Thursday, February 6, 2025 at 06:39PM Palestine, The Mandate and The League of Nations
After the end of WW1, the Jewish population in Palestine was 11 per cent.
Since then, The Indigenous Palestinian people have been denied the exercise of their legal right to self-determination when Britain took over Palestine and pursued a Zionist policy to help establish a nation State exclusively for the Jewish people in the land of Mandatory Palestine.
This right for the Palestinian people originates in the “sacred trust” obligations of Article 22 of the League of Nations Covenant, part of the Versailles Treaty signed in 1919 and entered into force in 1920.
Palestine, an “A” class Mandate under British colonial rule was, after the First World War, supposed to have its existence as an independent State “provisionally recognized”.
The United Kingdom, The Mandatory power, and other members of the League Council attempted to bypass this by incorporating the infamous 1917 Balfour Declaration commitment to establishing a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine into that instrument. An illegal move.
Britain became “The belligerent occupant’ of the Country of Palestine when it occupied it on 11 November 1917. Thus it could not introduce changes to its status. Its right to ‘govern’ could not come from the League of Nations either.
In line with the laws of war, Britain set up a military administration guided by the official Occupied Enemy Territory Administration (OETA). Britain’s military officials in the country understood their international obligations. Britain did not OWN Palestine. It was a mere administrator of it. Palestine’s laws under the Ottomans were merely transferred to the new administrator.
Thus Britain did neither own nor possess Palestine. This was confirmed by a famous legal court case brought to The Permanent Court of International Justice (the predecessor to today’s ICJ). In this case, famously known as The Mavrommatis Palestine Concessions Case’, Britain admitted:
“That there has been no succession between Turkey and Great Britain in regards to Palestine”, meaning that Britain has no legal standing in Palestine and was merely an occupying power”.
The Balfour pledge itself was merely a political statement from the British Foreign Secretary to a private Zionist individual. It was of no legal standing and non-binding. The League Council exceeded its legal authority under The Covenant by incorporating the Balfour Declaration into the Mandate Agreement. The UK did not have any authority over the territory of Palestine when the Balfour Declaration was made.
There was and is no legal basis in that Mandate instrument for either a specifically Jewish State in Palestine, or for the United Kingdom to discharge its “sacred trust of civilisation” obligation to pursue the implementation of Palestine’s self-determination, under the League Covenant.
After WW2, this self-determination right applicable to colonial peoples became enshrined in international law.
In 1947, the UN proposal to partition Palestine was, therefore, contrary to International Law.
In 1948, Palestine was legally a single territory with a single population enjoying a right of self-determination.
Despite this, a State of Israel, specifically for Jewish people, was proclaimed in 1948 and then immediately recognised. It occupied 78 per cent of Historic Palestine, forcing the displacement of more than 700,000 of the indigenous Palestinian population. A year later, Israel was admitted as a United Nations Member, despite this illegality.
