The Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917 was a recognition by the British Government that a national home for the Jews should be created in Palestine. But Palestine was never defined in the declaration. It was only a concept at the time. The territory of what was to become the British-awarded Palestine Mandate after World War I was under Ottoman rule at the time and was split into several sanjaqs or sub-provinces, one of which was the sanjaq of Jerusalem.
The territory of Palestine was not defined until September 1, 1922 as a line "drawn from a point two miles west of... [Aqaba] up the center of the Wadi Araba, Dead Sea and River Jordan to its juncture with the River Yarmuk; thence up the centre of the river to the Syrian frontier." This was the boundary between Palestine and Transjordan and, according to Suzanne Lalonde in Determining Boundaries in a Conflicted World "was approved by the League of Nations, and the language defining the boundary was actually incorporated within the text of the Palestine Mandate by decision of the League Council."1
Putting aside other agreements made before and after the Balfour Declaration (including the 1947 UN partition plan for Palestine, accepted by the Jews but not by the Arabs), the Balfour Declaration called for a Jewish national home in "Palestine" which later became defined, per above, as ending at the Jordan River. Which meant that West Bank was included within Palestine as so defined and therefore could be considered justified as an area where Jews could legitimately settle. This is not just an antique argument; I heard the Balfour Declaration recently cited by a Jewish interlocutor as a justification for Israeli settlements on the West Bank (which the Arabs claim as the area for a future Palestinian state.)
But the British Mandate also specified the following: ... "it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."
But how could a mass influx of Jews into Palestine not prejudice the "civil and religious rights" of existing non-Jewish communities there? The Balfour Declaration stands, along with the partition of India, as an icon to the micawberish policies of the British Empire at the start of its decline.
1Suzanne Lalonde, Determining Boundaries in a Conflicted World (Canada: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2002), p. 100.
Faisal, who spoke for the arabs and got [Huge] Iraq and Jordan as spoils for Saudi Princes had AGREED to large Influx of Jews in...... 1919.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/faisaltext.html
Not one of Israel's allies follows that argument. As pointed out above, it didn't hold water at the time. Why is this nonsense being peddled again? Will exhuming it make Netanyahu's position in the cabinet easier? Will it reconcile the Israeli cabinet's position with the rest of the world? Will it make Abbas' job in selling a compromise to his side easier?
Once on breaks down Israel's contradictory stances on all of these, it looks quite absurd.
1. Please, distinguish between policy papers, e.g. White Papers, Balfour Declaration, of a given country and international law, e.g. San Remo conference decisions, League of Nations decisions, UN Charter.
2. Try to single out - if you are interested in ever achieving an accommodation of peaceful coexistence between Arab and Jew, between the Muslim-Arab world and the sovereign nation-state of the Jewish people, Israel - those elements in international law that are designed to resolve the conflict.
Perhaps, once organizing the data properly, you too will realize that the way to resolve the conflict, legally, is by implementing the 1921/22 partition of "Palestine", i.e. 77% to the Arabs vs. 23% to the Jews.
The language used in the declaration, however, is very important and telling: It is an acknowledgment of the historic affinity of the Jewish people as a people to its homeland of Eretz Israel (Land of Israel) - named in English Palestine - and its national right to exercise in it the universally accepted right afforded to all peoples, the right of national self-determination and independence.
This right, of course, was also accepted by the participants in the San Remo peace conference into whose decisions the language of the Balfour Declaration was incorporated, hence becoming, for the firs time, part of international law.
And, of course, the League of Nations that decided, 1922, to assign "Palestine" to be the Jewish people's nation-state - note, it calls for an unlimited Jewish settlement between the Jordan River and the Med. Sea, and it doesn't call for the extending of national rights to any other residents of the country but to the Jewish people - which became an important enough act for the UN to adopt it and etch it into its Charter, Article 80, 1945, as an irrevocable act.
http://www.mythsandfacts.org/conflict/mandate_for_palestine/mandate_for_palestine.pdf
All that is remained at this point to do is for the parties and the international community to accept the 1921/22 legal partition of Eretz Israel/Palestine and learn to live with it within the context of an accommodation of peaceful coexistence between Arab and Jew, between the Muslim-Arab world, local and regional, and the sovereign nation-state of the Jewish people.
There is not one sentence in any document that you can quote that "calls for an unlimited Jewish settlement between the Jordan River and the Med. Sea," whereas there are many that say that Jewish immigration should be restricted to numbers that were sustainable within the territory.
What the League of Nations, in 1922, DID say was that the territory has "reached a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognised subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone. The wishes of these communities must be a principal consideration in the selection of the Mandatory." Fulfilment of that statement would have resulted in Palestine achieving statehood as a whole. Within that state, even as late as 1948, the Jewish population would have been a small minority.
I have asked you countless times to substantiate your assertions with evidence, and you have never done so.
Please save us both time, and stop reposting fallacious comments again and again and again.
In fact he advocates an Israeli State not only including the West Bank, but also the East Bank, Jordan, and parts of Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iraq, as his "mythical facts" map indicates.
My repeated question of the future or the fate of the 5-7 million Palestinians, Jordanians, Saudis, Iraqis and Syrians also remained unanswered".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Em_PbN8nPPU&feature=g-all-u
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTWlXRnZbVc&feature=player_embedded
No, one doesn't advocate the expulsion of people back to Arabia or any other place of course, since one is motivated by certain humane Jewish values. But, one asks: on what basis others deny us, the Hebrews/Israelis/Jews the right to exercise our universally accepted right of national self-determination and independence on the 23% of "Palestine"/Eretz Israel (Land of Israel) assigned to us by international law; that part of the land located between the Jordan River and the Med. Sea...??
In short: Why can't we all accept international law and apply it, as is, in trying to resolve the Arab Israeli conflict? 77% of "Palestine" will remain with the Arabs, located east of the Jordan River; and, only 23% of "Palestine" will remain with the Jews, located between the Jordan River and the Med. Sea??
"This land belongs to us, the Jews"
OR
"This land belongs to us, the Arabs"
Regardless, you cannot escape the fact that people lived on this land that is today called Israel, West Bank, Gaza, Palestine, etc prior to 1948 or 1880 or whenever but who are not currently considered citizens of the current sovereign government there and the fact that they didn't call that land some original place-name in their native language shouldn't change their rightful political rights to citizenship in a government that is the sovereign in the land they already live in nor should it change their claim to the land they have been living on.
"In defiance of the will of the international community, as embodied in the UN General Assembly resolution of November 29, 1947, (Palestinian Arabs) launched hostilities against the Jewish community in Palestine in the hope of aborting the emergence of the Jewish state and perhaps destroying that community. But they lost; and one of the results was the displacement of 700,000 of them from their homes.
Most of Palestine's 700,000 "refugees" fled their homes because of the flail of war (and in the expectation that they would shortly return to their homes on the backs of victorious Arab invaders)."
Reality, of course, indicate that those Arabs who, for one reason or another stayed put became Israeli citizens with full human, civil and religious rights.
This can't be said about the Jews who lived in areas that were conquered by the Egyptian and Arab Legion: they were expelled from those parts of the country, e.g. Gaza, Samaria, Jordan Valley, Judea and Jerusalem.
“For the entire day of April 9, 1948, Irgun and LEHI soldiers carried out the slaughter in a cold and premeditated fashion...The attackers ‘lined men, women and children up against the walls and shot them,’...The ruthlessness of the attack on Deir Yassin shocked Jewish and world opinion alike, drove fear and panic into the Arab population, and led to the flight of unarmed civilians from their homes all over the country.” Israeli author, Simha Flapan, “The Birth of Israel.”
was severly restricted by the British , Arab enigration into what would become Israel wasn't.
And in fact many arabs entered ad part of British development projects especially in Haifa.
Many of the arabs were emigrating into the jewaih portion and prejucing Jewish rights.
All the land owned by the Jews was legally purchased, Jews were in no position to take land from anyone because the British were in control. On the other hand the Arabs engaged in a campaign
of terror forcing Jews to abandon lands they leagally owned. for example in Jews were forced
from Gaza and Hebron in 1929 Dozens were murdered. the British did nothing. this
happened again in 1936, but this time the brtish were also the target.
It was not the Jews who were prejudicing anyone's rights it was the arabs.
As for emigration, the Jews were assigned that land and had a right to move in and they legally
purchase the lands within that territory. those who managed to get in.
priceless
The British Survey of Palestine confirmed that increases in the Jewish demographic of Palestine between 1922 and 1945 was due almost entirely to immigration with very little being due to natural growth whereas increase in the Arab demographic was due almost entirely to natural growth with very little being due to immigration.
The land they have now does not truly belong to them ,it was stolen.
During the war between Iraq and Iran (that Iraq started ,and used chemical weapons that killed 65,000 Iranians ) at the end of the war all land won by Iran was returned to the Iraqi's
Yet Iran is constantly classed as an aggressor in the Middle East.
In the last few day Benjamin Netanhayu has reiterated he intends to launch an attack on Iran
( I assume he will lead from the back and let US Soldiers lose their lives )
So ,again ,who is the aggressor.?
1) The lines of 1967 have never been official borders; only armistice lines. In fact, the Arabs, when they reached the armistice agreements with Israel in 1949 on those lines insisted that those lines must never be considered final and official borders.
2) International law has designated the area between the Jordan River and the Med. Sea as "the national home for the Jewish people", i.e. the Jewish people's nation-state, while the Arabs had been handed over the rest of the territory of "Palestine", located on the eastern bank of the River. The former consisting of 23% of "Palestine" and the latter of 77% of it. Why expect, therefore of the Jews to give up even further of the little that they were assigned by international law?
http://www.mythsandfacts.org/conflict/mandate_for_palestine/mandate_for_palestine.pdf
3) Perhaps the poster should ask the question of the Arabs: Why do you, categorically, refuse to accept Israel's RIGHT to be, to exist as the sovereign nation-state of the Jewish people don ANY parcel of land of the Jewish people's homeland of 4,000 years?
To point 3: In 1993, PLO recognized Israel's right to exist in peace, accepted UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338, and rejected "violence and terrorism"; in response, Israel officially recognized the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people.[6]
Eretz Israel (Land of Israel)/Palestine as presently defined by international law, being the territory located between the Jordan River and the Med. Sea, affords all its residents civil and religious rights, along with human and political ones. The only question is the degree to which such rights are afforded and by whom.
Within the sovereign nation-state of the Jewish people, Israel, all citizens enjoy all human, civil and religious rights, and all are equal before the law: black and white, men and women, religious and secular, Arabs and Jews, short people and tall people.
Within the autonomous region of the PLO's Palestinian Authority all Arabs - not Jews - are entitled to all civil, political and religious rights.
And, in those parts of Samaria and Judea under Israeli rule, i.e. Area C, the 50,000 Arab residents are entitled to all civil and religious rights, while their political rights are met by participating in the political life of the PLO's Palestinian Authority and/or Jordan, i.e. the 77% of "Palestine" that had been handed over to the Arabs back in 1921.
It is high time to finalize this accommodation by reaching by the parties the Final Status Agreement. But, for some reason, the PLO refuses to come to the table in order to accept Israel's offers. One wonders, why....??
An example: A Jew, legally, may not be permitted to acquire land in the PA; or, rather, an Arab may not sell real estate to a Jew, be the real estate public or privately owned. Violation of this - some would say, correctly, as racist - law is punishable by..., death. A good number of Arabs are no longer among the living due to the fact that they sold their own privately owned real estate property to Jews.
This, of course, is a legal violation of both civil and human rights. But, this should be addressed to the PLO's Palestinian Authority that continues a long tradition that prevails in some Muslim-Arab countries, e.g. Jordan, and not to the sovereign liberal democratic nation-state of the Jewish people, Israel.
What International Law is that?
The 4th Geneva Concetions as well as the ruling of the International Court of Justice in 2004 has clearly stated that the Occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem is ILLEGAL according to International Law.
Not some sort of former "diktat" by the Colonial rulers, like the same sort of "International Law" that decided that Chechoslowakia would become part of Bavaria.