This July, Pete Buttigieg, who for reasons I fail to grasp, has been described as one of the most pro-Israel candidates in the Democratic field, signaled that on Israel, he had moved farther to the left. He tweeted: “The occupation has to end.” Anti-Israel groups were ecstatic.
What we have here is a failure by Buttigieg to understand the legal status of the West Bank. The word “occupation” suggests that Israel has no legal claim to the West Bank; it is merely to be seen as a military occupier, like the Americans in Occupied Japan or Occupied Germany. But Israel’s legal claim is not that of a military occupier, who remains for a few years, and once having rearranged the politics of a defeated country, leaves. That legal claim to the West Bank is based on the Mandate for Palestine itself. Buttigieg should look at the Mandate maps. He may not realize – he is hardly alone – that the West Bank (to use the term the Jordanians affixed to that area in 1949 so as to avoid the too-Jewish “Judea and Samaria”) was included, by the League of Nations’ Mandates Commission, in the territory that was assigned to Mandatory Palestine, thus part of the land that was to become the Jewish National Home and, subsequently, the State of Israel. This territory included all of historic Palestine west of the river Jordan.
Buttigieg should study the provisions of the Mandate, especially Articles 4 and 6, where he will find that the Mandatory authority solemnly undertakes to facilitate Jewish immigration into Palestine and to encourage “close settlement by Jews on the land.” If Buttigieg thinks that those clauses are without continued relevance, as he likely does, he should consult Article 80 (known as “the Jewish People’s clause”) of the U.N. Charter, which preserves intact all the rights granted to Jews under the Mandate for Palestine, even after the Mandate’s expiry on May 14-15, 1948. Under this provision of international law (the Charter is an international treaty), Jewish rights to Palestine and the Land of Israel were not to be altered in any way unless there had been an intervening trusteeship agreement between the states or parties concerned, which would have converted the Mandate into a trusteeship or trust territory. There was no such intervening trusteeship.
When Jordan won the West Bank in the 1948-49 war, Israel’s legal right to that territory was not extinguished. Nor did Jordan create for itself, by seizing it in a war of aggression, a legal right to that land. Jordan was only the military “occupier” of the West Bank from 1949 to 1967. Then, after the Six-Day War, Israel came into possession of the West Bank. and could then enforce its preexisting legal claim under the Mandate.
At the same time, Israel has a separate and distinct claim to much of the West Bank, based on U.N. Resolution 242, by which Israel could hold onto territories it had won if they were necessary for it to have “secure and recognizable boundaries,” or as another phrase often used put it, “secure and defensible borders.” Israel had the right to determine what territory it needed to be “secure.” So far it has given up 95% of the territory it had won in 1967; it gave back the entire Sinai to Egypt, for the second time (the first time was in 1956) and gave up Gaza in 2005 to the “Palestinians.” After the Battle of Gaza in June, 2007 between Fatah and Hamas, Hamas won decisively and has ruled – and misruled – Gaza ever since.
It bears repeating again and again: the West Bank, by the terms of the Mandate, was included in the territory that was to be the Jewish national home (which became Israel). Jordan was its military occupant from 1949 to 1967, not its legal claimant. Furthermore, according to the text of U.N. Resolution 242, Israel has a right to retain certain territories taken in the Six-Day War, that it needs if it is to have “secure and recognizable boundaries.” Shortly after the Six-Day War, President Johnson had the Joint Chiefs send a delegation to study the security situation in Israel. In the report they issued, they concluded that Israel would necessarily have to retain the Golan Heights and much of the West Bank.
Were Israel forced to give up the entire West Bank – which is what Buttigieg’s “The occupation has to end” must mean – Israel would no longer control the Jordan Valley or the Judean hills. The traditional invasion route from the east would be wide open. Israel would once again be only nine miles wide at its narrowest width, from Qalqilya to the sea, and the country could be cut in two within a matter of hours. That is not a defensible result, in either the legal (see the Mandate for Palestine and U.N. Resolution 242) or the moral sense.
Then there is Buttigieg’s statement about the Golan, criticizing Trump’s recognition of Israel’s annexation, and his insistence that unlike Trump, he did not want to “intervene” in Israeli policies. But by commenting on the annexation, he has intervened on the side of those who oppose the annexation and want the future of the Golan to still be subject to negotiation. He intervenes, that is, to oppose recognizing the annexation that 85% of Israel’s Jews support. When asked about the possibility, were he to become president, of undoing Trump’s move, Buttigieg replied that he will not “make any declarations now about the future of that status other than to say that on my watch it would not have come as part of the intervention of [sic] Israeli [politics].” To me, that sounds as if he might indeed undo Trump’s recognition of the Golan annexation; that he considers it to be “occupied territory,” and he’s now tweeting “the occupation has to end.” Does he really mean to say that he wants Israel to be pushed back to the pre-1967 lines, that is, the armistice lines of 1949, which Abba Eban once described as “the lines of Auschwitz”? Does he not think we non-Israelis, in the case of the Golan, should defer to the Israeli military’s judgment that it is critical to Israel’s defense?
Does Buttigieg have an opinion on Brexit? If he expresses it, is he not “intervening” in British politics? If he declares himself a supporter of Juan Guaido, is he not “intervening” in Venezuelan politics? If he denounces the crackdown on Hong Kong protesters, is he not “intervening” in Chinese politics? Every foreign policy statement he – or anyone else — makes is an “intervention” in some other country’s politics. But the only “intervention” that seems to exercise him is that which recognizes an annexation which was carried out nearly 40 years ago, which is supported by 85% of Israeli Jews, and which reflects Israel’s determination to create “secure” borders, as it is fully entitled to do under U.N. Resolution 242.
So here’s a homework assignment for Pete Buttigieg:
1. Read the Mandate for Palestine, paying special attention to the Preamble, and Articles 4 and 6.
2. Study the Mandate for Palestine maps, showing the territory assigned to the Mandate after all the territory east of the Jordan River had been unilaterally closed to Jewish immigration by the British.
3. Read Article 80 of the U.N. Charter.
4. Read the text of U.N. Resolution 242.
5. Read the discussion of the meaning of U.N. Resolution 242, written by its author, Lord Caradon.
6. Read the report on territorial adjustments that would be required to meet Israel’s security needs, as prepared by staff members of the U.S. Joint Chiefs, who visited Israel after the Six-Day War.
FOR EXTRA CREDIT:
Read Israel and Palestine: An Assault on the Law of Nations, by the celebrated Australian jurist Julius Stone.
Let us know, after that bit of homework – it’s always fun to learn new things – if you still want to stand by that tweet “the occupation has to end,” or if the knowledge you’ve acquired will lead, as I allow myself to believe it will, to quite a different understanding.
mortimer says
‘The FARCE is strong in him.’ Pete Buttigieg is strong in propaganda, but weak in historical knowledge of Mandatory Palestine. He should stick to local matters, because international matters are beyond his scope.
t parry says
his name is pronounced butt geig
mortimer says
The West Bank is another description of the province of JUDAEA … the part of Israel assigned to the CHILDREN OF JUDAH (JEWS) by God in the Bible.
Under Rome, the area of the West Bank was called ‘JUDAEA’.
The connection of the Jewish people with JUDAEA is thus incontrovertible. Jews have always lived there since
The words Jerusalem, Israel and Zion appear more than 850 times in the Bible as such. The Bible is in fact a very Zionist book and Jesus revealed himself in it as a patriotic Israelite.
The place “Philistia” is mentioned only eight times in the Old Testament, but Palestine is not mentioned even ONCE in the New Testament. The Bible is full of references to Zion and ‘going up’ to the ‘holy hill’. The focus of Jewish worship is the Temple Mount. Jewish graves point to the Temple.
Jesus spoke as an Israelite by nationality and a Jew by religion: “We Jews know whom we worship because it is from the Jews that salvation comes.” (John 4.22)
Jesus Christ declares himself a pious Jew, and as a descendant of King David {Matthew 1 v 17} would have no difficulty accepting modern Israel’s prophetically-promised right to exist.
Jerusalem only took on interest to Muslims when the infamous Nazi Mufti Mohammed Amin al-Husseini promoted the genocidal 1920s myth that “Jews are destroying Al Aqsa”, thus taking Jerusalem out of the shadows of irrelevance where it had been for centuries.
Arabs have always referred to this region as Lower Syria.
mortimer says
MANY ARAB LEADERS HAVE DENIED THE EXISTENCE OF ‘PALESTINE’
There is ‘No Palestine’
“There is no such country as Palestine. ‘Palestine’ is a term the Zionists invented. There is no Palestine in the Bible… Palestine is alien to us.” – Awni Abdul-Hadi, Peel Commission testimony, 1937
“There is no such thing as Palestine in history. Absolutely not.” – Arab historian, Dr. Philip Hitti, Anglo-American Committee testimony, 1946
“It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria.” – Saudi representative to the United Nations, 1956
“Never forget this one point: there is no such thing as a Palestinian people. There is no Palestinian entity … Palestine is an integral part of Syria.” – Hafez al-Assad to Yasser Arafat
NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A PALESTINIAN AND A JORDANIAN or A SYRIAN
Jordan is a 20th-century British invention, dreamed up in the 1920s, for the peoples living in what Britain illegally hived off from the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine in 1923. In 1923 the British arbitrarily violated the Mandate, morally and legally, by creating the “Emirate of Jordan” in Eastern Palestine. The British announced that this was a “temporary” measure, which they quietly and quickly made “permanent.” Jews were no longer allowed to live there. Once the British established the Mandate, and Jewish immigration began to create a mini-industrial revolution, both Western and Eastern Palestine attracted waves of Muslim Arab immigrants from Egypt and Syria. These new immigrants found it convenient to make common cause with the non-Bedouin residents of Jordan and much later, specifically after 1967, called themselves and their children Palestinians. President Roosevelt pointed out in 1939 that “Arab immigration into Palestine since 1921 has vastly exceeded the total Jewish immigration during this whole period.” Until 1946, its British administrators called TransJordan — Eastern Palestine.
Arab Opinions about the Demographic Unity of ‘Palestine’ and Jordan
”Palestine and Transjordan are one, for Palestine is the coastline and Transjordan the hinterland of the same country.” – King Abdullah, at the Meeting of the Arab League, Cairo, 12 April, 1948
”We are the Government of Palestine, the army of Palestine and the refugees of Palestine.” – Prime Minister of Jordan, 23 August, 1959
”Palestine is Jordan and Jordan is Palestine; there is one people and one land, with one history and one and the same fate.” – Prince Hassan, brother of King Hussein, addressing the Jordanian National Assembly, 2 February, 1970
Tama says
Majority of these comments.. don’t know what countries these people are from
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2315328388774546&id=1413475698959824
Nice from russell:
If Palestine was a sovereign country before Israel occupied it, can anyone name a prime minister or president before the occupation? I’ll wait…
Says abdul:
History written by who ? . . . The French , British and the Jewish immigrants , who left the states in the middle east where they lived as respected citizens , to settle on stolen lands . How about checking pre – history or your made up history . History shows a Palestine map , but no that wouldn ‘ t work for the new peaceful immigrant who own the promised land
mortimer says
Response to Tama: Sheikh Abdul Palazzi PhD says:
“Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel was never abolished. Moreover, the Quran explicitly refers to the return of the Jews to the Land of Israel before the Last Judgment when it says in the Surah of the Children of Israel, verse 104:
And thereafter We [God] said to the Children of Israel: ‘Dwell securely in the Promised Land. And when the last warning will come to pass, we will gather you together in a mingled crowd.’
Therefore, from an Islamic point of view, Israel is the legitimate owner of the land God deeded to her and whose borders were defined by Abraham in Genesis.”
So the Koran endorses Jews living in Israel.
mortimer says
Jews are ‘occupying’ JUDAEA … the homeland of the Jews.
Does anyone else see the contradiction in that statement?
Eric Jones says
Arab leaders are wrong. The term Palestina is mentioned four times in the Old Testament in the KJV of the Bible.: Exodus 15:14, Joel 3:1 -4, Isiah 14:29 and Isiah 14:31. We should all read it some time. Its good for the soul.
Eric
Hugh Fitzgerald says
Good for one’s prose style too.
gravenimage says
🙂
Angemon says
“Arab leaders are wrong.”
Imagine my surprise…
b.a. freeman says
mr. buttigieg will *never* do that homework assignment, because he already “knows” everything he thinks he has to know about the situation. his acolytes are cheering him on, so he *must* be doing the right thing … right?
mr. buttigieg may have a rapidly-fading memory of what he read on wikipedia (probably immediately after the pages were vandalized by either hard-core leftists or pious muslims), but i *GUARANTEE* that he knows *NOTHING* about islam, unless he, too, is a hard-core leftist, and is more than willing to lie about the reality of the cult. there is no in-between for these brownshirts.
James Lincoln says
b. a. freeman,
Correct and insightful post. My compliments.
You’re certainly correct about Wikipedia. It is totally a mixed bag…
If you’re looking up the specifications of a 1965 Pontiac GTO, it’s generally factual. And because of this, the average person thinks that other articles in Wikipedia reach the same level of accuracy.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Any article that is the least bit political / opinion in nature has been heavily wordsmithed by the far left. Look up the Southern Poverty Law Center for example.
Reader beware…
CRUSADER says
Reader Beware
Caveat Emptor
Keep Brain In Gear ⚙️
As ALWAYS !
Charlie in NY says
For additional credit, though not applicable to the Golan of course, the would-be next President of the United States should read Article 24 of the PLO’s 1964 Charter and then recognize that the West has been, and is continuing to be, played for fools. Imagine relinquishing your sovereign claims (even if they are, as Inc this case, imaginary) to lands you now claim are yours by right from time immemorial. What true national liberation movement would ever sell its birthright like that? Then again, what true national liberation movement has no indigenous name for its homeland but calls it by a foreign one?
To save everyone the time and effort, here is the Charter provision I mentioned.
Article 24. This Organization does not exercise any regional sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, on the Gaza Strip or the Himmah Area. Its activities will be on the national popular level in the liberational, organizational, political and financial fields.
It should be referred to in any discussion along with everything mentioned in this article.
CRUSADER says
Looking forward to visiting newly formed village named after Trump there in the Golan, where good wines are to be tasted.
Also, highly recommend visiting the Trump winery outside of Charlottesville. Excellence! Friendly, knowledgeable, orderly, with a beautiful natural setting which will take your breath away. Quite a welcome respite — distanced by rolling hills — from the politically correct insane world experienced in Charlottesville, VA.
gravenimage says
Pete Buttigieg on the Golan Heights and “the Occupation [that] Must End” (Part 2)
……………..
Mayor Pete is too clueless to know that this would lead to the destruction of Israel and the genocide of her people.
Mr. Cohen says
Mr. Stephen M. Flatow [an attorney in New Jersey
and father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an
Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995] said:
“…Israel ended its rule over 98 percent [98%]
of the Palestinian Arabs back in [year] 1995.
It is the Palestinian Authority that rules them.
The gang [of political Far-Leftists and Progressives]
knows that Israel does not rule the area.
……………………………..
So why do the Progressive Networkers persist in
promoting the fantasy that Israel rules over the Arabs?
Because demonizing Israel as the occupier galvanizes
their followers. It gives them something to be upset about…”
SOURCE: Ten Jewish groups unite
against Israeli democracy by Stephen M. Flatow
http://www.jns.org/opinion/ten-jewish-groups-unite-against-israeli-democracy/
Mr. Cohen says
Lord Ian Livingston of England said:
“Whilst the Israeli Defense Forces are not
perfect, the obsession of focusing on them
despite being the most moral and professional
army in the Middle East is very strange.”
SOURCE: Ten Baroness Tonge
Pilloried at House of Lords Session She Initiated
on Israel’s Treatment of Palestinian Children
by Benjamin Kerstein, 2019 July 8
http://www.algemeiner.com/2019/07/08/itiated-on-israels-treatment-of-palestinian-children/
Mr. Cohen says
Mr. Ross Perot
(two-time USA Presidential candidate) said:
“Israel is a beacon in its part of the world
in terms of its democratic government.
It is a role model to the others there…”
SOURCE: Remembering Ross Perot’s
relationship with Israel and the American Jewish
community by Jackson Richman, 2019 July 10
http://www.jns.org/remembering-ross-perots-relationship-with-israel-and-the-amreican-jewish-community/
gravenimage says
Ross Perot was certainly right about this.
Mr. Cohen says
Saudi journalist Fahad al-Shammari
declared [in a television interview] that:
“the Palestinians are beggars,” and “have no honor”.
SOURCE: PA and Jordanian
incitement against Saudi Arabia
by Yoni Ben Menachem of JCPA, 2019/7/28
http://www.jns.org/opinion/pa-and-jordanian-incitement-against-saudi-arabia/
===================================
Mr. Patrick Condell described the Palestinians as:
“the World’s most tiresome cry-babies with a bogus
cause and a plight that is entirely self-inflicted”.
SOURCE: The Great Palestinian Lie
a YouTube video by by Mr. Patrick Condell, 2011 October 6
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1N1zhUm84w
Mr. Cohen says
Miss Ayaan Hirsi Ali [a Somalian-born ex-Muslim] said:
[In many Muslim countries], corrupt rulers play an intricate game to stay in power.
Their signature move is the promise to “free” the Holy Land — that is, to eliminate the Jewish state.
SOURCE: Anti-Semitism Is Hard to
Unlearn but it’s Possible — Even for Ilhan Omar
https://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/politics-current-affairs/2019/07/anti-semitism-is-hard-to-unlearn-but-its-possible-even-for-ilhan-omar/
===================================
Miss Ayaan Hirsi Ali [a Somalian-born ex-Muslim] said:
There is very little freedom of expression in Muslim-majority countries, and state-owned media churn out anti-Semitic and anti-Israel propaganda daily — as do even media groups that style themselves as critical of Muslim autocracies, such as Al Jazeera and Al-Manar.
SOURCE: Anti-Semitism Is Hard to
Unlearn but it’s Possible — Even for Ilhan Omar
https://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/politics-current-affairs/2019/07/anti-semitism-is-hard-to-unlearn-but-its-possible-even-for-ilhan-omar/
===================================
from the Jewish Virtual Library:
“Leading up to Israel’s independence in [year] 1948,
it was common for the international press to label Jews,
not Arabs, living in the [British] mandate as Palestinians.
It was not until years after Israeli independence
that the Arabs living in the West Bank and
Gaza Strip were called Palestinians.”
SOURCE: Origin of “Palestine”
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/origin-of-quot-palestine-quot/
Mr. Cohen says
Winston Churchill said this in 1937 CE:
“[Winston] Churchill did not accept that the Jews
were a foreign race [to the Holy Land]. He said it was
the Arabs who had been the outsiders, the conquerors.”
SOURCE: Churchill and the Jews
(chapter 10, page 115) by Martin Gilbert, year 2007 CE
CHRONOLOGY:
Sir Winston Churchill was British Prime Minister
from 1940 to 1945 CE and from 1951 to 1955 CE.
HISTORY NOTE:
According to the Wikipedia internet encyclopedia,
these lands were conquered by the Rashidun Caliphs,
from year 632 to year 661 of the Common Era
(from west to East): Libya, Egypt, Israel, Lebanon,
Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Eastern Turkey, and Iran.
Therefore, Winston Churchill was correct when
he said that the Muslims were the outsiders
and conquerors, with respect to the land of Israel.
===================================
Winston Churchill said this in 1937 CE:
“When the Mohammedan upset occurred in world history,
and the great hordes of Islam swept over these places,
they broke it [Palestine] all up, smashed it all up.
You have seen the terraces on the hills which used to be
cultivated, which under Arab rule have remained a desert.”
SOURCE: Churchill and the Jews
(chapter 10, page 116) by Martin Gilbert, year 2007 CE
CHRONOLOGY:
Sir Winston Churchill was British Prime Minister
from 1940 to 1945 CE and from 1951 to 1955 CE.
UNCLE VLADDI says
Pete Buttigeig’s real name is Paul Montgomery.
(He actually CHOSE to put BUTT in his name)!
gravenimage says
His full name is Peter Paul Montgomery Buttigieg. He is not using a false name as you appear to believe.
Many–perhaps most–people do not use their middle name or names day-to-day. I don’t.
Jay says
The name “Buttigieg” is derived from an Arabic word meaning “poultry farmer”. He’s a deep-cover moslem operative, or at least, that’s what any part-time paranoid might reasonably conclude.
gravenimage says
Jay, I have to admit I thought you were being silly–but you are quite right:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buttigieg
“Buttiġieġ is a Maltese surname, derived from the Arabic kunya أبو الدجاج (‘Abū d-dajāj), meaning chicken owner or poulterer.”
My apologies.