Is Israel ‘occupying’ its own land?

Jephthah sent emissaries to the king of the Children of Ammon, saying, ‘What is there between you and me that you have come to me to make war in my land’?  (Judges 11:12)

The king of the Children of Ammon said to Jephthah’s emissaries, ‘Because Israel took away my land when it ascended from Egypt, from Arnon to the Jabbok to the Jordan! So now return them in peace.’  (Judges 11.13)

Of course, the land of Israel was not part of Ammon. Ammon was northeast of Moab. As God spoke in Deuteronomy 2:19,  “and you shall approach opposite the children of Ammon; you shall not distress them and you shall not provoke them, for I shall not give any of the land of the children of Ammon to you as an inheritance, for to the children of Lot have I given it as an inheritance.”

Zionism, begun by Theodore Herzl at the close of the 19th century, was successful in procuring the Balfour Declaration, on Nov. 2, 1917, supporting a Jewish national home in Palestine. After World War I, the League of Nations confirmed the Balfour Declaration, under international law, for a Jewish home as demarcated in the Palestine Mandate.

The mandatory authority was conferred on Britain in April 1920. As envisaged by Lord Arthur Balfour, British foreign secretary, and the League of Nations, the geographic area of the Jewish home was much broader than was subsequently authorized in the United Nations’ Partition Plan of 1947. Nonetheless, the international legal commitment of the League of Nations was subsumed by the U.N. Charter as valid under international law.

This is the foundational legal basis of the State of Israel under international law. The Palestinians had no comparable status. They had rejected the U.N. Partition plan, along with their mentors, the Arab states.

The Six Day War of June 1967 brought the Palestinians under Israeli rule. U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, which emerged from that conflict, called for “secure and recognized boundaries” for Israel.

It was understood at the time that Israel would keep some territories. British Foreign Secretary George Brown explained, “The proposal said ‘Israel will withdraw from territories that were occupied, not from “the territories,” which means that Israel will not withdraw from all the territories.”

Also, the holy city of Jerusalem was not part of Resolution 242.  Arthur Goldberg, U.N. ambassador at the time of 242, wrote a letter to the New York Times on March 6, 1980, stating, “Resolution 242 in no way refers to Jerusalem, and this omission was deliberate.”

However, Charles Yost, the U.N. ambassador during the Nixon administration, for the first time called East Jerusalem “occupied territory.” And so began the long course of U.S. foreign policy that weighed strong support for the democratic state of Israel against support for the Arab lobby – particularly its heated focus on the deprived Palestinians.

Efraim Karsh, professor and head of the Middle East and Mediterranean Studies Program at Kings College, in London, explains in his book “Palestine Betrayed” that the Nakba was a result of violent self-destruction by the leaders of the Palestinians, such as the Mufti Hajj Amin Husseini, who went to Nazi Germany and was a sycophant of Hitler.

The Arab states, many of them sympathetic to Nazi Germany, advocated after World War II the total and violent destruction of Israel. This commitment to destroy Israel was never abandoned by the Palestinians; it continues today.

Yasser Arafat, about two months after rejecting an astounding offer of almost complete sovereignty over Jerusalem by Ehud Barak during the Camp David talks with President Bill Clinton in 2000, launched the murderous al-Aksa Intifada, which he had been planning for a long time.

President Barack Obama focused on Israeli settlements, including in East Jerusalem, as illegal under international law. This view is not necessarily shared by international law scholars. Mark Goldfeder, senior lecturer at Emory University Law School, has stated, “Israel has exclusive title and sovereignty ... from an international law perspective, this is not an occupation.”

Northwestern University School of Law Prof. Eugene Kontorovich wrote, “The U.S. must clearly declare that whatever the political merits of Israeli settlements, they do not violate international law. The [U.N.] Security Council’s condemnation of any Jewish presence in eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank is a unique rule invented for Israel.”

Obama warned Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas not to internationalize the conflict with Israel by going to the U.N. General Assembly in 2012. Yet on Dec. 23, 2016, Obama did exactly that. He threw Israel into the maws of a hostile international community. This act, which arguably harmed American national security, certainly harmed Israel’s security.

MOSES MORDECAI TWERSKY has a master’s degree in American history from Providence College. He is a scion of the Chernobyl Belz Makarov Hasidic rabbinical dynasty.