UN Security Council and Obama Revive Palestine Mandate Solution
United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 passed on 23 December 2016 has buried any lingering hopes for the creation of a second Arab State in former Palestine in addition to Jordan (”the two-state solution”)…writes David Singer.America’s decision to not veto Resolution 2334 – taken in the dying days of President Obama’s eight years term of office – revives the solution first envisaged in 1922 by the League of Nations.
Pursuant to Article 25A of the Mandate for Palestine – the territory covered by the Mandate was to be divided between the Jewish people and the Arab inhabitants of Palestine – restricting the Jews to reconstituting the Jewish National home in just 22% of the territory whilst the remaining 78% was reserved for the Palestinian Arabs.
The Jews reluctantly accepted that solution even though it contradicted promises made to them in 1920 at the San Remo Conference and in the Treaty of Sevres.
The Arabs however rejected the Mandate solution.
Notwithstanding such rejection – the two successor States to the Mandate – Israel and Jordan – have achieved the Mandate solution in 95% of the territory covered by the Mandate.
Negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) over the last 23 years to allocate sovereignty in the remaining 5% have been stalled since 2014. Resolution 2334 guarantees the failure of any such negotiations – if indeed they are ever resumed.
Resolution 2334 will lead to increasing conflict and violence – as the Palestinian Arabs buoyed by this unexpected change in their diplomatic fortunes seek to continue their declared objective of eliminating the Jewish State of Israel and replacing it with a 23rd Arab State.
Resolution 2334 contains the following language that signals the end of the two-state solution – rather than facilitating and advancing such an outcome:
- The Security Council still envisions:
“a region where two democratic States, Israel and Palestine, live side by side in peace within secure and recognized borders”
The Palestinian Arabs have had no elections for the last 10 years and no say in their own future – whilst Hamas and the PLO continue their internecine struggle for power against each other.
- The Security Council continues to misleadingly claim that:
“the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law”
There is no binding legal judgement supporting this claim. It is an opinion – not a statement of fact.
To the contrary the right of Jews to “close settlement” on land in East Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and Gaza including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes is specifically “encouraged” by article 6 of the Mandate and preserved by article 80 of the United Nations Charter.
The Security Council’s continuing flagrant violation of the Mandate and the UN Charter finally doomed the two-state solution to extinction.
- The Security Council is concerned that “the viability of the two-State solution based on the 1967 lines” is being imperilled.
Favouring this end-game only encourages the PLO to be intransigent in negotiations.
This exact outcome could have been achieved between 1948 and 1967 following the forced eviction of all the Jews living in Jordanian-occupied Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem and Egyptian-administered Gaza.
An even better result was on offer had the Arabs accepted General Assembly Resolution 191 (II) on 29 November 1947.
Such lost opportunities do not re-occur.
The Security Council has apparently learnt nothing in its unseemly haste to pass Resolution 2234.
Drawing new international borders between Israel and Jordan in direct negotiations between their respective States remains the best option to replace the buried two-state solution.
David Singer is a Sydney Lawyer and Foundation Member of the International Analysts Network
Leon
I have no idea why the WZO – indeed most Jewish organisations – continue to gloss over the Mandate and article 80 of the UN Charter as the legal basis for the right of the Jews to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in 22% of the territory covered by the Mandate.
By not doing so they have allowed a false Arab narrative to be presented which ignores the critical period between 1917 and 1947 and starts the Jewish-Arab conflict – which it falsely labels ‘”the Israeli-Palestinian” conflict – with the “Nakba” in 1948.
Clever indeed – but entirely false and misleading – and swallowed hook line and sinker by not only the ordinary public – but also by diplomats and governments as this latest UN debacle shows.
Our organisations have a lot to answer for in allowing this sorry situation to have developed.
Apropos article 80 of the UN Charter I am giving you the link to a critical document recently bought to my attention that you and our organisations’ hasbara departments should read
http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/downloadFile.cfm?FileID=22125
The Poms violated their mandate and the Arabs rejected the General Assembly’s 1947 partition. The Arabs started the 1967 war when Israel wiped the floor with them and then, as the proudly defeated aggressors, they bellowed the 3 Nos in Khartoum. They aggressed again in 1973. The local Arabs have shown disloyalty and their representative kleptocracy has serially demonstrated its implacable hostility and Jew-hatred as well as their determination to base their claims on lies.
Those Arabs have forfeited their moral right to a state and they never had a legal one. Israel has the victor’s right to hold territory retrieved in a defensive war. Israel should declare its legal rights over Judea and Samaria and send the PA packing therby terminating the Oslo farce.
David, why have successive Israeli governments, as well as the World Zionist Organisation, consistently failed publicly to remind the international hypocrites’ community of the binding “Mandate for Palestine” (1922), relying instead on the UN’s non-binding 1947 partition suggestion?
Much of world “public opinion” is utterly unaware of the pre-1967 history of the Jewish People’s legal rights in The Land of Israel.
Though realpolitik has little regard for truth, justice and equity, at least “the ordinary public” would become enlightened if this were done.