On Friday the UN General Assembly passed a series of resolutions pertaining to the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict. Most of them simply duplicate what the UN has said before.So why bring it up again? Because the wording of these resolution is couched in terms that are unfavorable to Israel. They use terms like “occupying power”, and “illegal settlements”. Neither of those terms is either historically accurate or appropriate. Their use indicates that the UN General Assembly, whose resolutions are advisory only, and do not constitute a factual representation of international law, are based on what they regard as a status quo ante that only begins in 1967.
What’s wrong with that thinking? Well, today I’m only going to talk about one aspect, What happened before 1967. The same UN General Assembly voted in 1947 that the British mandate in the territory of Palestine was to end in the partition of that territory into separate areas for Jews and for Arabs. Those areas were expected to co-exist in a state of mutual cooperation. Indeed, the areas were marked out so that different parts of each were NOT contiguous, travel and commerce between them would have to be by way of the territory under the control of the other party. It was alo in direct opposition to the terms of the League of Nations original mandate that specified ALL of Palestine would be a future Jewish state. This wasn’t the first time that provision had been ignored. The British, who controlled the mandate, had already unilaterally separated all of the Eastern part in order to make the Kingdom of Jordan. They had also made border adjustments without the approval, or even consideration, of the League. These included ceding the entire Golan heights to the then French Syrian mandate. Those actions were unilateral, and in today’s terms, probably illegal. Any subsequent conclusion based on a false premise would also be, at the very least, highly suspect.
The next historical problem comes with the withdrawal of the British from Palestine. No efforts were made to create any local institutions of government to take over when they left. The Jewish side did have a shadow government, but the Palestinian Arabs did not. Neighboring Arab states invaded the territory and when the fighting ceased the Jews held a contiguous area on one side, The Egyptians occupied the Gaza strip, and the Jordanians controlled the Eastern part of Jerusalem and the mountainous territory of Judea and Samaria in the center. The boundaries between those sections were cease fire lines, not borders. The future borders were to be determined by negotiations between the parties. It took several years, but those borders were finally established. Egypt, Jordan, and Israel may not be on the friendliest of terms, but they do not have territorial claims against one another.
Syria is another matter. There is no Israeli-Syrian peace treaty. And then there is the matter of the Palestinian Arabs. The Jordanians left the West Bank of Palestine and left it for the Palestinians to negotiate with Israel. In 1947 the people claiming to represent the Palestinians totally rejected the UN Partition resolution. They preferred to rely on the use of force to achieve their aims. Now, since that approach failed miserably, they want the UN to solve their problem. This is almost like the story of the man who killed his parents and then asked for mercy because he was an orphan. They deny any responsibility for their actions that resulted in the 1947-8 war. Today they have said they agree to a two state solution. But the original charters of the political entities that now run Palestinian affairs, both Hamas and Fatah, call for the destruction of Israel. Saeb Arakat may state that he is willing to meet any Israeli representative anywhere at any time, but if he were to do so, it would only be to continue the Palestinian claim to all the territory of the former Palestine mandate. More about this in a future blog.
Wetherhorn 