The claim that the United States created Israel overlooks the foundational legal and diplomatic history of the modern Middle East, which was actually shaped by the global community through European powers. In April 1920, in the aftermath of World War I, the victorious Allied powers-Britain, France, Italy, and Japan-met in San Remo, Italy, to redraw the map of the collapsed Ottoman Empire.
What emerged was not an improvised political gesture, but a binding legal framework that still underpins the modern Middle East. Through this formal global decision, Great Britain-not the United States-was entrusted with the Mandate for Palestine and charged with reconstituting a national home for the Jewish people. Israel was not an accident. It was not a colonial experiment. It was the result of a formal international decision.
At San Remo, the Allies incorporated the Balfour Declaration into international law.
This was the critical shift-from political promise to legal obligation. The powers entrusted Britain with the Mandate for Palestine, explicitly charging it with implementing “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people," while safeguarding the civil and religious rights of non-Jewish communities.
That language matters. It was deliberate. It recognized Jewish national rights-but not Arab national rights in Palestine. That omission was not accidental; it reflected the geopolitical reality of the time. The Arab population was understood as part of a broader Arab nation, which was simultaneously being granted vast territories across the Middle East-what would become Iraq, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia.
In other words, the Arabs were not dispossessed of a state in Palestine. They were granted multiple states across the region. The Jews, by contrast, were allocated one small territory-their historic homeland.
Even within the Allied camp, there was resistance. The French representative, Philippe Berthelot, pushed to roll back support for a Jewish national home. But Britain held firm. Lord Curzon, despite his own reservations about Zionism, made a blunt point: the Jews themselves were the best judges of what they needed. The French ultimately relented-not out of conviction, but because they lacked the leverage to oppose Britain on the ground.
That framing is critical. San Remo did not “grant" Jews something new. It recognized and legalized an existing historical claim-the reconstitution of a national home in the land of Israel.
The subsequent League of Nations Mandate formalized this framework. It explicitly affirmed “the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine" and the grounds for reestablishing their national home. This was not vague rhetoric-it was the legal architecture of sovereignty.
Equally important is what did not exist at the time: a distinct Palestinian Arab national identity. Prior to the 1920s, the area was widely regarded as part of southern Syria. Local Arab leaders initially demanded incorporation into a larger Syrian state. Only after that project collapsed-when the French crushed the Arab Kingdom in Damascus-did a separate Palestinian Arab political identity begin to emerge.
As historian Daniel Pipes has argued, Palestinian Arab nationalism did not precede Zionism-it developed in response to it. Without the Jewish national movement, there is little evidence that Palestinian Arabs would have been seen as a separate political entity at all.
This is an uncomfortable reality for modern narratives, which retroactively project a fully formed Palestinian Arab nationalism into a period when it simply did not exist.
The borders themselves reinforce the point. The modern Middle East was not shaped by ancient ethnic divisions or organic national movements. It was carved up by imperial powers, often with little regard for demography or geography. Kurds were split across four states. Shiite and Sunni populations were fragmented. Druze, Alawites, and other minorities were scattered across artificial borders.
Israel is not an exception to this system-it is a product of the same system. To delegitimize Israel on that basis is to undermine the legitimacy of the entire post-World War I order.
Even the term “Palestine" did not carry the meaning it does today. For centuries, it was a geographic expression, not a sovereign entity. Jewish institutions proudly used the name: the Palestine Post, the Palestine Electric Company, the Palestine Symphony Orchestra. Only after 1948 did the term suddenly become exclusively associated with Arab nationalism.
So why does San Remo still matter?
Because it is the legal foundation that modern critics prefer to ignore. Unlike later United Nations resolutions-many of which are non-binding recommendations-San Remo was a binding agreement among the world’s leading powers. It created what was effectively a “title deed" for the Jewish national home.
More than that, it established the framework for the entire region. Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Transjordan all trace their modern political existence back to the same set of decisions. If San Remo is invalidated for Israel, it is invalidated for everyone.
The implications are obvious-and that is precisely why the conference is so often omitted from contemporary discourse.
The debate over Israel’s legitimacy is frequently framed in moral or ideological terms: colonialism, occupation, displacement. But those arguments collapse when confronted with the legal record. Israel’s existence is not the result of a historical anomaly. It is the outcome of a formal international consensus, grounded in both historical connection and legal recognition.
San Remo is the moment when the international community acknowledged that the Jewish people were not foreign interlopers in their own land-but a nation returning home.
That is not a narrative built on sentiment. It is one built on law.
And that is exactly why it continues to be ignored.
Dr. Alex Grobman is the senior resident scholar at the John C. Danforth Society, a member of the Council of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, and on the advisory board of The National Christian Leadership Conference of Israel. He holds an MA and PhD from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.