Under Israeli constitutional law, Israel can annex any area of the Land of Israel that is not yet part of the State of Israel simply by applying the corpus of the law of the State to the area in question, as confirmed by the Supreme Court of Israel. This can be done in four ways: (1) by the issuance of a government order; (2) by a new proclamation issued by the Defense Minister, to which is attached a map of Eretz-Israel noting or depicting the area of the Land of Israel to be annexed; (3) by an existing proclamation with a map of Eretz-Israel showing the area to be annexed; and (4) by the passage of a new law.
If we follow the 1948 precedent of Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion acting in his capacity as Defense Minister, then the route or constitutional procedure to follow is by a proclamation issued by the Defense Minister with a map of Eretz-Israel depicting the area of annexation. This is how Ben-Gurion incorporated into the nascent State of Israel all areas of the Land of Israel beyond the UN Partition lines that were liberated or repossessed by Jewish military forces that were later unified as the Israel Defense Forces. Ben-Gurion’s action was fully consistent with international law which, in the years 1919 to 1924 recognized that all of Mandated Palestine was to be included in the future independent Jewish State. The 1947 Partition Resolution was an illegal derogation from what international law had previously determined regarding exclusive Jewish national rights to Palestine.
...The fact that Israel has not incorporated Judea and Samaria, as well as Gaza, into the borders of the State of Israel ever since these regions were liberated or repossessed by the Israel Defense Forces in June 1967 is an indictment against the Government of Israel for violating its own constitutional law, which I have written about in various articles. In fact, this was one of the major legal arguments I made in my Petition to Annul the Interim Agreement (of September 28, 1995), filed before the Supreme Court of Israel in May 1996. You may download the Petition (in English) from the web-site of the Ariel Center for Policy Research.
All legal rights held by the Jewish People to the Land of Israel or to former Mandated Palestine remain intact to this very day. Such rights are imprescriptible (not subject to any statute of limitations), indefeasible (no possible annulment or voidance) and inalienable (no possible transfer) (pages 191; 576 of my book). The continuing failure of the Government of Israel to annex Judea, Samaria and Gaza, does not nullify or negate Israel's rights to these regions, but does leave them open to challenge and doubt, especially by those ignorant of or hostile to Israel’s duly recognized legal rights under international law. Any renunciation by Israel of those fundamental rights is blatantly illegal and unconstitutional.
Jordan’s illegal “annexation” of Judea and Samaria violated international law and did not affect or change Israel’s rights to these regions. As you probably know, Egypt never annexed Gaza, but ruled it illegally under military administration from 1948 until the Six-Day War of June 1967. Insofar as the 1948 Armistice Agreements were concerned, Israel did not cede any of its legal rights to those areas of the Land of Israel that fell under foreign Arab occupation, in particular, the lands held by Jordan or Egypt...
... – the UN Partition Resolution, the Road Map Peace Plan, etc. – are [not] true documents or acts of international law and thus cannot deprive Israel of its existing legal rights. Even if those documents were vested with this status or character, they cannot legally override or rescind the rights of Israel to the Land of Israel previously recognized...
Well,, yes, but have not Jewish legal rights to the Land of Israel or former Mandated Palestine that were recognized in 1920 at the San Remo Peace Conference been “superseded in importance by subsequent events”, with even Israel itself having accepted or acknowledged that fact by entering into various agreements or endorsing plans that contravene those rights originally derived from the San Remo Resolution and the Mandate for Palestine?
...Jewish sovereign rights over [Judea, Samaria and Gaza] that were recognized as vesting in the Jewish People in the San Remo Resolution and the Mandate for Palestine in 1920 and 1922 respectively, remain intact and have not been “superseded by subsequent events”...
...The Doctrine of Estoppel...prevents or precludes those nations or states that in 1920 and 1922 recognized or assented to our rights in a legally valid treaty or international agreement or simply by being a member of the League of Nations, from afterwards denying or retracting their express or implied recognition or consent...[otherwise] treaties or agreements would be absolutely worthless and international law would have no meaning. Hence the countervailing Doctrine of Estoppel comes into play to protect those rights already recognized in a treaty or valid legal agreement or instrument. The same doctrine also applies to Jewish rights to Palestine which were recognized or acknowledged by 52 (not 51 as often propounded) nations in 1922 when the Mandate was confirmed and separately recognized or acknowledged by the United States in 1924 in a treaty with the U.K. That means that all those nations or states (including the U.S.) are estopped or precluded from acting contrary to what they have already assented to in regard to Jewish sovereign rights to Palestine and the Jewish National Home.
The Doctrine of Estoppel which safeguards sovereign Jewish rights to the Land of Israel is reinforced by Article 80 of the UN Charter, which preserves, as I have pointed out in my book and in various articles and letters, all Jewish rights to Palestine derived from the San Remo Resolution and the Mandate, and can be invoked against the UN itself to stop it from violating those rights...
...[and] The principle of Acquired Legal Rights. This is the flip side of the Doctrine of Estoppel. Once sovereign rights over the Land of Israel were vested in the Jewish People as a direct result of the San Remo Resolution and the Mandate for Palestine, those rights continued to exist, even after the Mandate’s termination on May 14-15, 1948. This principle is now codified in Section 70(1)(b) of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. Jewish rights in a de facto sense may temporarily be lost sometimes, even for a long period of time, as a result of catastrophic events such as the consequence of a war, conquest or subjugation, but they will be restored automatically when the circumstances return to what they were prior to the war, conquest or subjugation. Thus, the right to build Jewish settlements in Judea, Samaria and Gaza specified in the Mandate was temporarily lost during the 19-year period of Jordanian and Egyptian occupation of those regions of the Jewish National Home from 1948 to 1967, but this right immediately revived when the illegal Arab occupations were brought to an end in the Six-Day War of June 1967.
Apart from violating Jewish legal rights derived from the Mandate for Palestine and preserved by the Doctrine of Estoppel, as well as Article 70(1)(b) of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties and by Article 80 of the UN Charter (i.e., international law), any voluntary forfeiture or cession of Jewish legal rights would be also a violation of both Israeli constitutional law and Jewish law, and is therefore illegal. Jewish rights to the land may be given up only in cases of absolute necessity, i.e., under duress, where the alternative would be annihilation of the Jewish State and/or its population. In those cases, the land can be later reclaimed once the necessity or duress has passed or no longer exists.
...none of the subsequent “superseding events” referred to...erases, abrogates, rescinds or repeals pre-existing Jewish legal rights to any region of the Jewish homeland, because the documents that were formulated “post-San Remo” either by the United Nations or by the artificial conglomerate known as the “Quartet”, do not constitute binding acts of public international law...
Yes, well what about whether the Mandate was similar to others and should have provided for all the peoples living in the terriutory and not specificaly or even exclusively Jews?
...What basically differentiated the Mandate for Palestine from the other Class “A” Mandates was the identification of the national beneficiary which was to be tutored or assisted by an “advanced nation”, i.e., the Mandatory Power – toward eventual independence in accordance with the general provisions of Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations. In the specific and exceptional case of Palestine, the national beneficiary that was to be tutored or assisted was not the local inhabitants of the country nor all “the people of Palestine”, but the Jewish People or World Jewry, most of whom did not reside at the time in the country.
In this connection, the opening words found in Paragraph 1 of Article 22, which refers to “those colonies and territories… which are inhabited by peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world”, the words “inhabited by peoples” in the context of the creation of Palestine as a mandated territory to be governed by the Balfour Declaration, a decision adopted by the victories Principal Allied Powers of World War I on April 24, 1920 at the San Remo Peace Conference, alluded not only to those Jews who were already physically present in Palestine (some 65;000, according to the Peel Report, p. 40), but also to all other Jews who in the years ahead would emigrate to Palestine to help build the Jewish National Home and thus establish the independent Jewish State in accordance with the Allied decision of April 24, 1920, as stated exactly by both Foreign Secretary Lord Arthur James Balfour and Prime Minister David Lloyd George.
...This decision to name the Jewish People as the national beneficiary of the Mandate for Palestine under Article 22, paragraph 1 was taken by the Principal Allied Powers because of the Jewish historical connection with the country, as stated in the third recital of the Preamble of the Mandate for Palestine. The country of Palestine was not considered an Arab land despite the fact that the Arabs, at the time the Mandate was granted to Britain, were by far the largest segment of the population, but rather a land strongly tied historically to the Jews – a land that was to be set aside for Jewish self-determination.
That Palestine was not considered to be an Arab land like Syria or Iraq or, for that matter, like the principalities and sheikdoms of Arabia, was confirmed in the Peel Report itself, which cited the words of Lord Alfred Milner, who had played a key role in producing the final draft version of the 1917 Balfour Declaration prior to its approval by the Imperial War Cabinet on October 31, 1917. The Peel Report stated:
Palestine was different from the other ex-Turkish provinces. It was indeed, unique both as the Holy Land of three world-religions and as the old historic homeland of the Jews. The Arabs had lived in it for centuries, but they had long ceased to rule it, and in view of its peculiar character they could not now claim to possess it in the same way as they could claim possession of Syria or Iraq. Speaking in the House of Lords on the 27th June, 1923, Lord Milner declared himself “a strong supporter of pro-Arab policy”. “I believe in the independence of the Arab countries… I look forward to an Arab Federation”. But he went on:
Palestine can never be regarded as a country on the same footing as the other Arab countries. You cannot ignore all history and tradition in the matter. You cannot ignore the fact that this is the cradle of two of the great religions of the world. It is a sacred land to the Arabs, but it is also a sacred land to the Jew and the Christian, and the future of Palestine cannot possibly be let to be determined by the temporary impressions and feelings of the Arab majority in the country of the present day." (Peel Report, Chapter II, No. 4, The Mandate, paragraph 48, pp. 40-41)
...based on the assumption made by the Principal Allied Powers as confirmed in the Peel Report, that Palestine was not by any means or by definition an Arab land, like Syria and Iraq and Arabia, it must be concluded that “self-determination” as provided for under Article 22, Paragraph 1, was never intended for the Arabs or non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine. This further meant that the majority non-Jewish population could not claim that they were the Mandate’s intended beneficiary, a false claim often put forward by Arab advocates, just recently by two Arab judges in the 2004 Advisory Opinion rendered by the International Court of Justice which erroneously found Israel’s security fence built to ward off Arab terrorists from entering the State of Israel to be “illegal”. See, for instance, the separate opinion of Judge Nabil Elaraby of Egypt, now the Secretary-General of the Arab League, who referred to “the people of Palestine” as the subject or beneficiary of Article 22, paragraphs 1 and 4, of the League Covenant, when in point of fact and point of law it was the Jewish People to whom this article applied (see his opinion in International Legal Materials, Volume 43, Number 5 [September 2004], p. 1083). See also the separate opinion of Judge Awn Al-Khasawneh of Jordan – today, after leaving the Court, the Prime Minister of that country – in which he falsely asserted that the principle in Article 22, paragraph 1, concerning “the well-being and development of… peoples not yet able to govern themselves” which formed “a sacred trust of civilization” was meant in fact to apply to the Arab “Palestinians”, as they are called today (op. cit., nos. 8-9, pp. 1076-1077). Naming the Arabs of Palestine as the “people” to whom this article was intended to apply in regard to the Mandate for Palestine, is and has always been an inversion of the legal truth.
...that the Arabs of Palestine too were separately entitled to self-government and self-determination [is]...a complete inversion of the legal framework of the Mandate for Palestine which did not recognize any Arab national and political rights to Palestine and, moreover, was in effect an abrogation of the San Remo Resolution which had allotted all of the land of Palestine without exception for the self-government and self-determination of the Jewish People.
...On the question of which party was to have self-determination in Palestine, the remarks made by Lord Balfour at the Royal Albert Hall, London on July 12, 1920 to celebrate the conferment of the Mandate for Palestine upon Great Britain and the incorporation of the Balfour Declaration in the Treaty of Peace with Turkey, should suffice to answer your question and remove any doubts you have as to who that party was: Here are Balfour’s own words (p. 86 of my book):
… the Great Powers… most especially Great Britain, has freed them, the Arab race, from the tyranny of their brutal conqueror… I hope they will remember it is we who have established the independent Arab sovereignty of the Hedjaz. I hope they will remember that it is we who desire in Mesopotamia… a self-governing, autonomous Arab State, and I hope that, remembering all that, they will not grudge that small notch – for it is no more geographically, whatever it may be historically – that small notch in what are now Arab [populated] territories being given to the people who for all these hundreds of years have been separated from it – but surely have a title to develop on their own lines in the land of their forefathers, which ought to appeal to the sympathy of the Arab people as it, I am convinced, appeals to the great mass of my own Christian fellow-countrymen...We may look forward with a happy gaze to a future in which Palestine will indeed, and in the fullest measure and degree of success, be made a home for the Jewish People (emphasis added).
...[and there are] the explicit instructions given to Sir Mark Sykes by Prime Minister David Lloyd George and, surprisingly enough, with the approval of Lord George Nathaniel Curzon at a meeting held on April 3, 1917 at 10 Downing Street, London. Sykes, who was then Lloyd George’s chief adviser and troubleshooter on the Middle East prior to his untimely demise, was instructed in the following manner before going off to Egypt to become the Chief Political Officer on the staff of the Commander-in-Chief of the British Army based in the country, whose mission was to captue Palestine and Syria from the Ottoman Turks:
Not [to] prejudice the Zionist movement and the possibility of its development under British auspices. The Prime Minister laid stress on the importance if possible, of securing the addition of Palestine to the British area, and suggested that Sir Mark Sykes ought not to enter into any political pledges to the Arabs, and particularly none in regard to Palestine.
According to the Cabinet note of the meeting by Maurice Hankey, the secretary of the War Cabinet, who was present at this meeting, Sir Mark Sykes responded:
The Arabs probably realized that there was no prospect of their [them] being allowed any control over Palestine.
...there can be absolutely no reasonable doubt whatsoever in the mind of any objective observer that Palestine in its entirety was reserved exclusively for the Jewish People represented by the Zionist Organization to establish its future independent state and not at all for Arab self-determination in any part of the country, including Transjordan.
To substantiate the point that Palestine was always treated as a Class “A” Mandate by the Permanent Mandates Commission, I shall quote the words of William Ormsby-Gore, one of the original members of this Commission when it was set up by the League Council on December 1, 1920: “to receive and examine the annual reports of the Mandatories and to advise the Council on all matters relating to the observance of the Mandates, as stipulated in paragraphs 7 and 9 of the Covenant of the League of Nations”. Ormsby-Gore, who was (1936-1938) the Colonial Secretary when the Peel Report was issued and later ennobled as Baron Harlech, described as follows the different Mandatory regimes in an article he wrote entitled “The Mandatory System”:
The three classes of Mandate ‘A’, ‘B’, and ‘C’ are quite clearly differentiated. In the case of the Class ‘A’ Mandates, it is clear that the exercise of powers by the Mandatory are to be regarded as purely temporary, and that the role of the Mandatory is to provide such protection, advice, and assistance as will enable the three countries Mesopotamia, Syria and Palestine to become independent States Members of the League (A History of the Peace Conference of Paris, edited by Harold W.V. Temperley, Oxford University Press, First Published 1924, Reprinted 1969, Vol. VI, Chapter VI, Part IV, The Mandatory System: ‘A’ Mandates [Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia], paragraph 16, Character of Mandates, p. 521).
...I direct your attention to the statement made by the illustrious Belgian diplomat Pierre Orts, who served on the Permanent Mandates Commission from 1923 to 1940, the last four years as Chairman, and who thus had intimate knowledge of the classification of all the Mandates. Here is what he said at a meeting of the Commission held on August 5, 1937:
For the Mandates Commission, Palestine had never ceased to constitute a separate entity. It was one of those territories which under the terms of the Covenant, might be regarded as “provisionally independent” [this was a direct reference to the fourth paragraph of Article 22 – H.G.]. The country was administered under an “A” Mandate by the United Kingdom, subject to certain conditions and particularly to the condition appearing in Article 5 [of the Mandate]: The Mandatory shall be responsible to see that no Palestine territory shall be… in any way placed under the control of the Government of a foreign Power (The Rise of Israel, Vol. 25, Document 4, p. 176; this quote is reproduced in my book, The Legal Foundation and Borders of Israel under International Law, p. 273).
...you seem to doubt that the aim of the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate for Palestine was the eventual establishment of a Jewish State, since the Balfour Declaration refers to a National Home rather than to a State...a Jewish State was always the intended aim of the Mandate – despite the British sabotage of this aim, beginning with the Cairo Conference of March 1921 and solidified in the Churchill White Paper of June 3, 1922. This evidence emanates from the testimonies of the key personalities as to what the Balfour Declaration meant.
To begin with, when the Balfour Declaration was first presented by Lord Balfour to the Imperial War Cabinet for its final approval on October 31, 1917, he said he foresaw an eventual Jewish State arising in Palestine. His exact words were "an independent Jewish State… was a matter for gradual development in accordance with the ordinary laws of political evolution.”...David Lloyd George, who stated in his book, The Truth about the Peace Treaties (Vol. II, pp. 1137, 1139): “that… if the Jews had meanwhile responded to the opportunity afforded them by the idea of a National Home and had become a definite majority of the inhabitants, then Palestine would thus become a Jewish Commonwealth”. A similar statement was made by General Jan Christiaan Smuts, then a member of the Imperial War Cabinet, who in December 1919 stated that “in generations to come you will see a great Jewish State rising there once more” (Zionist Bulletin, December 10, 1919...There were other statements made by British officials and leaders to the same effect, that the goal of the Balfour Declaration and the establishing of the Jewish National Home in Palestine was a Jewish State. Such statements were made by Lord Robert Cecil (1917), Neville Chamberlain (1918), Herbert Samuel (1919) and Winston Churchill (1920) (Frankenstein, op. cit., pp. 147-148).
Balfour later told Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, on February 7, 1918, that his personal hope was that “the Jews will make good in Palestine and eventually found a Jewish State. It is up to them now; we have given them their great opportunity”
...Meinertzhagen further reports on a meeting that took place at Balfour’s home on July 22, 1921, at which he was present along with Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill, Chaim Weizmann, Maurice Hankey and Edward Russell, that in a conversation that ensued both Lloyd George and Balfour categorically stated “that by the [Balfour] Declaration they had always meant an eventual Jewish State”, as well as an ultimate Jewish majority in Palestine...That a Jewish State was envisaged by the Balfour Declaration is also clear from the letter dated October 29, 1920 sent by Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon to Lloyd George, in which he stated:
The important thing is that we got the Balfour Declaration – you will remember how hard a fight I made for it – into the Treaty [of Peace with Turkey] at San Remo, and that is the Magna Charta [Magna Carta] of the Zionists.
...Other important evidence that Palestine was to be a Jewish State comes from American sources. On November 20, 1917, a mere eighteen days after the issuance of the Balfour Declaration, Colonel Edward Mandell House, President Wilson’s closest adviser at the time, wrote in his diary for that date that Lloyd George had informed Wilson over dinner, at which Colonel House was also present, together with the Lord Chief Justice, that “Palestine [was] to be given to the Zionists…”...[Wilson] told a delegation from the American Jewish Congress on March 2, 1919:
As to representations touching Palestine, I have before expressed my personal approval of the Declaration of the British Government regarding Palestine. I am moreover persuaded that the Allied Nations with the fullest encouragement of our Government and people are agreed that in Palestine there shall be laid the foundations of a Jewish Commonwealth
...the Report and Recommendations of the Intelligence Section of the American Delegation to the Paris Peace Conference, which was drawn up on January 21, 1919 for the explicit use of the President...stated as follows:
It is right that Palestine should become a Jewish state, if the Jews, being given the full opportunity, make it such. It was the cradle and home [emphasis added] of their vital race, which has made large spiritual contributions to mankind, and is their only land in which they can hope to find a home of their own; they being in this respect unique among significant peoples...
It is clear from President Wilson’s 1919 pronouncement and the Report and Recommendations he earlier received from the Intelligence Section of the American Delegation to the Paris Peace Conference, that “home” and “state” were, for the Americans, interchangeable terms and thus were synonymous....
In light of the foregoing evidence, there is no reason...to doubt the fact that the Balfour Declaration, the San Remo Resolution and the Mandate for Palestine had only one overriding purpose in mind, namely, the re-establishment of a Jewish State in Palestine which naturally embraced the entire territory, as is evident from the fact that the partition of the Land, as illegally took place later, was absolutely prohibited under Article 5 of the Mandate...
Thank you, Adv. Grief.
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You are a very capable person!
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