Last week I wrote an article titled “Why didn’t Israeli professors of law or of political science denounce PM Netanyahu’s June 14, 2009 endorsement of the so-called two-state solution as a clear violation of (1) the Balfour Declaration of 1917; (2) the San Remo Resolution of 1920, which recognized the exclusive national Jewish rights to the Land of Israel under international law, on the strength of the historical connection of the Jewish people to the territory previously known as Palestine; and (3) the Anglo-American Treaty of 1925.

Legal basis for sovereign Israel

The San Remo Resolution, which was affirmed by the Principal Allied Powers of the First World War (Britain, France, Italy, Japan, and the United States acting as an observer), was later affirmed unanimously by the League of Nations. The San Remo Resolution therefore recognized exclusive national Jewish rights to the Land of Israel under international law, on the strength of the historical connection of the Jewish people to the territory previously known as Palestine. San Remo therefore resolved “That no part of Palestine would be ceded or leased to foreign powers.”

It logically follows that the so-called two-state solution would bestow Judea and Samaria on the Palestinian Authority is null and void under international law. That Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Barack Obama have opted for that solution has no legal standing and renders them criminally suspect!

It should also be understood that the UN General Assembly has no power to vary an existing valid international treaty which the League of Nations, its predecessor, approved (res judicata). (The League of Nations had granted Israel exclusive possession of the lands between the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River).

It should be emphasized that the San Remo Resolution is the basis on which the Mandate for Palestine was constructed by the League of Nations. While the decision made at San Remo created the Palestine Mandate de facto, the Mandate document signed by Great Britain as the Mandatory and by the League of Nations made it de juré. It thus became a binding treaty in international law. It follows that the State of Israel has the right, under international law, to declare Jewish sovereignty over Judea and Samaria.

Why would a leader of Israel want a two-state solution?

We therefore need to ask what prevents Ayelet Shaked, Israel’s Minister of Justice, from taking a positive stand on this issue by applying Israeli law over this ancestral Jewish land, as authorized by the above cited international declarations and agreements, above all by the San Remo Resolution?

Would such a decision upset or upstage PM Netanyahu, who, on June 14, 2009, violated the above mentioned international agreements by endorsing the creation of a Palestinian state in the historic land of Israel, and did so without Knesset debate?

Would exposing of Netanyahu’s unlawful denial that Judea and Samaria belong exclusively to the Jewish people destabilize his fragile coalition cabinet?

Conversely, if Jewish sovereignty extended to Judea and Samaria, would this foster a very large influx of religious Jews such that Judea and Samaria would become, what it always was, Israel’s political and demographic center of gravity?

Just ponder a prolific birthrate of religious Jews in Judea and Samaria – they now number about half a million – wouldn’t this development soon relegate Israel’s secular parties to the political wilderness?

Does Netanyahu fear this? Does Ayelet Shaked?☼