Farley Weiss is the co-author, with Leonard Grunstein, of Because It’s Just and Right: The Untold Backstory of the U.S. Recognition of Jerusalem as the Capital of Israel and Moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, and a past president of the National Council of Young Israel.
European countries led by Britain, Spain and Norway are sanctioning Israel while proclaiming their support for a Palestinian Arab state. Think about the unbelievable irrationality of this behavior because we saw when Israel disengaged from Gaza and gave it to the Palestinian Authority in 2005, that this led to the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack from Gaza on Israel.
It is obvious that a Palestinian Arab state will be a terrorist state aligned with Iran and would be antithetical to all western interests. It would be pretty much identical for the European countries to be advocating for an Al Qaeda or ISIS state, since the Palestinian Authority has a “Pay to Slay" law that financially rewards mass murderers of Jews and Americans and those who murder the most people get the most money. It is hard to imagine supporting the creation of a state that has such a law and yet this does not stop the European countries or, for that matter, virtually the entire Democratic party in America, to continue advocating for such a state.
When asked why they advocate for this state they attempt to [falsely] claim that the so called "West Bank" (Judea and Samaria) is Palestinian Arab land under international law. The problem for them is that they are wrong. In 1920 at San Remo the British, French Italians and Spanish were four of the world powers that heard arguments on claims to Israel from both Jews and Arabs and unanimously decided that the historical Jewish claim was right. In July 24, 1922 the League of Nations established the Mandate for Palestine in which it stated in the third paragraph of the preamble that “Whereas recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the ground for reconstituting their national home in that country..."
The British then decided to obligate the United States to this decision in which the terms became binding in the Anglo American Treaty of 1924 which was ratified by the U.S. Senate and signed by President Coolidge. That treaty is still in force under the laws of treaties. Under Article 80 in the establishment of the UN it adopted all of the decisions of the League of Nations which includes the decision supporting Jewish sovereignty over all of what the UN at the time referred to the land as Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem. The term the "West Bank" was coined by Jordan after it illegally took this land from the Jews after trying to destroy the Jewish state in 1948. Jordan renamed the land the "West to include all of Judea and Samaria as well as eastern Jerusalem.
The Palestinian Arabs started terrorist attacks against Jews in April 1920 after the Ottoman Empire lost sovereignty of the area after WW1 and gave the land to the Allied Powers. The April 1920 Palestinian Arab attacks led to 5 Jews being murdered and hundreds wounded in the Nebi Musa riots. In 1922 Jaffa riots Palestinian Arab attacks on Jews resulted in 47 Jews being murdered. In 1929 the Hebron riots led to 67 Jewish deaths in Hebron and the ethnic cleansing by the Palestinian Arabs of the Jews of Hebron as the remainder of the Jews in Hebron had to flee for their lives and end over a thousand year Jewish presence in Hebron.
It should be noted that the British policy today is to advocate for ethnic cleansing again for the Jewish presence in Hebron.
133 Jews around the country were murdered in total in 1929 by Palestinian Arab terrorists. “The Arab Revolt" from 1936 to 1939 led to over 400 Jewish deaths. The Palestinian Arabs saw the success of their resorting to terrorism because on May 17, 1939 the Neville Chamberlain British Government issued the White Paper restricting Jewish immigration to what would become Israel. A bipartisan group of 15 members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee led by Congressman Hamilton Fish wrote a public letter that this British White Paper violated the Anglo American Treaty.
In the end, the British violation of international law by limiting Jewish immigration with the White Paper at the encouragement of the Palestinian Arabs led to 6 million Jews dying in the Holocaust, because at first Hitler was in favor of expelling the Jews, but when countries would not take the Jews in ,or in the case of Britain, they would not let the Jews come to what would later be Israel, Hitler switched to murdering what became 6,000,000 Jewish dead.
The precursor to the Palestinian Authority, the PLO, made it clear in its founding Covenant in 1964 in Article 24 that it made no claim to the "West Bank" (which in that terminology included eastern Jerusalem) and Gaza. Its goal from the beginning was and is to destroy Israel. This is why the Arabs have rejected all compromise offers made by Israel and it is why the Israel electorate overwhelmingly opposes a Palestinian Arab state as they saw what one looked like in Gaza, which instead of leading to peace led to war. The creation of a Palestinian Arab state in the "West Bank" would lead to war and not peace as the Palestinian Arabs have made clear that they overwhelmingly support the destruction of Israel.
The Europeans claim their support for Palestinian Arab statehood and opposition to Israeli "settlements" are moral and just policies. However, the history and international law actually show the opposite. The British policies are against international law and the creation of a Palestinian Arab state as the Gaza war has shown would only lead to more wars and not peace. It would also be giving away Jewish land to the Palestinian Arabs who gave up the right to that land in its founding document, while the Jews never gave up this land which includes the burial sites of the forefathers and foremothers of the Jewish people. Hebron is where David created his first kingdom in the year 1010-1003 which was over 3,000 years ago.
History and international law says what is right and just is Israel’s right to Judea and Samaria and it declares their being able to settle the land. The British violated that right in the White Paper in 1939 and the British government is violating that right once again -- right now -- with its new sanctions policy.