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Israel Upholds International Law in the Territories

(Jerusalem Post) Melanie Phillips - Last week at the UN, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas made a speech expressing hostility to Israel's very existence. He falsely presented the Jews of Israel as squatters in the Palestinians' own land, when the only people for whom the Land of Israel and the disputed territories have ever been their national kingdom are the Jews. He even demanded that Britain apologize for the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which first committed Britain to reestablish the Jewish homeland in what was then called Palestine. His speech showed that the Palestinians' complaint is not about the absence of a state of their own. It is about the existence of Israel which they want gone. The speech reflected two entirely false Western beliefs: that Israel acts in contravention of international law, and that the land originally belonged to the Palestinians. The West maintains that Israel occupies Palestinian territory in the "West Bank." This is untrue. There has never been any "Palestinian territory." Israel is furthermore entitled under international law to continue to hold onto the disputed territories as a defensive measure as long as its Arab aggressors continue to use them for belligerent ends. The West says Israel's settlements are illegal. This is also untrue. In the 1920s, the Mandate for Palestine gave Britain the legally binding duty to settle the Jews throughout what is now not just Israel but the disputed territories too. That Jewish right has never been abrogated. The West makes a fetish of international law. Yet it denounces Israel, the one Middle East state that upholds it. The writer is a columnist for The Times (UK).
2016-09-30 00:00:00
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