Macron’s error: The UN did not create Israel

French Prime Minister Emmanuel Macron told his cabinet last month that Israel was created by a decision of the United Nations and that the Jewish state should not “disregard the decisions of the U.N.”

However, the United Nations did not create Israel. Point of fact: U.N. General Assembly Resolution 181, generally known as the Partition Plan, was never implemented. By its express terms, it was merely a recommendation. While it requested that the U.N. Security Council take measures to implement it, this never occurred.

The Partition Plan was unequivocally rejected by the Arab world, which sought, by force, to eliminate any possibility of a Jewish state in any part of Israel (then referred to as the British Mandate of Palestine). There was no real appetite by the permanent members of the Security Council to intervene militarily to effectuate the recommended Partition Plan in the face of Arab militant intransigence or to prevent the existing Arab nations from invading and overrunning the country. The Jews in Israel were left on their own to deal with the onslaught and invasion.

It is important to note that there is no reference in Resolution 181 to the so-called Palestinian people. The label was invented more than a decade and a half later. There was also no reference to a so-called West Bank. This was an artificial construct by Jordan, which illegally annexed the land to distinguish it from Jordan proper, located on the eastern side of the Jordan River.

Resolution 181 referred to the area as the hill country of Samaria and Judea. The name given to the proposed partitioned area intended to house Arab residents of Israel was the “Arab state,” not the “Palestinian state.”

At the time and historically, Arab residents in Israel were viewed—and, indeed, viewed themselves—as a part of the Arab people. As Anwar Nusseibeh, a Jordanian minister in the 1950s, explained, Arabs who resided in the areas assigned to the re-established Jewish State of Israel saw themselves as a part of the Arab nation, generally and specifically as a part of Syria. There was no concept of a separate so-called Palestinian people, nor was there any distinct identity beyond being a part of pan-Arabism.

It is critical to appreciate that the U.N. Charter explicitly provides, in Article 80, that “ … nothing in this chapter shall be construed in or of itself to alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments to which members of the United Nations may respectively be parties.”

Thus, the rights of the Jewish people to Israel under the San Remo Resolution discussed below take precedence over any U.N. resolution, including Resolution 181.

The propaganda effort to disassociate Jews from Israel is absurd. International law, the French Court of Appeals of Versailles in PLO et ano vs. Societe Alstom Transport SA et al. (which decided against the claims asserted by Mahmoud Abbas as representative of the PLO, relating to Jerusalem), the Bible and Quran (5:21 and 17:104) recognize the rights of Israel. The waqf’s own “Guide to Temple Mount” confirms the identity as the site of Solomon’s Temple is beyond dispute and that in the year 637 CE, Omar occupied Jerusalem. Consider, too, that the Mount of Olives Jewish Cemetery is more than 3,000 years old. There’s no comparable Arab cemetery in Israel. The oldest dates back only to the 11th century.

It should be no surprise that the Supreme Council of Allied Powers meeting at San Remo in 1920 recognized and resolved that the Land of Israel belonged to the Jewish people. The San Remo Resolution was unanimously confirmed in 1922 by the League of Nations. It was reconfirmed in the 1924 Anglo-American Convention. The law and history are a striking rebuttal to the false narrative of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.

The minutes from the discussions at San Remo regard the area denominated as Palestine as a national home for the Jews. It is important to appreciate that presentations were made by Jewish and Arab delegations, both asserting claims to Palestine. The Supreme Council considered the claims of the various parties, deliberated and decided that the title to Palestine was vested in the Jewish people. Reference was made to the area and borders of the re-established Jewish state. Consideration was also given to the civil and religious rights of the non-Jewish communities residing in Palestine. However, political rights were reserved only to the Jewish people.

The Council of the League of Nations unanimously adopted the San Remo Resolution on Palestine. It thereby became an international agreement, binding on all member countries, that confirmed the title of Palestine (Israel) to the people of Israel under International Law. It recited that recognition had been given to “the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country.”

The council’s resolution confirmed the Jewish people as the recognized indigenous people of Palestine for more than 3,500 years and rejected the claims of others. This demolishes the fallacious claim that Jews are just modern-day colonialists.

The resolution also did not grant the Jewish people a newly minted right to Palestine. Rather, the resolution recognized that the Jews were being given the land on the “grounds for” reconstituting their national home in that country (i.e., a pre-existing legal right). The use of the term “country” in the resolution is also cogent. It was no longer referred to as a geographical territory in the former Ottoman Empire, rather, its sovereignty and legal title to the country of Palestine was vested in the Jewish people.

Article 7 of the resolution expressly provided for the enactment of a nationality law that granted Palestinian citizenship to Jews taking up permanent residence in Palestine. In essence, international law expressly provided for a law of return for Jews to their native homeland of Palestine [Israel]. No similar provision was made for anyone else.

Repeating the baseless and false narratives of Hamas seeking to delegitimize Israel is abhorrent. The legal, historical and moral basis of the Jewish State of Israel is indisputable.