When the truth is a minority opinion, then it must be repeated - by Vic Rosenthal

...But in fact all but a few ‘Palestinians’ are descended from Arabs who migrated to the area for economic reasons after the advent of Zionism, and even fewer arrived before the invasion by Muhammad Ali in the 1830s. The Jewish connection to the land doesn’t need further explication. Judea and Samaria, in fact, represent the biblical heartland of the Jewish people, where its history took place and where its holy places are located. If there is any part of the land of Israel that should belong to the Jewish people, it is Judea (including Jerusalem) and Samaria.

Vic Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
12 December '16..

This morning I got an email from an American correspondent asking what are the arguments for the legitimacy of Israeli communities (not ‘settlements’) across the Green Line, including all of Jerusalem. When I responded, I realized that although I have written about this before, it needs to be repeated – and repeated, because in this case the truth is a minority opinion. So here is a slightly more complete version of my answer:

The Jewish people have a legal, historical and moral right to live anywhere in the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean; and the only sovereign power in this region is Israel, the state of the Jewish people. Here is why:

From a legal point of view, the land was originally a part of the Ottoman Empire, which ceased to exist at the end of WWI. “Palestine” was set aside for the Jewish people by the Palestine Mandate, which was supposed to be administered for their benefit by Britain, which then tried to subvert it for its own interests. It’s clear that while the intent of the Mandate was that all residents would have civil rights, rights to a “national home” were reserved for the Jewish people, who were also explicitly granted the right of “close settlement on the land”. This was affirmed for all the land from the river to the sea by the representatives of the international community in 1923.

The partition resolution of November 1947 (UNGA 181) was non-binding – a recommendation for a permanent settlement after the end of the Mandate. But it was never implemented. In 1948, the Arabs rejected the UN’s partition resolution and invaded the territory of the former Mandate, blatantly violating the UN Charter in an attempt to acquire the territory for themselves. The 1949 ceasefire agreement that ended hostilities was not a peace agreement, and both sides insisted that that the ceasefire lines were not political boundaries. Their only significance was to mark the locations of the armies when the shooting stopped.

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