Sunday, 4 July 2021

Israeli settlements are legitimate under international law - opinion

 

Israeli settlements are legitimate under international law - opinion

The Mandate of Palestine is an international legally binding document that was unanimously approved by all 51 members of the League of Nations in 1922.

By ANDREW LÖVY   

JULY 3, 2021 15:34

Last week, 73 members of the US House of Representatives sent a letter to President Joe Biden urging him to consider Israeli settlements as being inconsistent with international law. However, this assertion is unequivocally false, as Israeli settlements have legitimacy under international law through different legal doctrines and documents, the most notable being the Mandate of Palestine.

The Mandate of Palestine is an international legally binding document that was unanimously approved by all 51 members of the League of Nations in 1922. The Mandate worked toward implementing the Balfour Declaration’s objective of establishing a Jewish national home in the geographical area referred to as Palestine. 

Article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine encouraged “close settlement by Jews on the land, including state lands not required for public use.” During the Mandatory period, Jewish communities were established in Judea and Samaria (“West Bank”) such as Neveh Ya’acov, Gush Etzion and several communities north of the Dead Sea.

Though the League of Nations was superseded by the United Nations following WWII, Article 80 of the UN Charter stipulated that the UN would not alter existing states, peoples or mandates. This meant that the UN protected and recognized the legal right for the establishment of a Jewish state and Jewish settlement of the land that stretched from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, which was to be the boundary of the Mandate of Palestine.

Additionally, this boundary delineated Israel’s borders; under the customary international law doctrine of uti possidetis juris, newly forming countries acquire their pre-independence administrative borders.

On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly (UNGA) passed Resolution 181, which recommended the partition of the land allotted for a Jewish national homeland into two states: a Jewish state and an Arab state. However, like all UNGA resolutions, UN Resolution 181 was merely a non-binding recommendation that carried no force of law. 

Israel accepted the proposal and the Arab states rejected it. 

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/israeli-settlements-are-legitimate-under-international-law-opinion-672758 

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