Sunday, October 27, 2013

One state, two states, three states, four...?

The League of Nations “Mandate for Palestine” irrevocably establishes the legal right of Jews to settle anywhere between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. It was conferred on April 24, 1920 at the San Remo Conference, its terms outlined in the Treaty of Sèvres on August 10, 1920; it was finalized and unanimously approved on July 24, 1922, by the Council of the League of Nations, which was comprised at that time of 51 countries, and became operational on September 29, 1923. The League's Trust was transferred to the UN, and that legal right is intact.

Furthermore, after a century of defensive wars, as Professor, Judge Schwebel, wrote in "What Weight to Conquest":
"(a) a state [Israel] acting in lawful exercise of its right of self-defense may seize and occupy foreign territory as long as such seizure and occupation are... necessary to its self-defense;
"(b) as a condition of its withdrawal from such territory, that State may require the institution of security measures reasonably designed to ensure that that territory shall not again be used to mount a threat or use of force against it of such a nature as to justify exercise of self-defense;
"(c) Where the prior holder of territory had seized that territory unlawfully, the state which subsequently takes that territory in the lawful exercise of self-defense has, against that prior holder, better title.
"... as between Israel, acting defensively in 1948 and 1967, on the one hand, and her Arab neighbors, acting aggressively, in 1948 and 1967, on the other, Israel has the better title in the territory of what was Palestine, including the whole of Jerusalem, than do Jordan and Egypt."

So we should stop looking for some final solution to the problem. Just manage it. Stay in iron-clad control of the entire area to the Jordan River. Annex all vacant land there. Where enemies of the state in that area reside there, let them have their local autonomy or whatever they damn-well want as long as they leave us alone.

...and let time do its work. May the Moshiach come: bim'hera, b'yamenu...

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