For Elizabeth Weil to write that for Israel to claim sovereignty over the West Bank is a violation of international law is patently false. (" Miriam Adelson's Unfinished Business")
Article 80 of the United Nations Charter, an international treaty that supercedes any resolution of the Security Council or General Assembly that may conflict with it, is the controlling international law concerning Israel. Article 80 which incorporates by reference the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine and the 1920 San Remo Agreement, declares all of Israel including the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and Gaza to be the reconstituted homeland of the Jewish people recognizing the Jewish people's 3500 year indigenous presence on the land and the land as sovereign Jewish territory. Simply put Israel cannot occupy or annex what is already its sovereign territory.
As Eugene Rostow, Dean of Yale Law School(1955-1965) and Under Secretary of State in a Democratic administration(1965-1969) wrote:
"Legally the West Bank and Gaza are unallocated parts of the Palestine Mandate...and as far as the claims of the Arabs who live there goes, it must be remembered that, in contrast to other League of Nations mandates, the Palestine Mandate was not established as a trust for the indigenous population of the area, to be terminated when the population was ready for self government.
It was set up under a different article of the League Covenant as a trust for the Jewish people, in recognition of their historic connection to the land on the condition that the civic and religious rights of the Muslims and Christians be respected.
"Moreover the right of the Jewish people to settle in the West Bank has never been terminated...Jewish settlement in the West Bank ...is..the exercise of a right protected by Article 80 of the United Nations Charter and hence necessarily part of the domestic law of the West Bank". Eugene Rostow, "Commentary Magazine", October, 1989.
Further," those Jewish rights that had existed under the Mandate remain in full force and effect, to which the UN is still committed by Article 80 to uphold, or is prohibited from altering.
"As a direct result of Article 80, the UN cannot transfer these rights over any part of Palestine, vested as they are in the Jewish People, to any non-Jewish entity, such as the “Palestinian Authority.” Among the most important of these Jewish rights are those contained in Article 6 of the Mandate which recognized the right of Jews to immigrate freely to the Land of Israel and to establish settlements thereon, rights which are fully protected by Article 80 of the UN Charter." ("Article 80 and the UN
Recognition of a 'Palestinian State' ", Howard Grief, "The Algemeiner", 9/22/11).
Salomon Benzimra, author of The Jewish People’s Rights to the Land of Israel(2018) has written that Article 80 is “relevant in preventing any action contemplated by the United Nations to alter existing Jewish rights and title to any part of the Land of Israel–Palestine, rights that are legally preserved under Article 80” (Page 70).
The reality is that any claims of sovereignty that Israel has for the West Bank are totally consistent with the international law known as the United Nations Charter regardless of all those commentators and "experts" who may calumniate to the contrary.
Richard Sherman, Florida
Comments