Famous conference of allied leaders in 1920 determined the fate of the former Ottoman Empire and gave international legitimacy to the right of the Jewish people to a national homeland in Palestine.

By Paul Shindman, World Israel News

On Sunday, Israel and Jewish communities around the world are marking the 100th anniversary of the San Remo Conference and its closing resolution that paved the way for the rebirth of an independent Jewish state.

Representatives of the victorious allied powers met on April 26, 1920 in San Remo, Italy to divide up the lands that had been part of the defeated Ottoman Empire, giving new independence to the peoples who lived there.  The document created new countries like Syria and Iraq, but also “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”

While some Middle East countries gained quick independence, the leading nations of the world recognized the concept of an independent nation state for the Jewish people for the first time since Jewish independent rule was ended by the Romans in 136 CE. The leaders gave Palestine to the British who had captured Jerusalem during World War I.

The Mandate for Palestine gave Britain the job of preparing the groundwork to “secure the establishment of the Jewish national home.” However, for almost three decades Britain did the opposite, actively working to undermine Jewish sovereignty until finally the newly established United Nations voted in 1947 to partition the land, establishing Jewish and Arab states.

“There is probably no more understated event in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict than the San Remo Conference of April 1920,” said Prof. Efraim Karsh of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan University. The outcome of the conference “created a new international order on the basis of indigenous self-rule and national self-determination.”

Karsh said it marked the first time the international community gave “unqualified recognition” to the Jews as a national group rather than simply as members of a religious community.

“It was an extraordinary feat of diplomacy … recognizing the Jews as a nation deserving self-determination in its ancestral homeland,” Karsh wrote in a paper released to mark the century since the conference. “This is something that successive Palestinian leaderships have been loath to acknowledge to date.”

“The world powers recognized the ancient connection of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel and the right of the Jewish people to a national home on that land was given the force of International Law,” U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman said it a tweet marking the anniversary.

A live online broadcast by the European Coalition for Israel and hosted by the Christian Broadcast Network’s Middle East Bureau Chief Chris Mitchel was scheduled for later Sunday featuring senior Israeli diplomats and greetings from world leaders.

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The State Department’s omission of the word ‘occupied’ when referring to the territory of Judea and Samaria may ultimately facilitate a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

By: Daniel Krygier, World Israel News

A US State Department report recently dropped the word ”occupied” in reference to Judea and Samaria for the first time since 1979. In isolation, this move may seem insignificant, but it may also indicate a new US Middle East policy in the making that could facilitate a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Ever since the Arab countries failed to destroy Israel during the Six-Day War in 1967, the international community has increasingly framed the conflict as an “Israeli occupation of Palestine.” However, the international term “Occupied Palestinian Territories” is political and not rooted in international law or documented history. “Palestine” is the Roman name for occupied Judea, and no “Palestinian” Arab state has ever existed in the Land of Israel.

In his monumental work “The Legal Foundation and Borders of Israel under International Law,” late scholar Howard Grief argued that the legal title of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel was recognized by the international community at the San Remo Peace Conference in 1920.

Judea is not French Algeria

The implications of this recognition are that Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria are legal under international law even if regularly condemned by the politicized United Nations and the European Union. Unlike formerly French-occupied Algeria, Judea and Samaria constitute the ancestral heartland of Israel. Israel won the territories in a defensive war after being attacked by Arab forces. Since “Palestine” is fiction, Judea and Samaria should legally be defined as disputed rather than “occupied” territories. This means that Israel has legal rights in Judea and Samaria that the French colonialists in Algeria or Vietnam did not have.

This does not mean that Israel will annex the entire disputed territories anytime soon. It is not in the Jewish state’s interest to add another 2 million Arabs to its population. However, parts of Jewish-populated areas of Judea and Samaria could eventually be annexed by Israel in a future Arab-Israeli peace deal. This is consistent with the spirit of the key UN resolution 242, which envisions that Israel will retain some of the disputed territories.

Core of the Arab-Israel conflict

This brings us back to the State Department report’s omission of the word “occupied” when referring to Judea and Samaria. This is important because the core of the Arab-Israel conflict was never about “occupation,” but a deeply entrenched Muslim Arab opposition to a reborn Jewish state within any borders. It is the Arabs, not the Jews, who have systematically rejected a two-state solution since it was first suggested by the British Peel Commission in 1937.

Israel is not an “occupier.” Nor was it established as a “haven for refugees from the Holocaust,” as recently claimed by Hollywood actress Natalie Portman. Israel’s final borders are yet to be defined. However, what is beyond any doubt is the fact that modern Israel is the historical and legal realization of the Jewish people’s return to its ancestral homeland. The path to genuine peace requires a recognition of this fundamental truth.

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