Op-Ed: Palestine Mandate Trumps PLO Charter
David SingerDavid Singer is an Australian lawyer who is active in Zionist community...
The 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine - and international law - have finally emerged as triumphant victors over the 1964 PLO Charter, following the collapse of 50 years of failed attempts by the PLO to arbitrarily void the vote of the 51 members of the League of Nations who unanimously endorsed the legal right of the Jewish people to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in 23% of former Palestine.
This significant PLO defeat and loss of face follows the ignominious end - on 29 April 2014 - of the nine months negotiating deadline period imposed on Israel and the PLO by US Secretary of State - John Kerry - designed to achieve the "two- state solution" - the creation of a second Jew-free Arab State - in addition to Jordan - in former Palestine (a name given by the Romans to the area and that has no connection to the Arabs who invaded hundreds of years later) for the first time ever in recorded history.
The American and PLO failure to achieve the "two-state solution" after 20 years of fruitless negotiations represents a lost opportunity not likely to return for a long time - leaving the political prestige, influence and credibility of those much-vaunted negotiators in total disarray in the rapidly growing silent and abandoned diplomatic graveyard.
The PLO - since its formation in 1964 - had arrogantly strode the world stage claiming Palestine as the sole property of the Arab nation, while simultaneously denying the Jewish people any right to live in their 3000 year old Jewish, ancient, legally sanctioned and biblical homeland.
Article 18 of the 1964 PLO Charter had brazenly declared:
"The Balfour Declaration, the Palestine Mandate System, and all that has been based on them are considered null and void. The claims of historic and spiritual ties between Jews and Palestine are not in agreement with the facts of history or with the true basis of sound statehood. Judaism, because it is a divine religion, is not a nationality with independent existence. Furthermore, the Jews are not one people with an independent personality because they are citizens to their states."
Four years later article 18 had been replaced with a more strident, equally dismissive article 20:
"The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine, and everything that has been based upon them, are deemed null and void. Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own; they are citizens of the states to which they belong."
This outright rejection of international law by the PLO has never been questioned by the League of Nations' compliant successor - the United Nations - which, acting in clear breach of Article 80 of the UN Charter, knowingly collaborated to prolong the Arab-Jewish conflict in violation of international law when welcoming the PLO purveyor of Jew-hatred -Yasser Arafat - into its midst, with adulation and enthusiastic applause, on 13 November 1974.
The acceptance of this terrorist organization into the realm of civilised political discourse by the United Nations, while the PLO simultaneously continued to assert that the League of Nations had no power to make any legally binding decisions, must surely rank among the most shameful episodes and low points in United Nations history.
Lecturing to Israel on international law while allowing the PLO to reject international law was breathtaking hypocrisy on the United Nations part.
The principle of respect for the law was cast aside by United Nations members as they trashed the original and noble principles enunciated in the Mandate on the altar of expediency and national self- interest
Adopting countless condemnatory General Assembly resolutions of non-binding validity, those spineless members lined up with the automatic majority represented by Arab Islamic and third world member States to sell out their souls to appease an organization of terrorists, law-deniers and Jew-haters.
Former UN Secretaries General stood by in silence as anti-Israel resolutions denigrating and delegitimizing Israel were ramped up with ever increasing hatred.
The legal commitments enshrined in the Mandate had previously stood resolutely firm against this Arab assault on the Jewish National Home since 1922 - as partition proposals by the Peel Commission in 1937 and a newly created United Nations in 1947 were contemptuously shredded into the garbage bin of history by an Arab leadership that would not brook any compromise or reconciliation with the Jewish people.
The advent of major wars, including the 1948 War of Independence, the 1967 Six Day War and the 1973 Yom Kippur War, brought staggering losses and suffering for both Arabs and Jews as the Arab League armies still vainly attempted to eliminate the Jewish State and the consequences of the Mandate.
While the PLO fails to recognize Israel as the Jewish State - no peace between Jews and Arabs is realistically likely to occur.
The Arab League and Kerry have the power to create a breakthrough - pressuring Jordan and Israel to redraw the internationally recognized boundary between their respective countries, as successor States to the Mandate for Palestine
In view of their loss of political clout, do these neutered politicians and the United Nations really possess the diplomatic ability to make peace finally happen?
Using the wisdom and political sagacity of their League of Nations ancestors - the miracle created by the Mandate for Palestine 92 years ago might hopefully be set to resurface.if attempts to rescue the peace process are started once again.