- 1 - CILR wish to thank Rabbi Daniel Green of the Adas Israel Congregation for making this presentation possible. We are also very grateful to all those who organized this event, particularly Steven Scheffer and the whole team of the Never Again Group, as well as Mark Vandermaas of Israel Truth Week . International law is no longer confined to the legal profession. It is now part and parcel of world politics. The ramifications of international law extend to all levels of foreign affairs. However, we often witness situations where powerful states and organizations trample, ignore, or disfigure the principles of international law for political expediency. This is particularly evident in the case of Israel. In the past several decades, we have observed an overt disregard of the legal rights of Israel as they have been recognized in international law. This trend can be seen at the General Assembly of the United Nations, at the UN Human Rights Council, at the European Union and at the International Court of Justice, in what could only be characterized as an “Assault on the Law of Nations,” to borrow the title of Professor Julius Stone ’s book of 1980. We shall briefly review how Israel is selectively blamed for supposed wrongdoings in spite of its incontrovertible legal rights, and how the ongoing “peace process” rests on a flawed premise which fuels hostility toward Israel and denigrates its established rights. We shall conclude by suggesting a corrective course of action. Salomon Benzimra, P. Eng. Canadians for Israel’s Legal Rights – CILR
- 2 - There is hardly a statement, declaration, speech or academic debate dealing with the Arab-Israeli conflict where the “Occupation of Palestinian Territories” is not regularly brought up by the anti- Israel side. T he “OPT” notion is baseless but it is used by the EU and others to sanction Israel and its purportedly “ illegal settlements ” while other real occupations remain largely unchallenged. Since 1974, the northern part of Cyprus has been occupied by Turkey – illegally, according to the UN Security Council . There are over 100,000 “illegal Turkish settlers” and yet, the European Union (of which the Republic of Cyprus is a member) lavishly funds the development of this area. After Spain withdrew from Western Sahara (earlier called “ Rio de Oro”), Morocc o organized a massive march of 350,000 people in 1975. Even though the International Court of Justice ruled in favour of the self-determination of the local Sahrawi population, the Moroccans occupied 80% of the territory ( red area in map above) and built a 2,500 km “security wall.” The EU now has fishing agreements with Morocco, in the territorial waters of the occupied territory. The annexation of Tibet by China in 1950 and the massive, forcible transfer of ethnic Chinese to the region do not seem to raise any international concerns on violations of the Geneva Conventions. The selective application of international law and the singling out of Israel are quite apparent. This anomaly was rightly mentioned by PM Stephen Harper in his speech at the Knesset last January. It is imperative that the legal rights of Israel under international law be forcefully asserted . To understand the origin of these rights, we must first look at the Ottoman Empire in the early 1900s. Salomon Benzimra, P. Eng. Canadians for Israel’s Legal Rights – CILR
- 3 - The map shows the full extent of the Ottoman Empire. Starting in 1300 in a small portion of western Anatolia, Turkish conquests expanded considerably in the next three centuries to finally include all the colored areas, the different colors reflecting successive periods of conquest. At its apex, the Ottoman Empire spread from central Europe to south-western Arabia and from Algeria to the Persian Gulf. The Ottoman Turks were finally stopped in their advance at the gates of Vienna in 1683. During the 18 th and 19 th centuries, they gradually lost all their European and North African possessions. In 1914, on the eve of World War One, the Ottoman Empire was reduced to the territories shown within the red line when it joined the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria) against the Allied Powers (mainly France and the British Empire but also Italy and Japan among others). The United States entered the war in Europe in 1917 but did not fight the Turks in the Middle East. By the end of WWI in 1918, Turkey had lost all its possessions in the Middle East. The Ottoman Empire collapsed, together with the German, Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires, the latter through the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. The Allied Powers were then responsible for the drafting of boundaries and the creation of new countries in Europe and the Middle East, among which Palestine . Salomon Benzimra, P. Eng. Canadians for Israel’s Legal Rights – CILR
- 4 - Before the end of WWI, and twenty years after Theodor Herzl launched the Zionist movement, the British Government issued the Balfour Declaration (Nov. 1917) in favor of establishing a Jewish National Home in Palestine. It was an expression of British foreign policy but it was also welcomed by various other governments. Two months later, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson presented his Fourteen Points in Congress (Jan. 1918), where he advocated the creation of an “Assembly of Nations” and the right of peoples to “self - determination” in order to promote world peace. After WWI, the Supreme Council of the Allied Powers (Britain, France, Italy, Japan and the U.S.) convoked the Paris Peace Conference (Jan. 1919). The League of Nations was created, governed by a Covenant which instituted the Mandates System for the benefit of peoples aspiring to sovereignty, thus fulfilling President Wilson’s wishes. The Covenant of the League of Nations was included in Part I of the Treaty of Versailles which, together with other treaties, determined the fate of post-war Europe under international law. In Paris, both the Zionists and the Arabs presented their territorial claims. The final disposition of Turkish territories in the Middle East took place in San Remo, Italy, in April 1920, under the authority of the same Supreme Council (the U.S. acting as an observer). The San Remo Resolution combined Article 22 of the Covenant to the Balfour Declaration, thus making the latter a binding act of international law with regard to the Jewish National Home in Palestine under a British Mandate. The San Remo Resolution also allocated Syria (later split into Syria and Lebanon) and Mesopotamia (Iraq) to French and British mandates, respectively. Two years later, the Mandate for Palestine was confirmed by the Council of the League (July 1922) and approved by its 52 members. By failing to forcefully assert Israel’s internationally recognized rights, successive Israeli governments let the “Palestinian s ” fill the void with the most outlandish claims. Salomon Benzimra, P. Eng. Canadians for Israel’s Legal Rights – CILR
- 5 - The Palestinian claims listed above are a representative sample of their official position. They are clearly spelled out in their three founding Charters (PLO, Fatah, Hamas); in the UNGA Resolutions supported by Arab/Islamic countries, the Soviet Bloc and the Non Aligned Movement; in statements voiced by historian Nabil Alqam, published in Omar Barghouti ‘s book on BDS, and broadcast by the current Mufti Muhammad Hussein; in the declarations of Mahmoud Abbas at the UN and in his Christmas message in Bethlehem in 2013; and in the latest fantasy of Saeb Erekat on Jericho. “Frivolous” would be too charitable a term to characterize these Pa lestinian claims. Their purpose is clear: to buttress the non-existing national rights of the “Palestinian people” and to substitute Palestine to Israel, with the ultimate goal of eliminating the Jewish State (see Page 10). And yet, most of these fraudulent claims appear in the ongoing peace negotiations, in varying iterations. The politics of the so-called “ Israeli- Palestinian peace process” have been so deeply entrenched for the past twenty years that even the most outlandish Palestinian claims – which have no basis in history or law – do not seem to affect the zeal of the negotiators. It is “ peace at any cost ” – a foreign policy that “ becomes a weapon in the hands of the most ruthless, [and] produces moral disarmament , ” in the words of Henry Kissinger. No wonder that the pursuit of the peace process has enhanced the status of the Palestinian cause beyond all expectations, to the detriment of Israel. The search for peace in the past twenty years has been a sustained project marked by successive failures. We should realize that projects invariably fail when they are based on faulty foundations. Salomon Benzimra, P. Eng. Canadians for Israel’s Legal Rights – CILR
Recommend
More recommend
