Posted on 09/17/2011 10:01:37 AM PDT by Eleutheria5
The political unrest now rocking the Arab world emphasizes the risk that an independent Palestinian state would be subject to the same destabilizing influences and form a terror haven on what are now Israel's security buffers. The other choices. Part II: Alternatives
In determining the permanent status of Judea and Samaria, many advocates believe Israel instead should be guided by the principles laid out at the San Remo Conference of 1920, during which the Supreme Council of Principal Allied Powers made decisions implicating the future of the territories they liberated from the Ottoman Empire during the First World War.
The Council, among other things, incorporated the Balfour Declaration into its program and recognized that the Jews comprised a people defined not solely by religion, but by nationality and descent as well. Moreover, it recognized that the Jews were indigenous to the Land of Israel and, accordingly, that they had the right to self-determination in their homeland.
The Mandate for Palestine of 1922 further guaranteed the right of “close settlement,” which recognized that Jews could settle anywhere west of the Jordan. No similar recognition was accorded Palestinian-Arab nationality at that time because it simply did not exist.
Rather, the local Arabs considered themselves to be culturally part of the greater Syrian community, and much of their population had accrued through late migration into the area only after the Jews had begun rehabilitating the land and creating economic opportunities that did not exist elsewhere in the Mideast.
The acceptance of the San Remo program by the League of Nations – and the restatement of its ambitions in the 1922 Mandate for Palestine – evidenced an acknowledgment of the Jews’ status as an indigenous people and their right to settle anywhere in their homeland, including Judea and Samaria.....
(Excerpt) Read more at israelnationalnews.com ...
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