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Why Do People Continue to Demonize Israel?
(Jewish Chronicle-UK) Melanie Philips - Israel on Trial: How International Law Is Being Misused to Delegitimize the State of Israel, written by two international lawyers, Matthijs de Blois and Andrew Tucker, comprehensively lays out both the justice of Israel's actions and the staggering denial of international law by its tormentors. One of the persistent falsehoods that has surfaced in the official itinerary for Prince William's visit to Israel implies that Jerusalem's Old City and the Western Wall are in "the Occupied Palestinian Territories." As de Blois and Tucker make clear, the term is false. In law, the territories were never Palestinian and they are not occupied. In 1922, the League of Nations conferred upon Britain the Mandate to facilitate the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. When Israel took possession of east Jerusalem and the West Bank in 1967, "it was taking physical possession of territory that - as a matter of law - already belonged to Israel." The authors go on: "The law of occupation makes no sense, and has no application." There was no sovereign power to which, in 1967, the West Bank and east Jerusalem belonged. So under international law there is no occupation. Israeli settlements aren't illegal either. The requirement for Britain to enable the "close settlement" of Jews throughout the Mandate territories, including the West Bank and Jerusalem, has never been abrogated.