PAUL LUNGEN, Staff Reporter, Canadian Jewish News
The Jewish people’s historic and religious connection to Jerusalem and Israel are widely acknowledged, but what about their legal rights?
Opponents of Israel repeatedly refer to Israel’s “illegal occupation” of territories and to “Palestinian east Jerusalem,” but are these terms accurate in law?
A group of academics and legal scholars gathered in Basel, Switzerland, two weeks ago to discuss those issues and to affirm “their support for the recognition of the international legal rights of the State of Israel and the Jewish people in respect to the whole city of Jerusalem.” They issued a declaration stating just that, along with their support of “a unified Jerusalem” as the capital of Israel.
Organized by the Alliance for International Justice in Jerusalem, the conference met on dates corresponding to the first Zionist Congress in 1897 and in the same location, the Musiksaal. The conference issued a declaration referring to the international legal documents that form the legal basis for Jews’ contemporary claim to Israel, which according to conference participant Jacques Gauthier, includes Judea and Samaria (the West Bank).
Gauthier, an international lawyer who addressed the conference, said his legal research over 25 years led him to the conclusion that Jews had a valid legal claim to all the territory west of the Jordan River, including Jerusalem.
“I came to the conclusion that the legal answer came out of key historical events,” he said.
The Basel Conference Declaration cites the legal documents that cumulatively gives the Jewish people title to the lands, including Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, the San Remo Resolution of the Supreme Council of the Principal Allied Powers of April 25, 1920, and the Mandate for Palestine approved by the Council of the League of Nations on July 24, 1922. “These were the foundational instruments for the establishment of the modern State of Israel,” the declaration stated.
It all goes back to the World War I and the defeat of the Ottoman Empire by Britain, France, the United States, Italy and Japan, Gauthier said.
The Ottomans had controlled most of the Middle East, including today’s Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and the Palestinian territories. Historically, victorious powers simply seize the losing power’s territories, but under the influence of U.S. president Woodrow Wilson, a much different approach was taken. The five victorious powers, meeting as the Supreme Council, heard claims to the territories from Arab and Jewish representatives.
Chaim Weizmann led the Jewish delegation.
“The Zionists asked for recognition over Palestine of their historical connection and the recognition of the Jewish People as a legal entity, along with the right to reconstitute what they had once had, enough territory to cover all historical links to the Holy Land,” Gauthier said.
The Arabs, “who had not been unified and had tribal territories but no states, presented their claims in Paris,” Gauthier said. Led by the Hashemite King Faisal, the Arabs asked for a single giant state that would have included Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, but not the area known as Palestine. They had agreed with the Jewish delegation beforehand that that territory would go to the Jews and that each side would support the others’ claim.
No decision was made in Paris in 1919, but in San Remo, the Supreme Council reconvened to determine the disposition of the Ottoman territories. “They said ‘yes’ to the Arabs and gave them Mesopotamia [Iraq] under a British Mandate [trust] and Syria and Lebanon under a French Mandate.”
As to Palestine, “they adopted the policy right out of the Balfour Declaration – all the political rights were given to the Jewish People,” Gauthier said.
The treaties of Sevres and Lausanne confirmed this and three subsequent treaties created the mandates.
“Those international instruments are binding on all the parties and recognized in international law,” Gauthier said.
“The Jewish People are in the city [of Jerusalem] by right. They are not trespassers, they are not there wrongfully,” he said.
In 1921, the British severed the east bank of the Jordan and handed it to the Hashemites. “Jews accepted that partition” on the basis that “the rest of Palestine would become a Jewish state.”
Asked about Palestinian claims – at the time the Jews were called Palestinians – Gauthier said the Allies dealt with the Jewish people and wouldn’t subsequently entertain claims from Jews who said they were excluded, as well as Arab representatives.
“The issue legally involves the Arabs as a whole and they were given rights which were satisfactory, as noted in the documents,” he said.
In other words, Gauthier continued, any Palestinian claims were included in the larger Arab claims and were satisfied at that time.
The Jews’ claim to Israel is as strong, in law, as those of Syrians, Iraqis and Lebanese to their countries, since all those sovereignties arose from the same documents, Gauthier said.
Israel has annexed Jerusalem, affirming its claim, but has not done the same with the West Bank. That leaves open the possibility of negotiations and ceding by Israel of its rights to some of the land as contemplated in UN Resolution 242, he added.
Thanks Ted Belman
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