November 29, 1947.
Every year Israel’s leaders praise the greatness of this date. On November 29, 1947, the United Nations passed General Assembly Resolution 181, calling for the partition of Palestine.
To borrow U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s description of the December 7, 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, let’s call November 29, 1947, “a date which will live in infamy,” or we can just call it the “Jewish People’s Nakba (tragedy).”
So, you ask, “What’s so tragic about this day? After all, didn’t the UN resolution establish of the Jewish State?”
Au contraire, the resolution was a serious violation of the Jewish People’s legal rights to the entire Jewish homeland. It also gave false legitimacy to a second Arab country on Jewish National territory, and was a serious violation of international law.
For five hundred years prior to World War I, the Ottoman-Turkish Empire controlled the Middle East. After the war, the Middle East was in the hands of the victorious Principal Allied Powers (Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan). Under the agreements in 1919, the Ottoman Empire was to be dismantled and the victorious allies would distribute their territories, creating smaller, independent countries.
Palestine was to be returned to the Jews, but the Arabs would receive an area of land twice the size of the United States.
In April 1920, at a peace conference in San Remo, Italy, Palestine was officially created as a country for the first time in history, but Palestine was created as the reconstitution of the Jewish Commonwealth. The country was placed under the “big brother” Mandate System, which was a newly adopted system for setting up independent countries in the territories that had been liberated from the losing empires of the war.
Under the Mandate System, larger existing countries would administer the news ones, putting into effect all systems necessary to establish autonomous new countries according to a specific set of legally binding guidelines and rules. The administrators or Mandatories would maintain the peace and stay until the recipients of this benificence were able to become independent.
By the time the San Remo Conference was concluded, the borders of the three Middle East Mandates [the Mandates for Mesopotamia (Iraq), Syria (Syria and Lebanon), and Palestine (Israel)] were already decided. However, it would later be up to the British and the French, according to instruction from San Remo, to draw the maps. These borders are the legal borders today under the December 1920 Franco-British Boundary Convention.
The borders of the Jewish National Home in Palestine, according to the convention, included all of Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, Judea and Samaria (the territory erroneously called the West Bank).
The Principal Allied Powers recognized “the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country.” The British were appointed the task of “putting into effect” the creation of the Jewish State as outlined in the Mandate for Palestine.
Article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine recognizes the right of Jews to settle in any of the territory as mapped for the Mandate, and Article 5 prohibits altering the borders.
Therefore, there is no validity to any claim calling settlements illegal, and no option for giving any Jewish National territory to create an Arab country.
Contrary to common belief, the Mandates were not created by the League of Nations. They are binding law under Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations and reaffirmed as law under Article 80 of the United Nations Charter. Neither the League of Nations nor the United Nations had or has any legal jurisdiction to create or alter the Mandates in any way not consistent with the instructions contained in the Mandate’s articles.
The International Court of Justice at The Hague has already ruled that the UN may not alter the Mandates. Therefore, any resolution calling to divide Palestine into two countries violates the Mandate and Article 80 of the United Nations Charter and is illegal.
The UN Partition Plan did not and could not establish the Jewish State. The Jewish State had already been established under international law twenty-five years earlier in San Remo, Italy.
The world’s belief that the UN Partition Plan has any legal status, defines Israel’s right to exist, or determines that Arabs have a right to a separate country in Palestine, is a grave deception. That’s why I call the 1947 Partition Plan Israel’s version of the Nakba—the term Arabs use to describe Israel’s Independence Day.
So, this year, when our leaders stand up to celebrate the UN Partition Plan, everyone should stand up and shout, “How can you celebrate the event that, for 64 years has challenged Jewish legal sovereignty to our homeland?”
For a detailed history, see Eli Hertz: Myths and Facts on UN Resolution 181- The Partition Plan