101 years ago, on April 26, 1920, an international conference ended in the town of San Remo on the Italian Riviera that made historic decisions, which had a tremendous impact on the establishment of a Jewish state in the Land of Israel. Last year, we had plans to produce a big event in San Remo to mark the centenary of the conference, but we had to cancel it because of the pandemic.
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It's important to me to do historical justice to the San Remo Conference. The "Mandate for Palestine" document approved in San Remo and adopted by the League of Nations is the founding document of the State of Israel. This was the historic event in which the nations of the world restored to the Jewish people the right to their sovereignty over the western Land of Israel in its entirety. Unfortunately, the San Remo Conference is less well known than the historic events of the Balfour Declaration and the UN vote on November 29, 1947, whose legal value is small compared to the San Remo conference's resolutions. In 1920, the leaders of the Allies who won World War I (Britain, France, Italy, Greece, and Japan) gathered in San Remo to discuss how to divide the territories of the former Ottoman Empire. They decided not to annex territories, but to establish a new system of government called a "mandate", as a tool to control underdeveloped countries until they developed an independent governing capacity.
The states agreed to divide between themselves the mandates for control over India, Syria, Iraq, as well as Palestine. France was given a mandate to control Syria and Lebanon, and Britain was given a mandate over Iraq and Palestine. The mandate for Palestine includes the Land of Israel on both banks of the Jordan and the Golan Heights. The San Remo Conference decided that the administration of the Land of Israel would be temporarily entrusted to the British Mandate, in order to establish a national home for the Jewish people in due course. But the British violated the mandate given to them in 1946, when they gave King Abdullah 77 percent of the land allotted to Jews at the San Remo Conference.
We did conquer
The World Zionist Organization, which I currently chair, was involved in the San Remo Conference. Dr. Chaim Weizmann, head of the World Zionist Organization, influenced the San Remo Conference to ratify the Balfour Declaration on the exclusive national rights of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel. The preamble to the conference resolutions and Article 2 state that "recognition has thereby been given to the historical connexion of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country ... and also for safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion."
Two years later, in July 1922, the League of Nations unanimously approved the "Mandate for Palestine" document from the decisions of the San Remo Conference. Thus, the document became part of international law, and is valid to this day.
The League of Nations was disbanded after World War II, and was replaced by the United Nations on the basis of the United Nations Charter. Article 80 of the UN Charter forbids changing decisions concerning areas over which the League of Nations imposed a mandate, except with the consent of all parties. Therefore, the UN vote on November 29, 1947 on the partition of the Land of Israel was done in violation of Article 80. Thus, Security Council resolutions 242 and 338 were passed without authority, because the UN Charter has the validity of an international contract, which is also part of international law. The Oslo Accords, which granted the Palestinian Authority sovereignty over about 90 percent of Judea, Samaria and Gaza territories, were also in violation of international law.
The relevant meaning today is that international law supports Jewish settlement also in the Golan Heights and in Judea and Samaria. We cannot be accused of illegally "conquering" Judea and Samaria during the Six-Day War, because according to international law these territories are part of the national home of the Jews. This legal argument also suits our defense for the International Court of Justice's indictments in The Hague, and is also a triumphant response to the BDS movement and our enemies trying to sever the legal connection between Jews and their historical homeland.
A legitimate political entity
The resolutions of the San Remo Conference were made 101 years ago, and are valid and relevant to this day. This important chapter in our history has been forgotten. Sometimes I wonder if political elements in Israel have deliberately forgotten it, because it deals with the Greater Land of Israel and both banks of the Jordan River.
I am honored to sit today in the chair and position of Chaim Weizmann at the time, chairman of the World Zionist Organization. I am determined to continue his path, including on the San Remo Conference. I am working to ensure the history of the San Remo conference is properly included in the national school curriculum so that everyone will know that the existence of the state is based on international law. I vow to ensure it is added into the Israeli ethos in rallies and youth movements, as I did when I was the director-general of the Beitar movement.
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I intend to act to launch a global information campaign on our legal situation. In the first stage, I am working to bring this legal information to the attention of all politicians and officials of the Ministry of Justice and employees of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In the next stages of the campaign, we will also bring the information to everyone involved in the International Court of Justice in The Hague, and then all over the world.
I regret that many in Israel do not recognize the enormous significance of the San Remo Conference. It is written in the Torah that before the entry of the children of Israel into the land of Canaan, Moses tells them: "You have now become the people ." with "[on] this day, you have become a legitimate political entity."
Yaakov Hagoel is the chairman of the Executive of the World Zionist Organization.
