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Nations was superseded by the United Nations following WWII, Article 80 of the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.
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