took place in fashioning the Declaration and ensuring it international approval.

There is therefore no juridical or factual basis for asserting that the phrase “in Palestine” limited the establishment of the Jewish National Home to only a part of the country. On the contrary, Palestine and the Jewish National Home were synonymous terms, as is evidenced by the use of the same phrase in the second half of the Balfour Declaration which refers to the existing non-Jewish communities “in Palestine”, clearly indicating the whole country. Similar evidence exists in the preamble and terms of the Mandate Charter.

The San Remo Resolution on Palestine combined the Balfour Declaration with Article 22 of the League Covenant. This meant that the general provisions of Article 22 applied to the Jewish people exclusively, who would set up their home and state in Palestine. There was no intention to apply Article 22 to the Arabs of the country, as was mistakenly concluded by the Palestine Royal Commission which relied on that article of the Covenant as the legal basis to justify the partition of Palestine, apart from the other reasons it gave.

The proof of the applicability of Article 22 to the Jewish people, including not only those in Palestine at the time, but those who were expected to arrive in large numbers in the future, is found in the Smuts Resolution, which became Article 22 of the Covenant. It specifically names Palestine as one of the countries to which this article would apply. There was no doubt that when Palestine was named in the context of Article 22, it was linked exclusively to the Jewish National Home, as set down in the Balfour Declaration, a fact everyone was aware of at the time, including the representatives of the Arab national movement, as evidenced by the agreement between Emir Feisal and Dr. Chaim Weizmann dated January 3, 1919 as well as an important letter sent by the Emir to future US Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter dated March 3, 1919. In that letter, Feisal characterized as “moderate and proper” the Zionist proposals presented by Nahum Sokolow and Weizmann to the Council of Ten at the Paris Peace Conference on February 27, 1919, which called for the development of Palestine into a Jewish commonwealth with extensive boundaries. The argument later made by Arab leaders that the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate for Palestine were incompatible with Article 22 of the Covenant is totally undermined by the fact that the Smuts Resolution – the precursor of Article 22 – specifically included Palestine within its legal framework.

[Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.]

Israel's Legal Right to Samaria is enshrined in International Law!

A cold, hard look at the law reveals an undeniable if inconvenient (for some) truth: Israel and the Jewish People have full sovereign rights to Judea and Samaria. A fair and objective analysis of the various post-WWI agreements, decisions, conferences, treaties, declarations, covenants and conventions regarding the Question of Palestine (not to be confused with today's made-up "Palestine" that the "Palestinians" claim as theirs) can only lead to this conclusion.

The most significant of these decisions was the San Remo Resolution of 1920 confirmed by the 1920 Treaty of Sevres and Lausanne, which recognized the exclusive national Jewish rights to the Land of Israel under international law, on the strength of the historical connection of the Jewish people to the territory previously known as Palestine. The outcome of this declaration gave birth to the "Mandate for Palestine," an historical League of Nations document that laid down the Jewish legal right to settle anywhere in western Palestine, between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. In fact, in San Remo Treaty confirmed by the 1920 Treaty of Sevres and Lausanne, the nations of the world had formally obligated themselves not only to establish a Jewish state on the historic Jewish Homeland but also to facilitate its development as well (see Article 6 of the still-binding Mandate for Palestine). This plainly means that today's Israeli settlements are in fact 100% legal and that the accusation of "occupation Believe it or not...

Israel's Legal Right to Samaria is enshrined in International Law!" is completely false. Back then, the concept of a "Palestinian People" was unheard of and "Palestine" referred only to a Levantine region and never to an Arab nation or state. Believe it or not.

So if the world ratified into international law that a Jewish state be established within the boundaries of Mandatory Palestine, how is it we hear nothing about this today? Why has this truth completely disappeared from today's narrative? By what right do the nations of the world shirk their obligations and deny the State of Israel and the Jewish people their due? Suffice to say that if the truth, any truth, is not actively preserved and if the facts are forgotten, falsity and misinformation fill the vacuum. That is why "Palestinian rights", "Israeli occupation" and "1967 borders" dominate the headlines today.

The Legal Right: Following the WWI defeat of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, the League of Nations (precursor to the U.N.) decided to divide up the huge landmass of the vanquished Ottomans as follows: a mandate, or trusteeship, for France (Lebanon and Syria) and a mandate for Britain (Iraq and Palestine [comprised of what is today Israel, Gaza, Judea, Samaria and Jordan]). The legal position of the whole of Palestine was clearly defined in several international agreements, the most important of which was the one adopted in April 1920 at the San Remo Conference, attended by the Principal Allied Powers (Council of Four). It decided to assign the Mandate for Palestine under the League of Nations to Britain. Two years later an agreed text was confirmed by the League and came into operation in September 1923. In Article 2 of that document, the League of Nations declared that

"The Mandatory shall be responsible for placing the country under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home, as laid down in the preamble.”

The preamble clearly stated that

"recognition has hereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country.”

It was on this basis that the British Mandate was established. The San Remo Agreement was the last legally binding international decision regarding the rights to the land in the West Bank aka Judea and Samaria of Jordan and thus, according to international law which is still binding to this day, these parts, Judea and Samaria, belong to Israel and the Jewish People, period.

The significance for Israel and the Jewish People of San Remo cannot be overestimated. None other than Chaim Weizman, the Zionist leader of that time, declared:

"The San Remo decision...is Israel's Magna Carta and is the most momentous political event in the whole history of our (Zionist) movement, and, it is perhaps, no exaggeration to say in the whole history of our people since the Exiles"

Powerful words indeed, yet regrettably so unfamiliar. It makes one wonder just how many of today's "Middle East experts", journalists and opinion makers know the details of this and other important agreements of that era? How many have even a rudimentary understanding of San Remo's historical and legal importance?

This four minute video will give you the basics about the San Remo Conference:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijS8mFP4I1A

Renowned scholar and jurist Dr. Jacques Gauthier, a non-Jewish Canadian attorney specializing in international law as it applies to Israel and the territory she holds, spent 20 years researching the legal status of Jerusalem. The video below is a segment of his address to the ICEJ conference in Jerusalem, September 2010 (see his entire address here). Invest 16 minutes of your time to watch as he eloquently and passionately encapsulates Israel's legal foundation for her right to sovereignty over Judea and Samaria. A must-view video for those who really want to understand Israel's legal rights to Judea and Samaria and the legitimacy of the settlements therein.

See minutes 34:12 to 50:02 of this video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55GR84ITI6w

The dissolution of the League of Nations in 1946 in no way altered the Jewish People's rights to Judea and Samaria, given to them by the nations of the world, first in San Remo, then in the provisions of the Mandate for Palestine. When the United Nations was established, Article 80 of its charter clearly specified that rights previously granted by the League would be legally binding.

In the aftermath of the defensive war of June 1967, forty-five years after the League of Nations Declaration in San Remo, Israel liberated and retrieved some of her rightful possessions of the territories assigned to the Jewish People as a National Home. How her possession of her own homeland can be called the "Occupation of Palestinian territories" is beyond explanation and is plain fraudulent tactic to deprive the Jewish people of the ancestral land as guaranteed by international law and treaties. What is tragic is that the Jews themselves have adopted this usage and made it a cornerstone of their own national policy.

Although, under the law Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria is Jewish territory - No annexation is required.

If anything it may need to be re-incorporated or re-patriated.

Let me pose an interesting scenario. If you had a country and it was conquered by foreign powers over a period of time. After many years you have taken back you country and land in various defensive wars. Do you have to officially annex those territories. It was always your territory and by retaking control and possession of your territory it is again your original property and there is no need to annex it. The title to your property is valid today as it was many years before.
Annexation only applies when you are taking over territory that was never yours to begin with, just like some European countries annexed territories of other countries.

YJ Draiman

Jews hold title to the Land of Greater Israel even if outnumbered a million to one.

The fact that more foreigners than Jews occupied the Land of Israel during certain periods of time does not diminish true ownership. If my house is invaded by a family ten times larger that mine does that obviate my true ownership?