20 nov 2019
International law experts agree that the US administration does not have the legal capacity to legalize settlements, and that the recent announcement by its secretary of state comes in response to the European Court of Justice’s decision to label settlement goods and the international consensus to renew the mandate of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced, yesterday, that his country no longer considers settlements in the occupied West Bank “inconsistent with international law.”
The lawyer and expert in international law, Salah Mousa, said that the Pompeo declaration is a political statement and does not have any legal impact, noting that the US has no right to change the legal facts.
He said the announcement came in response to the European Court of Justice, which ruled to label the goods from settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Mousa said that the US administration’s current position is just another one in its anti-Palestinian decision, namely recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moving its embassy to it, ending financial support for the UNRWA and trying to end its mandate, and closing the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) office in Washington, which affirms that this administration does not give value to international law.
On how to confront these decisions, Mousa explained that the PLO should seek an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice, open the file of settlements as a war crime, prosecute US companies dealing with settlements, and launch lawsuits by Palestinians holding American citizenship against the Israeli occupation and its companies in the American courts.
He called for continuing the diplomatic battle, in addition to taking unified Arab decisions and positions, and raising the Pompeo declaration and its repercussions in international forums.
For his part, international law expert Hanna Issa said the US is not authorized to act against international law and UN resolutions, especially those on the settlements.
In 1967, the United States recognized that the Palestinian territories in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, were occupied, and that the Hague and Geneva Conventions were applicable to them, he said.
The United States also voted for UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, which considered the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip as occupied territory, and therefore considered the settlements illegal.
Issa said that what Pompeo announced, on the settlements, does not reflect the opinion of the international community, pointing out that the countries of the world without exception, even US allies, consider the settlements illegal, not mentioning that the declaration violates international law and the Charter of the United Nations.
Justice Minister Mohammed Shalaldeh said that this declaration, which set a dangerous precedent, encourages violations of international law and UN resolutions, undermines efforts to achieve peace and increases tension, violence and instability in the region to a point that will threaten world peace and security.
He called on the International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor to expedite the settlement complaint filed by the State of Palestine, taking into account the statements of the US Secretary of State and the approval of the US President to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem.
He recalled the overwhelming adoption by the UN Security Council in 2016 of resolution 2334 condemning settlements and calling for a halt to their construction in the occupied Palestinian territory, and which stressed that all states should not provide any assistance to Israel specifically if used in settlement activities.
The Minister of Justice said that the foreign policy of the United States completely contradicts with international law because of the clear breach of the provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and at the same time it involves an encroachment on the UN.
He considered Pompeo’s declaration reminiscent of the Balfour Declaration, on the 102nd anniversary of the old promise, but this time by an American official.
“With that declaration, the United States becomes an accomplice in the crime of settlements with the occupying Power, and the International Criminal Court has the right to prosecute US officials for this decision, including President Trump and his Secretary of State,” he said.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced, yesterday, that his country no longer considers settlements in the occupied West Bank “inconsistent with international law.”
The lawyer and expert in international law, Salah Mousa, said that the Pompeo declaration is a political statement and does not have any legal impact, noting that the US has no right to change the legal facts.
He said the announcement came in response to the European Court of Justice, which ruled to label the goods from settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Mousa said that the US administration’s current position is just another one in its anti-Palestinian decision, namely recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moving its embassy to it, ending financial support for the UNRWA and trying to end its mandate, and closing the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) office in Washington, which affirms that this administration does not give value to international law.
On how to confront these decisions, Mousa explained that the PLO should seek an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice, open the file of settlements as a war crime, prosecute US companies dealing with settlements, and launch lawsuits by Palestinians holding American citizenship against the Israeli occupation and its companies in the American courts.
He called for continuing the diplomatic battle, in addition to taking unified Arab decisions and positions, and raising the Pompeo declaration and its repercussions in international forums.
For his part, international law expert Hanna Issa said the US is not authorized to act against international law and UN resolutions, especially those on the settlements.
In 1967, the United States recognized that the Palestinian territories in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, were occupied, and that the Hague and Geneva Conventions were applicable to them, he said.
The United States also voted for UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, which considered the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip as occupied territory, and therefore considered the settlements illegal.
Issa said that what Pompeo announced, on the settlements, does not reflect the opinion of the international community, pointing out that the countries of the world without exception, even US allies, consider the settlements illegal, not mentioning that the declaration violates international law and the Charter of the United Nations.
Justice Minister Mohammed Shalaldeh said that this declaration, which set a dangerous precedent, encourages violations of international law and UN resolutions, undermines efforts to achieve peace and increases tension, violence and instability in the region to a point that will threaten world peace and security.
He called on the International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor to expedite the settlement complaint filed by the State of Palestine, taking into account the statements of the US Secretary of State and the approval of the US President to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem.
He recalled the overwhelming adoption by the UN Security Council in 2016 of resolution 2334 condemning settlements and calling for a halt to their construction in the occupied Palestinian territory, and which stressed that all states should not provide any assistance to Israel specifically if used in settlement activities.
The Minister of Justice said that the foreign policy of the United States completely contradicts with international law because of the clear breach of the provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and at the same time it involves an encroachment on the UN.
He considered Pompeo’s declaration reminiscent of the Balfour Declaration, on the 102nd anniversary of the old promise, but this time by an American official.
“With that declaration, the United States becomes an accomplice in the crime of settlements with the occupying Power, and the International Criminal Court has the right to prosecute US officials for this decision, including President Trump and his Secretary of State,” he said.
3 nov 2019
Marking the 102nd Anniversary of the Balfour Declaration on Saturday, Senior Palestinian Official, Dr. Saeb Erekat said Britain has the responsibility to make a qualitative shift towards realizing the political rights of the people of Palestine and recognizing their State.
Erekat, in an official statement, said that this date should serve as a reminder, for the United Kingdom, of its historical, political, moral, and legal responsibility to take substantive action and play a proactive role in the fulfillment of the national rights of the people of Palestine…
“…to apologize for the resulting injustice of a colonialist statement that denied the Palestinian people their political rights, to recognize the State of Palestine, and to take proactive measures against Israel’s colonial-settlement enterprise, including its products, companies, and funding sources,” Erekat said.
“Such actions are not going to remediate all the consequences of the Balfour Declaration. Yet, they will serve as a model for the rest of the international community to work for a just and lasting peace in Palestine, the Middle East, and the world,” he added.
According to the PNN, Erekat also added that what is happening on the ground today, in occupied Palestine, cannot be disconnected from the Balfour Declaration.
“Israel’s colonial agenda, supported by the Trump Administration, is precisely what Balfour envisioned 102 years ago: an overall Israeli control over the land of historic Palestine that can systematically deny the political rights of the Palestinian people and their right to self-determination,” he added.
The statement also saluted the International Solidarity Movement, civil society organizations, and other popular initiatives working towards the achievement of Palestinian rights, defending the principles and core values of the global system and law, in the face of the reactionary wave of populism.
“Only by implementing international law and UN resolutions, we will be able to face those forces that aim at imposing the law of the jungle, threatening the basic principles of peace, security, and stability,” he concluded.
Erekat, in an official statement, said that this date should serve as a reminder, for the United Kingdom, of its historical, political, moral, and legal responsibility to take substantive action and play a proactive role in the fulfillment of the national rights of the people of Palestine…
“…to apologize for the resulting injustice of a colonialist statement that denied the Palestinian people their political rights, to recognize the State of Palestine, and to take proactive measures against Israel’s colonial-settlement enterprise, including its products, companies, and funding sources,” Erekat said.
“Such actions are not going to remediate all the consequences of the Balfour Declaration. Yet, they will serve as a model for the rest of the international community to work for a just and lasting peace in Palestine, the Middle East, and the world,” he added.
According to the PNN, Erekat also added that what is happening on the ground today, in occupied Palestine, cannot be disconnected from the Balfour Declaration.
“Israel’s colonial agenda, supported by the Trump Administration, is precisely what Balfour envisioned 102 years ago: an overall Israeli control over the land of historic Palestine that can systematically deny the political rights of the Palestinian people and their right to self-determination,” he added.
The statement also saluted the International Solidarity Movement, civil society organizations, and other popular initiatives working towards the achievement of Palestinian rights, defending the principles and core values of the global system and law, in the face of the reactionary wave of populism.
“Only by implementing international law and UN resolutions, we will be able to face those forces that aim at imposing the law of the jungle, threatening the basic principles of peace, security, and stability,” he concluded.
2 nov 2019
British street artist Banksy unveiled a new artwork during an 'apology' tea party for Palestinians to mark 100 years since Balfour Declaration on 1 November 2017
When November arrives with its windy and rainy winter, a painful memory accompanies it; a memory which doomed the nation to live in a permanent winter and a permanent stormy season after which no spring comes, since the Balfour fateful promise.
2 November 1917: the day Palestine was lost. The day Arthur James Balfour sent a letter to Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild, one of the leaders of the World Zionist movement, indicating the British government’s support for the establishment of a national homeland for Jews in Palestine. It is the promise of he who does not own, to he who does not deserve.
At that time, the number of Jews in Palestine was no more than 50,000, while the number of Jews throughout the world was estimated at around 12 million. The Jews in Palestine accounted for only five per cent of the 650,000 Palestinians, who had owned the land for thousands of years. However, this ominous promise ignored the indigenous Palestinian population and only recognised some civil and religious rights, obscuring their political, economic and administrative rights.
Although the Balfour Declaration recognised the right of the Jews to establish a national homeland, more dangerous was the Conference of Versailles, which was held two years later in 1919, resulting in the document of the agreement between Prince Faisal, representative of the Hejaz Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and Dr. Chaim Weizmann, representative of the World Zionist Organization. This agreement included provisions that denied Palestinians their rights, and strengthened the Jewish presence in Palestine, such as the following:
All measures should be taken to encourage the large-scale immigration of Jews to Palestine, and urge them as quickly as possible to settle immigrants in the land, through housing and intensive agriculture.
Through the Versailles document, the call was launched to all the Jews throughout the world to gather from the Diaspora. Palestine opened the door wide, and they all responded to this call. Thus, a lasting process of Jewish immigration from all corners of the world to Palestine continued. In the Jewish melting pot, more than seventy nationalities fused and this was the first step towards establishing an entity for the Jews. The Balfour Declaration was the legal cover upon which the World Zionist Organisation was based, to support its demand for the establishment of the Jewish state in Palestine and the fulfilment of the dream of the Jews, who had achieved what they aspired to, as the dream of establishing the state of Israel eventually became a reality on 15 May 1948.
Israel joined the United Nations as a member state under pressure from the world’s major powers, and it became the first country in the history of the global political system to emerge on usurped land, after it displaced its native people outside their homeland and received international support and unprecedented support from the largest country in the world, the USA. This made this entity the most arrogant and the most ravaging in the region, waging wars, expanding and devouring more Palestinian and Arab lands, and oppressing the rest of the Palestinian people on its land, mercilessly and inhumanely.
I will not probe into the history or the reasons that led Great Britain to establish this Zionist entity, and the unlimited Western support for it. What was said, and the human and religious arguments introduced, will remain false and fraud as they are meant to embellish that Western imperial project called Israel, which was planted in the region to protect Western colonial interests, being called at that time “the guard dog in the region.”
Now, 102 years after the fateful Balfour Declaration, and after the Zionist takeover of more Palestinian lands, in addition to America’s recognition of Jerusalem as the unified capital of Israel, what did the Arabs do to liberate Palestine and bring it back to the Arab embrace?
Unfortunately, nothing was done, but trading with the Palestinian case by the Arab leaders. Besides, after the armed struggle clause was dropped from the Palestinian Liberation Organisation’s document, and the Oslo agreement which was concluded in exchange for a fake power that the Palestinian authority has nothing to do with, and which was actually a form of security coordination with the Zionist enemy to save its entity, the Palestinian cause would have been lost and no one would have remembered it, had it not been for Hamas and its resistance.
It is Hamas that makes Palestine and its dignity alive in Arab and international conscience, especially after the so-called peace agreements and the rush of the Arabs to the Zionist entity, kneeling down to such an entity, seeking to normalise it, and asking Trump to accelerate the implementation of the alleged “deal of the century,” in order to get rid of this chronic headache and put an end to the Palestinian issue.
So, while the 1907 Balfour Declaration granted the Jews a national homeland in Palestine, the peace and normalisation agreements with the Zionist enemy have granted the Zionist entity the entire Arab homeland, enabling it to realise the dream of “Greater Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates!”
When November arrives with its windy and rainy winter, a painful memory accompanies it; a memory which doomed the nation to live in a permanent winter and a permanent stormy season after which no spring comes, since the Balfour fateful promise.
2 November 1917: the day Palestine was lost. The day Arthur James Balfour sent a letter to Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild, one of the leaders of the World Zionist movement, indicating the British government’s support for the establishment of a national homeland for Jews in Palestine. It is the promise of he who does not own, to he who does not deserve.
At that time, the number of Jews in Palestine was no more than 50,000, while the number of Jews throughout the world was estimated at around 12 million. The Jews in Palestine accounted for only five per cent of the 650,000 Palestinians, who had owned the land for thousands of years. However, this ominous promise ignored the indigenous Palestinian population and only recognised some civil and religious rights, obscuring their political, economic and administrative rights.
Although the Balfour Declaration recognised the right of the Jews to establish a national homeland, more dangerous was the Conference of Versailles, which was held two years later in 1919, resulting in the document of the agreement between Prince Faisal, representative of the Hejaz Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and Dr. Chaim Weizmann, representative of the World Zionist Organization. This agreement included provisions that denied Palestinians their rights, and strengthened the Jewish presence in Palestine, such as the following:
All measures should be taken to encourage the large-scale immigration of Jews to Palestine, and urge them as quickly as possible to settle immigrants in the land, through housing and intensive agriculture.
Through the Versailles document, the call was launched to all the Jews throughout the world to gather from the Diaspora. Palestine opened the door wide, and they all responded to this call. Thus, a lasting process of Jewish immigration from all corners of the world to Palestine continued. In the Jewish melting pot, more than seventy nationalities fused and this was the first step towards establishing an entity for the Jews. The Balfour Declaration was the legal cover upon which the World Zionist Organisation was based, to support its demand for the establishment of the Jewish state in Palestine and the fulfilment of the dream of the Jews, who had achieved what they aspired to, as the dream of establishing the state of Israel eventually became a reality on 15 May 1948.
Israel joined the United Nations as a member state under pressure from the world’s major powers, and it became the first country in the history of the global political system to emerge on usurped land, after it displaced its native people outside their homeland and received international support and unprecedented support from the largest country in the world, the USA. This made this entity the most arrogant and the most ravaging in the region, waging wars, expanding and devouring more Palestinian and Arab lands, and oppressing the rest of the Palestinian people on its land, mercilessly and inhumanely.
I will not probe into the history or the reasons that led Great Britain to establish this Zionist entity, and the unlimited Western support for it. What was said, and the human and religious arguments introduced, will remain false and fraud as they are meant to embellish that Western imperial project called Israel, which was planted in the region to protect Western colonial interests, being called at that time “the guard dog in the region.”
Now, 102 years after the fateful Balfour Declaration, and after the Zionist takeover of more Palestinian lands, in addition to America’s recognition of Jerusalem as the unified capital of Israel, what did the Arabs do to liberate Palestine and bring it back to the Arab embrace?
Unfortunately, nothing was done, but trading with the Palestinian case by the Arab leaders. Besides, after the armed struggle clause was dropped from the Palestinian Liberation Organisation’s document, and the Oslo agreement which was concluded in exchange for a fake power that the Palestinian authority has nothing to do with, and which was actually a form of security coordination with the Zionist enemy to save its entity, the Palestinian cause would have been lost and no one would have remembered it, had it not been for Hamas and its resistance.
It is Hamas that makes Palestine and its dignity alive in Arab and international conscience, especially after the so-called peace agreements and the rush of the Arabs to the Zionist entity, kneeling down to such an entity, seeking to normalise it, and asking Trump to accelerate the implementation of the alleged “deal of the century,” in order to get rid of this chronic headache and put an end to the Palestinian issue.
So, while the 1907 Balfour Declaration granted the Jews a national homeland in Palestine, the peace and normalisation agreements with the Zionist enemy have granted the Zionist entity the entire Arab homeland, enabling it to realise the dream of “Greater Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates!”
1 nov 2019
On the 102nd anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, the Office of Refugees Affairs of the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, in Lebanon has called for protecting the Palestinian refugees in all their places of residence and securing a decent life for them.
"The Balfour Declaration, the promise of he who doesn't own to those who don't deserve, is unjust and unacceptable," the office said in a statement on Friday, holding Britain and the countries that supported the establishment of Israel responsible for the displacement of the Palestinian people.
The Balfour Declaration is the name of a letter dated 2 November 1917 from Britain's Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lord Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, in which he announced support for the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine.
Hamas's Office of Refugees Affairs stressed that no one can waive the Palestinian refugees' right to return to their towns and villages from which they were displaced. "It is an inalienable and sacred right. The Palestinian people will not accept partial solutions such as resettlement, alternative homeland and others," it added.
The Office called on the Palestinian people everywhere to adhere to all forms of resistance against the Israeli occupation until they restore all their rights.
It expressed its rejection of all the "racist and unjust" decisions targeting Palestinian refugees, especially the latest measures by the Lebanese Ministry of Labor, and urged Arab and Muslim countries to mobilize efforts at all levels to support the Palestinian cause.
"The Balfour Declaration, the promise of he who doesn't own to those who don't deserve, is unjust and unacceptable," the office said in a statement on Friday, holding Britain and the countries that supported the establishment of Israel responsible for the displacement of the Palestinian people.
The Balfour Declaration is the name of a letter dated 2 November 1917 from Britain's Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lord Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, in which he announced support for the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine.
Hamas's Office of Refugees Affairs stressed that no one can waive the Palestinian refugees' right to return to their towns and villages from which they were displaced. "It is an inalienable and sacred right. The Palestinian people will not accept partial solutions such as resettlement, alternative homeland and others," it added.
The Office called on the Palestinian people everywhere to adhere to all forms of resistance against the Israeli occupation until they restore all their rights.
It expressed its rejection of all the "racist and unjust" decisions targeting Palestinian refugees, especially the latest measures by the Lebanese Ministry of Labor, and urged Arab and Muslim countries to mobilize efforts at all levels to support the Palestinian cause.
