Jewish Rights to Palestine Are Guaranteed by International Law

October 24, 2011 | Eli E. Hertz

Successive Israeli governments have failed to recognize the supreme importance of the "Mandate for Palestine" [24 July, 1922] a historical League of Nations document that set forth the irrevocable Jewish legal rights to settle anywhere in western Palestine, the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, an entitlement unaltered by international law and valid to this day.

Leadership, both in Israel and in the Diaspora do practically nothing effective with the best legal weapon they will ever have: "The Mandate for Palestine." n the first Report of the High Commissioner on the Administration of Palestine (1920-1925) presented to the British Secretary of State for the Colonies, and published in April 1925, the most senior official of the Mandate underscored how international guarantees for the existence of a Jewish National Home in Palestine were achieved:

The [Balfour] Declaration was endorsed at the time by several of the Allied Governments; it was reaffirmed by the Conference of the Principal Allied Powers at San Remo in 1920; it was subsequently endorsed by unanimous resolutions of both Houses of the Congress of the United States; it was embodied in the Mandate for Palestine approved by the League of Nations in 1922; it was declared, in a formal statement of policy issued by the Colonial Secretary in the same year, 'not to be susceptible of change.'

Article 27 of the Mandate for Palestine states that the "consent of the Council of the League of Nations is required for any modification of the terms of this mandate." No such consent was ever passed.

Eleven successive British governments, Labor and Conservative, from David Lloyd George (1916-1922) through Clement Attlee (1945-1952) viewed themselves as duty-bound to fulfill the "Mandate for Palestine" placed in the hands of Great Britain by the League of Nations.

In 1947 the British put the future of western Palestine into the hands of the United Nations, the successor organization to the League of Nations which had established the Mandate for Palestine.

When describing trust agreements such as the Mandate for Palestine, Article 80 of the United States Charter states that "nothing in this Chapter shall be construed in or of itself to alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states of any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments to which Members of the United Nations may respectively be parties".

Thus, the Mandate for Palestine is still in effect today.

It is time to tell the free democratic world:
Effective immediately, the Government of Israel reaffirms the Mandate for Palestine as the foundation and the starting point for any and all peace discussions between the Jewish state of Israel and the Arab inhabitant in Judea and Samaria.