http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2012/08/david-singer-on-talking-about-palestine_17.html
The focus of the latest article, via the antipodean J-Wire service, by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer, who entitles the article “Palestine – Burying The Past – Faking The Future,” is the attitude of the controversial (some would say notorious) Richard Falk.
‘Richard Falk – United Nations Special Rapporteur on “the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967” – provides compelling proof of how successful the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) has been in its attempt to bury historical fact and international law regarding the former territory of Palestine.
Mr Falk is not on his own among the United Nations coterie of organizations and officials who seem ready to try and wrest the title deeds granted to the Jewish People to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in Palestine pursuant to the Mandate for Palestine and Article 80 of the UN Charter – following the decisions of the San Remo Conference and the signing of the Treaty of Sevres.
Former Secretary General Kofi Annan amazingly failed to include any mention of the Mandate and Article 80 in his brief delivered to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2003 seeking its advisory opinion on the legality of part of Israel’s security fence being erected in the West Bank.
The ICJ’s subsequent failure to consider the effect of the Mandate and Article 80 still needs to be explained – especially as one of the Presiding Judges warned that such an examination was necessary.
UNESCO maintains that Palestine is a state – when it clearly fails to comply with the requirements of the Montevideo Convention 1933.
Now Mr Falk – writing recently on his blog page – adds further fuel to the fire:
“I regard the Balfour Declaration and the mandatory system as classic colonial moves that have lost whatever legitimacy that they possessed at the time of their utterance, and prefer to view the competing claims to land and rights on the basis either of the 1948 partition proposal or the 1967 boundaries, although if there was diplomatic parity, I would respect whatever accommodation the parties reached, but without such parity, it seems necessary to invoke the allocation of rights as per settled international law.”
Mr Falk was parroting what had first appeared in Article 18 of the PLO Charter in 1964:
“The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate system and all that has been based on them are considered fraud.”
But even the PLO was forced to change that viewpoint just four years later – when it recognized that if the Mandate system was a fraud, then the Mandates for Syria and Lebanon and Mesopotamia – which had delivered self determination to the Arabs in 99.999 per cent of the captured Ottoman territory – could also be subject to challenge.
With some crafty draughtsmanship – Article 18 was replaced in 1968 with the following Article 20 in the redrafted Charter:
“The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine and everything that has been based on them is null and void”
In response to Mr Falk’s remarks, I asked him:
“The mandatory system delivered self determination to the Arabs as well as the Jews. When did the League of Nations mandate lose its legitimacy as settled international law?
Are both Jordan and Israel illegitimate?
Is article 80 of the UN Charter not settled international law?
The partition proposal was in 1947 – not 1948. It spoke of a Jewish state and an Arab state – not a Palestinian state. There were no 1967 boundaries. Do you agree? “
