Natural Child, Natural Society: palestine

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The Iron Wall - in 1923 leading Zionist Ze'ev Jabotinsky wrote about the impossibility of a Two State Solution, because he understood the nature of colonialism.

The Iron Wall is an essay written by Ze'ev Jabotinsky in 1923. It was originally published in Russian, as he was born in Russia as Vladimir Yevgenyevich Zhabotinsky and wrote for the Russian press.^[1]

Written in 1923, by Ze'ev Jacobintsky, in the same year as The Beer Hall Putsch, also known as the Munich Putsch, which was a failed coup d'état by Nazi Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP) leader Adolf Hitler, Generalquartiermeister Erich Ludendorff and other Kampfbund leaders in Munich, Bavaria, on 8–9 November 1923, during the Weimar Republic.

He wrote the essay after the British Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill prohibited Zionist settlement on the east bank of the Jordan River, and formed the Zionist Revisionist party after writing it.^[2]

Jabotinsky argued that the Palestinian Arabs would not agree to a Jewish majority in Palestine, and that "Zionist colonisation must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the native population. Which means that it can proceed and develop only under the protection of a power that is independent of the native population – behind an iron wall, which the native population cannot breach."^[1] The only solution to achieve peace and a Jewish state in the Land of Israel, he argued, would be for Jews to first establish a strong Jewish state, which would eventually prompt the Arabs to "drop their extremist leaders, whose watchword is ‘never!’ and pass the leadership to the moderate groups, who will approach us with a proposal that we should both agree to mutual concessions."

A week following the publication of this essay, Jabotinsky followed with "The Ethics of the Iron Wall," in which he argued that morality comes before everything else, and that Zionism is "moral and just," since it subscribes to "national self-determination" as a "sacred principle," which Arabs may also enjoy

The Iron Wall.

Full essay

https://en.jabotinsky.org/media/9747/the-iron-wall.pdf

I recommend my readers to read it, it is a short read, 8 minutes or 10...

In what follows I make my own comments on the meaning of this essays and it's impact upon the shituation in Palestine.

"The Iron Wall

Original in Russian, Razsviet, 4.11.1923

Colonisation of Palestine

Agreement with Arabs Impossible at present

Zionism Must Go Forward

"It is an excellent rule to begin an article with the most important point. But this time, I find it necessary to begin with an introduction, and, moreover, with a personal introduction.

I am reputed to be an enemy of the Arabs, who wants to have them ejected from Palestine, and so forth. It is not true.

Emotionally, my attitude to the Arabs is the same as to all other nations – polite indifference.

Politically, my attitude is determined by two principles.

First of all, I consider it utterly impossible to eject the Arabs from Palestine. There will always be two nations in Palestine – which is good enough for me, provided the Jews become the majority.

And secondly, I belong to the group that once drew up the Helsingfors Programme, the programme of national rights for all nationalities living in the same State.

In drawing up that programme, we had in mind not only the Jews , but all nations everywhere, and its basis is equality of rights.

I am prepared to take an oath binding ourselves and our descendants that we shall never do anything contrary to the principle of equal rights, and that we shall never try to eject anyone.

This seems to me a fairly peaceful credo.

But it is quite another question whether it is always possible to realise a peaceful aim by peaceful means.

For the answer to this question does not depend on our attitude to the Arabs; but entirely on the attitude of the Arabs to us and to Zionism."

----

In this last paragraph in this section Jacobintsky lays all the responsibility for any difficulties the Zionists might face squarely upon the Palestinian people and their resistance to being colonised. The Zionists are innocent.

He then states the following.

----

Voluntary Agreement Not Possible

"Voluntary Agreement Not Possible.

There can be no voluntary agreement between ourselves and the Palestine Arabs.

Not now, nor in the prospective future. I say this with such conviction, not because I want to hurt the moderate Zionists.

I do not believe that they will be hurt. Except for those who were born blind, they realised long ago that it is utterly impossible to obtain the voluntary consent of the Palestine Arabs for converting "Palestine" from an Arab country into a country with a Jewish majority.

My readers have a general idea of the history of colonisation in other countries.

I suggest that they consider all the precedents with which they are acquainted, and see whether there is one solitary instance of any colonisation being carried on with the consent of the native population. There is no such precedent.

The native populations, civilised or uncivilised, have always stubbornly resisted the colonists, irrespective of whether they were civilised or savage."

----

Jabotinsky admits that Colonialism always generates a fierce resistance amongst the people who lands are to colonised. We all know that Colonialism is inherently an evil process, a cruel and bloody one.

As he processes into this essay he makes it quite clear what the true stance of Zionism is, all the time seeking to absolve the Zionist project of any culpability.

The phrase 'the most moral army in the world' is drawn from this essay. Read on to see it’s roots, and the soil in which that false flag is planted.

----

Colonisation.

"It does not matter at all which phraseology we employ in explaining our colonising aims, Herzl's or Sir Herbert Samuel's.

Colonisation carries its own explanation, the only possible explanation, unalterable and as clear as daylight to every ordinary Jew and every ordinary Arab.

Colonisation can have only one aim, and Palestine Arabs cannot accept this aim. It lies in the very nature of things, and in this particular regard nature cannot be changed.

The Iron Wall

We cannot offer any adequate compensation to the Palestinian Arabs in return for Palestine. And therefore, there is no likelihood of any voluntary agreement being reached. So that all those who regard such an agreement as a condition sine qua non for Zionism may as well say "non" and withdraw from Zionism."

----

Two State Solution as a strategic weapon of hopeless hope.

The Two State solution was always dead in the water. It was never at the centre of Zionist aspirations, from the get-go, and the aspirations of the Two State Solution promoted to Western Audiences was always a strategic tactic, designed to enable the colonisation to move ahead, protected by Hope. The Hope of The Western audiences.

Zionists, and importantly, the Ruling Class in the West fully understood this strategic tactic and played along, delaying the necessary awakening amongst the western electorates, to buy the Zionists time to 'change the facts on the ground' through mass immigration of Jewish people, and settlement, and then by conquest and occupation, and now by total destruction of Palestinian civil and social and economic and political infrastructure.

---

Jabotisnky proceeds.

Here Jabotinsky sets ups the claim that Zionism is inherently Moral, and that outside forces should back it all the way.

——

The Iron Wall

"Zionist colonisation must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the native population.

Which means that it can proceed and develop only under the protection of a power that is independent of the native population – behind an iron wall, which the native population cannot breach.

That is our Arab policy; not what we should be, but what it actually is, whether we admit it or not.

What need, otherwise, of the Balfour Declaration? Or of the Mandate?

Their value to us is that outside Power has undertaken to create in the country such conditions of administration and security that if the native population should desire to hinder our work, they will find it impossible.

And we are all of us ,without any exception, demanding day after day that this outside Power, should carry out this task vigorously and with determination.

In this matter there is no difference between our "militarists" and our "vegetarians".

Except that the first prefer that the iron wall should consist of Jewish soldiers, and the others are content that they should be British.

We all demand that there should be an iron wall.

Yet we keep spoiling our own case, by talking about "agreement" which means telling the Mandatory Government that the important thing is not the iron wall, but discussions. Empty rhetoric of this kind is dangerous. And that is why it is not only a pleasure but a duty to discredit it and to demonstrate that it is both fantastic and dishonest.”

Zionism Moral and Just

“Two brief remarks:

In the first place, if anyone objects that this point of view is immoral, I answer: It is not true: either Zionism is moral and just ,or it is immoral and unjust.

But that is a question that we should have settled before we became Zionists. Actually we have settled that question, and in the affirmative.

We hold that Zionism is moral and just. And since it is moral and just, justice must be done, no matter whether Joseph or Simon or Ivan or Achmet agree with it or not.

There is no other morality."

----

This then lays out the coffin of Palestinian self determination, the sarcophagus of their human rights, the entombment of their land tenure and polity, the grave that is the erasure of their culture and their peoples from those lands, and ultimately the denial of their natural right to live peacefully on the land they have lived on for thousands of years, long before the advent os Judaism, Christianity or Islam.

The question then becomes how many nails must be used to ensure that the coffin lid is firmly shut, and cannot be re-opened.

The assault on Gaza is one of those nails.

The settlements across the West Bank are another bag of nails.

USUK unconditional support for their pet colonial project is another. That support is strategic in that it is designed to enrage, divide and destabilise the entire Arab polity.

The lack of detailed understanding of the history, the genesis of the so-called Israel -Palestine 'conflict' amongst the voters of the Western Christian Colonial States is another nail.

My task here is to describe those nails, to describe the hammer striking those nails.

The hammer is the collective Euro-Centric commercial interests, operating under the false flag of race superiority. Blair's odious 'clash of civilisations' articulated this in blatant terms, albeit misunderstood by Western audiences, as intended.

Our task as a democratic peace loving population is to ensure our Governments do not facilitate the hammer, that the nails already hammered in are removed, gently and with care, such that the Zionists (and all colonialists and Neo-colonialists) are isolated from our collective legislatures where they wield undue influence and that they are eventually placed where they cannot harm the Palestinian people or any other people, for that matter.

Free Palestine!

Free Western Democracy!

Free us all from the abject, venal and cruel Ruling Class Establishment who have operated the colonial process for centuries.

The two are inextricably linked.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

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Partition and Plantation as long term dominance planning through destabilisation. The 1000 year tradition.

It is not that history repeats, and lessons are not learned - it is that when it comes down to it, hagiography is a dishonest history and the Hierarchy Wealth Extraction bullies behave with the same patterns of behaviour passed from generation to generation, culture to culture, as their normalised behaviour and will do so until we ordinary healthy people organise politically to remove them from positions of Power and then start the process of holding them to account for their crimes before the Law, in courts. More than punishment the objective is to prevent future abuses of Power, to enable repair of harms to what ever degree is possible and to record an honest history.

Plantations in Northern Ireland

Plantations on Turtle Island

Plantations in West Bank and Gaza -This 2024 event is in New Jersey, USA.

Why the two state solution has died - from the Israeli/USUK perspective Palestine has all but vanished, and all the is left is the Palestinian people.

Partition : The policy of partition practiced by European Christian Wealth and Power Hierarchies has fuelled identity based oppression and resistance. That has been exploited by those Euro-Christian political hierarchies for at least 500 years.

Plantation : 'Inviting' a settler population to occupy conquered land, with the objective of creating a bugger population who will assist in the erasure of the indigenous land tenure and polities.

Partition is a long term weapon, a stealth attack that exploits internalised identities, and sets neighbours against each other. In this blog I am taking a brief overview of the long term impact of inserting a Partitioned Ethno-religious Colonising State into the Middle East as a long term destabilisation project.

This is not a detailed thesis - there are many others better versed in scholarship who can certainly offer a useful critique of this small pamphlet.

I am always interested learning more. I know I don't know how much I don't know. My take is that one must look at the behaviour patterns of Power, observe the outcomes, especially for the most vulnerable populations. I work on the assumption that repeat patterns with similar outcomes at this level indicate conscious intentionality. They know the harm they will cause and they intend it to happen. At the very least they are careless as to the welfare of the colonised...

Trace each of these imposed borders deliberately splitting ancient ethnic groups, and setting them against each other (Rwanda Genocide, South African Apartheid were a direct result of that policy).

The Europeans in Africa.

The British Empire in India - Bear in mind the Opium Wars, exporting drugs from India to China.

European colonisation of Southeast Asia Portuguese Timor Spanish East Indies Dutch East Indies French Indochina British Burma, Malaya, and Borneo Siam (Thailand)

Ireland was subjected to a series of 'plantations' - the introduction of a foreign population to take lands cleared violently of native peoples.

The English Ruling class perceive themselves as a 1000 year continuity since 1066. They think and plan long term is ways no electorate has ever been capable of.

Winston Churchill compares the Palestinians, as a people and as a polity, in 1937 to the dog in the manger after reading the Peel Commission which suggested partitioning British mandated Palestine into Arab and Jewish states. Churchill said of the Palestinians in 1937:

Churchill summed up their attitude as follows :

"I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place."

Straight up Racism. For profit.

This view defines every strategy and tactic deployed by White European Christian Powers to maintain their dominance, and it is for this that they undermined so many Governments across the global south.

The purpose of this was to ensure European control of cheap labour and cheap mineral and other resources, across the Global South, and to prevent those polities from ever developing independent economic models deploying their own resources for themselves, building economic systems which might stand as equals to the Euro-Diaspora Capitalist Economic model.

1. Why did the British Empire insert a Zionist Religious-Ethno state into the Middle East?

2. Look to all the other partitions and borders drawn by the British Empire. What did those partitions do to the indigenous peoples?

3. Look at the long term impact of those partitions and borders. What happened?

Tension between favoured and disfavoured groups, along religious or language group lines, caused by the splits across indigenous identities.

4. Internalised identity is felt by the person holding that sense of identity to be the very core of their psyche.

Any challenge to that very personal sense of identity is perceived as a direct existential threat.

Which leads to a fight or flight reaction.

Emotional self regulation is shut down, the forebrain goes off-line, and an irrational level of fear and rage is triggered.

Look at the settler communities in each colony partition. Notice the self-righteous irrational extremes of violence.

Ammunition for violence, long term violence, centuries of violence, passed from generation to generation via identity.

5. In every partition we see long term tensions that span centuries, that disable the emergence of independent polities and economic systems.

That is the observed outcome and I suggest the ultimate objective of partition and arbitrary borders imposed on contiguous indigenous populations.

6. The Zionist project was inserted after 1917 because the Arab and Persian polities were sitting on the next new fuel - Oil. Oil became important after WWI because it became the fuel of Warfare: Navies had relied on coal and sail prior to WWI.

It also became the fuel of mechanised infantry, air forces. It also became the feed stock for ammunition, and later on fertilisers and a range of synthetic products. An entirely new economy based on control of a single resource. The English had no known oil reserves in Great Britain. They had to get it somewhere.

7. Because the Empire is Racist, they detested the possibility that their inferiors - the Arabs and Persians (Iranians), the Chinese, the Africans and others might develop independent polities, and they also feared the emergence of independent economies that might stand as equals to the British, and even build different kinds of economies. Arab and African also Socialism emerged after WWI.

8. Spite and greed.

9. Israel has generated violent tension in the Middle East in the same way Northern Ireland Plantations of the 1600s did in Ireland.

9. Israel is not influencing the British Establishment - it has always been the other way around.

10. The formation of The Zionist State has less to do with the Holocaust than we are led to believe. The Zionist project was initiated after the British Empire had defeated and dismantled the Ottoman Empire, during WWI.

The Holocaust - a most horrific murderous campaign of extermination of Jewish people in Germany and across Eastern Europe was in all honesty a European Christian crime, a continuation of centuries of horrific intentional oppression and violence perpetrated against Jewish Communities as a political strategy, that old sordid tactic of othering one group to distract the majority population from the abuses of the Christian establishment. European powers did nothing much to prevent either phenomenon, Holocaust or Pogrom.

11. Just as they are doing nothing today to prevent the Palestinian Genocide. In spite of their claims to be the best and most moral upholders and representatives of Democracy on Earth, defenders of freedom and the stalwarts of International Law, etc etc etc.

12. However, for the British Establishment it looks better to suggest Israel is the malign influence - they can easily conflate anti-Semitism with anti-Zionist occupation and colonisation, and exploit European perceptions of guilt to protect their insert.

13. The only populations who can stop the UK Establishment are the UK population, and the same applies to the US and EU populations. However, the carefully curated divisions among us at this time make this impossible.

14. Humane solidarity that bridges the divides is the only trajectory we can develop to counter all this violence and abuse of Power. Intersectionality matters because it brings all forms of oppression under one umbrella.

15. https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/league-of-arab-states-presentation-to-the-icj-by-ralph-wilde/

Full text of the Arab Leagues presentation before the International Court of Justice February 26 2024

"Palestine was legally a single territory with a single population enjoying a right of self determination on a unitary basis."

It is well worth reading the presentation, because it states the facts as they really are.

What do you think of this analysis?

also: Misogyny is a partition long term planning tool of dominance. Hence the reversal of Roe vs Wade in USA. Identity weaponised to garner votes to gain illegitimate access to democratic power.

Corneilius Crowley · Get Off Your Land (We Have the Guns)

A soundcloud song about all of this - free download available at soundcloud

YouTube Video of the song

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

This blog, like all my other content creation work is not monetised via advertising. If you like what I present, consider sharing my content. If you can afford the price of a cup of coffee or a pint of beer/ale/cider for a few months, please donate via my Patreon account.

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Arab League presents the case against the 'legality' of the State of Israel.

Presentation of the legal facts around the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.
https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/league-of-arab-states-presentation-to-the-icj-by-ralph-wilde/
In essence the argument is that the establishment of the State fo Israel had no legal basis, and was conducted in contravention of existing International Law at the time, and ever since.
Short Excerpt:

My comment in addition to that is that Partition and Colonial Settlement has always been a weapon of the British Empire, from Northern Ireland to Israel, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the arbitrary borders drawn by the British over lands they had colonised, lines designed to ensure centuries long tension between communities, along religious identitarian lines, where one group was favoured and mother oppressed, to drive tensions amongst the populations in order to prevent those regions from developing healthy economies of their own independent nature.
They knew exactly what they were doing and why. Israel exists not to protect the Jewish people from European Christian anti-Semitism and centuries of pogroms - Israel was inserted to prevent the Arab polities from going about their own independent development, because the British were and remain White Supremacists.
Dog in the manger, Churchill.
Text of Mr Ralph Wilde's presentation:

The PRESIDENT: …I now give the floor to Mr Ralph Wilde. You have the floor, Sir.

Mr WILDE:

Mr President, distinguished Members of the Court, it is a great honour and privilege to appear before you, and to represent the League of Arab States7

1. MORE THAN CENTURY-LONG DENIAL OF SELF-DETERMINATION OF, AND WAR AGAINST, THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE, ON THE BASIS OF RACISM

The Palestinian people have been denied the exercise of their legal right to self-determination through the more than century-long violent, colonial, racist effort to establish a nation State exclusively for the Jewish people in the land of Mandatory Palestine.
When this began after the First World War, the Jewish population of that land was 11 per cent8. Forcibly implementing Zionism in this demographic context has necessarily involved the extermination, or forced displacement of, some of the non-Jewish Palestinian population; the exercise of domination over, and subjugation, dispossession and immiseration of, remaining non-Jewish Palestinians; the emigration to that land of Jewish people, regardless of any direct personal link; and the denial of Palestinian refugees the right to return. All operating through a racist distinction privileging Jewish people over non-Jewish Palestinian people.
This has necessitated serious violations of all the fundamental, jus cogens and erga omnes norms of international law — the right of self-determination, the prohibitions on aggression, genocide, crimes against humanity, racial discrimination, apartheid and torture ⎯ and the core protections of international humanitarian law9.
Today I will address, first, violations of international law arising out of the régime of racial domination — apartheid — perpetrated against the Palestinian people across the entire land of historic Palestine, and then, second, the existential illegality of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian Gaza Strip and West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since 1967.
As a necessary prerequisite, I must begin with the special right granted to the Palestinian people in the League Covenant.

2. PALESTINIAN SELF-DETERMINATION UNDER ARTICLE 22 OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS COVENTION

The legal right of self-determination of the Palestinian people originates in the “sacred trust” obligations of Article 22 of the League Covenant, part of the Versailles Treaty. Palestine ⎯ an “A” class Mandate under British colonial rule ⎯ was, after the First World War, supposed to have its existence as an independent State “provisionally recognized”: a sui generis right of self-determination11. The United Kingdom and other members of the League Council attempted to bypass this, incorporating the 1917 Balfour Declaration commitment to establishing a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine into the instrument stipulating how the Mandate would operate12. However, the Council had no legal power to bypass the Covenant in this way. It acted ultra vires, and the relevant provisions were, legally, void13. There was and is no legal basis in that Mandate instrument for either a specifically Jewish State in Palestine, or the United Kingdom’s failure to discharge the “sacred trust” obligation to implement Palestinian self-determination.

3. SELF-DETERMINATION IN INTERNATIONAL LAW AFTER THE SECONDWORLDWAR —AN ADDITIONAL RIGHT

After the Second World War, a self-determination right applicable to colonial peoples generally crystallized in international law.
For the Palestinian people, this essentially corresponded to, and supplemented, the pre-existing Covenant right, regarding the same, single territory. The 1947 proposal to partition Palestine was contrary to this; the Arab rejection an affirmation of the legal status quo.
In 1948, then, Palestine was, legally, a single territory with a single population enjoying a right of self-determination on a unitary basis.

4. NAKBA IN 1948 — VIOLATION OF SELF-DETERMINATION AND CREATION OF A RÉGIME INVOLVING AN ONGOING VIOLATION OF THIS RIGHT, AS WELL AS RACIAL DISCRIMINATION AND APARTHEID AND A DENIAL OF THE RIGHT TO RETURN

Despite this, a State of Israel, specifically for Jewish people, was proclaimed in 1948 by those controlling 78 per cent — more than three quarters — of Palestine, accompanied by the forced displacement of a significant number of the non-Jewish Palestinian population — the Nakba, catastrophe14. This illegal secession was an egregious violation of Palestinian self-determination. Israel’s statehood was recognized, and Israel admitted as a United Nations Member, despite this illegality. Israel is not the legal continuation or successor of the Mandate.
This violation of Palestinian self-determination is ongoing, and unresolved. Two key elements are:
First, Palestinian people not displaced from the land proclaimed to be of Israel in 1948, and their descendants, have been forced to live as citizens— presently they constitute 17.2 per cent — of a State conceived to be of and for another racial group, under the domination of that group, necessarily treated as second class, because of their race15.
Second, Palestinian people displaced from that land, and their descendants, cannot return.
These are serious breaches of the right of self-determination, the prohibitions of racial discrimination and apartheid, and the right of return. They must end, immediately.

5. 1967 ISRAELI CAPTURE OF THE PALESTINIAN GAZA STRIP AND WEST BANK (INCLUDING EAST JERUSALEM)

As if this ongoing Nakba was not catastrophic enough, in 1967 Israel captured the remaining 22 per cent of historic Palestine — the Gaza Strip and West Bank, including East Jerusalem — the Naksa16. It has maintained that use of force to remain in control for the 57-year period since.

6. ILLEGAL RACIAL DOMINATION — APARTHEID — FROM THE JORDAN RIVER TO THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA

For more than half a century, then, a State defined to be of and for Jewish people exclusively has governed the entire land of historic Palestine and the Palestinian people there. And the régime of racial domination — apartheid — and denying return, has been extended throughout. In the case of Palestinians living in the occupied territory, this has involved the same serious violations of international law, supplemented by serious violations of norms applicable in occupied territory17.
Indeed, these people are subject to an even more extreme form of racist domination, as they are not even citizens of the State exercising authority over them. Even in East Jerusalem, which Israel has purported to annex, the majority non-Jewish Palestinian residents do not have citizenship, whereas Jewish residents, including illegal settlers, are citizens.
Just as in territorial Israel, in occupied territory, these serious violations concerning how Israel exercises authority over the Palestinian people must end immediately.
However, here, a more fundamental matter must also be addressed. The illegality of the exercise of authority itself.

7. THE GAZA STRIP AND WEST BANK AS PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, WITH THE CONSEQUENCE THAT ISRAEL’S PURPORTED ANNEXATION, AND ATTEMPTED COLONIZATION, ARE ILLEGAL

The enduring Palestinian right of self-determination means that the Palestinian people, and the State of Palestine, not Israel, are sovereign over the territory Israel captured in 196718. For Israel, the land is extraterritorial, and, given what I said about the Mandate, territory over which it has no legal sovereign entitlement19.
Despite this, Israel has purported to annex East Jerusalem and taken various actions there and in the rest of the West Bank constituting de jure and de facto purported annexation, including implanting settlements. It is Israeli policy that Israel should be not only the exclusive authority over the entire land between the river and the sea, but also the exclusive sovereign authority there.
This constitutes a complete repudiation of Palestinian self-determination as a legal right, since it empties the right entirely of any territorial content20.
Actualizing this through de facto and de jure purported annexation is, first, a serious violation of Palestinian self-determination and, second, because it is enabled through the use of force, a violation of the prohibition on the purported acquisition of territory through the use of force in the law on the use of force, and so an aggression21. Serious violations of further areas of law regulating the conduct of the occupation are also being perpetrated, notably the prohibitions on implanting settlements and altering, unless absolutely prevented, the legal, political, social and religious status quo22.
The occupation is, therefore, existentially illegal because of its use to actualize purported annexation. To end this serious illegality, it must be terminated: Israel must renounce all sovereignty claims and all settlements must be removed. Immediately.
However, this is not the only basis on which the occupation’s existential legality must be addressed.
We need to delve deeper into both the law of self-determination and the law on the use of force.

8. SELF-DETERMINATION AS A RIGHT TO BE SELF-GOVERNING, REQUIRING THE OCCUPATION TO END IMMEDIATELY23

Beginning with self-determination: this right, when applied to the Palestinian people in the territory Israel captured in 1967, is a right to be entirely self-governing, free from Israeli domination. 29. Consequently, the Palestinian people have a legal right to the immediate end of the occupation. And Israel has a co-relative legal duty to immediately terminate the occupation.
This right exists and operates simply and exclusively because the Palestinian people are entitled to it. It does not depend on others agreeing to its realization. It is a right.
It is a repudiation of “trusteeship”, whereby colonial peoples were ostensibly to be granted freedom only if and when they were deemed “ready” because of their stage of “development” determined by the racist standard of civilization24. The anti-colonial self-determination rule replaced this with a right based on the automatic, immediate entitlement of all people to freedom, without preconditions. In the words of General Assembly resolution 1514, “inadequacy of . . . preparedness should never serve as a pretext for delaying independence”25.
Some suggest that the Palestinian people were offered, and rejected, deals that could have ended the occupation. And, therefore, Israel can maintain it pending a settlement. Even assuming, arguendo, the veracity of this account, the “deals” involved a further loss of the sovereign territory of the Palestinian people.
Israel cannot lawfully demand concessions on Palestinian rights as the price for ending its impediment to Palestinian freedom. This would mean Israel using force to coerce the Palestinian people to give up some of their peremptory legal rights: illegal in the law on the use of force and, necessarily, voiding the relevant terms of any agreement reached. The Palestinian people are legally entitled to reject a further loss of land over which they have an exclusive, legal, peremptory right. Any such rejection makes no difference to Israel’s immediate legal obligation to end the occupation.

9. THE OCCUPATION AS AN ILLEGAL USE OF FORCE IN THE JUS AD BELLUM AS A GENERAL MATTER (BEYOND THE LINK TO PURPORTED ANNEXATION

Turning to the law on the use of force: Israel’s control over the Palestinian territory since 1967, as a military occupation, is an ongoing use of force. As such, its existential legality is determined by the law on the use of force, as a general matter, beyond the specific issue of annexation.
Israel captured the Gaza Strip and West Bank from Egypt and Jordan in the war it launched against them and Syria. It claimed to be acting in self-defence, anticipating a non-immediately imminent attack. The war was over after six days. Peace treaties between Israel and Egypt and Jordan were subsequently adopted27.
Despite this, Israel maintained control of the territory — continuing the use of force enabling its capture.
Israel’s 1967 war was illegal in the jus ad bellum — even assuming, arguendo, its claim of a feared attack, States cannot lawfully use force in non-immediately imminent anticipatory self-defence.
Alternatively, assuming ⎯ again arguendo ⎯ that the war was lawful, the justification ended after six days. However, the jus ad bellum requirements continued to apply to the occupation as itself a continuing use of force. In 1967, with self-determination well established in international law, States could not lawfully use force to retain control over a self-determination unit captured in war, unless the legal test justifying the initial use of force also justified, on the same basis, the use of force in retaining control. Moreover, this justification would need to continue, not only in the immediate aftermath, but for more than half a century. Manifestly, this legal test has not been met28.
Israel’s exercise of control over the Gaza Strip and West Bank through the use of force has been illegal in the jus ad bellum since the capture of the territory, or, at least, very soon afterwards.
The occupation is, therefore, again existentially illegal in the law on the use of force — an aggression — this time, as a general matter, beyond illegality specific to annexation. To terminate this serious violation, the occupation must, likewise, end immediately.

10. ILLEGAL FORCE DOES NOT BECOME LAWFUL IN RESPONSE TO RESISTANCE TO IT29

What of Israel’s current military action in Gaza? This is not a war that began in October 2023. It is a drastic scaling-up of the force exercised there, and in the West Bank, on a continual basis, since 1967. A justification for a new phase in an ongoing illegal use of force cannot be constructed solely out of the consequences of violent resistance to that illegal use of force. Otherwise, an illegal use of force would be rendered lawful because those subject to it violently resisted — circular logic, with a perverse outcome.

11. ISRAEL CANNOT LAWFULLY USE FORCE TO CONTROL THE PALESTINIAN TERRITORY FOR SECURITY PURPOSES/PENDING A PEACE AGREEMENT30

More generally, Israel cannot lawfully use force to control the Palestinian territory for security purposes pending an agreement providing security guarantees. States can only lawfully use force outside their borders in extremely narrow circumstances. Beyond that, they must address security concerns non-forcibly.
The United States of America, the United Kingdom and Zambia suggested here that there is a sui generis applicable legal framework, an Israeli-Palestinian lex specialis. This somehow supersedes the rules of international law determining whether the occupation is existentially lawful. Instead, we have a new rule, justifying the occupation until there is a peace agreement meeting Israeli security needs. This is the law as these States would like it to be, not the law as it is. It has no basis in resolution 242, Oslo or any other resolutions or agreements31. Actually, you are being invited to do away with the very operation of some of the fundamental, peremptory rules of international law itself. As a result, the matters these rules conceive as rights vested in the Palestinian people would be realized only if agreement is reached, and only on the basis of such agreement. At best, if there is an agreement, this means one that need not be compatible with Palestinian peremptory legal rights, determined only by the acute power imbalance in Israel’s favour32. At worst, if there is no agreement, this means that the indefinite continuation of Israeli rule over the Palestinian people in the occupied Palestinian territories, on the basis of racist supremacy and a claim to sovereignty, would be lawful33. This is an affront to the international rule of law, to the United Nations Charter imperative to settle disputes in conformity with international law, and to your judicial function as guardians of the international legal system34.
A final potential basis sometimes invoked to justify continuing the occupation should be addressed. Occupation and human rights law — applicable to illegal and lawful occupations alike — oblige Israel to address security threats in occupied territory. However, they only regulate the conduct of an occupation when it exists. They do not also provide a legal basis for that existence itself. Existential legality is determined by the law of self-determination and the jus ad bellum only. There is no “back door” legal basis for Israel to maintain the occupation through the imperatives of occupation and human rights law35.

12. EXISTENTIAL ILLEGALITY OF ISRAEL’S OCCUPATION OF THE PALESTINIAN GAZA STRIP AND WEST BANK, INCLUDING EAST JERUSALEM

In sum: the occupation of the Palestinian Gaza Strip and West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is existentially illegal on two mutually reinforcing bases.
First, the law on the use of force. Here, the occupation is illegal both as a use of force without valid justification, and because it is enabling an illegal purported annexation. As such, it is an aggression.
Second, the law of self-determination. Here, it is illegal again because of the association with illegal purported annexation, and also, more generally, because it is, quite simply, an exercise of authority over the Palestinian people that, by its very nature, violates their right to freedom.
This multifaceted existential illegality — involving serious violations of peremptory norms — has two key consequences.
First: the occupation must end: Israel must renounce its claim to sovereignty over the Palestinian territory; all settlers must be removed. Immediately. This is required to end the illegality, to discharge the positive obligation to enable immediate Palestinian self-administration, and because Israel lacks any legal entitlement to exercise authority.
Second, in the absence of the occupation ending, necessarily, everything Israel does in the Palestinian territory lacks a valid international legal basis and is, therefore (subject to the Namibia exception), invalid, not only those things violating the law regulating the conduct of the occupation36. Those norms entitle and require Israel to do certain things. But this does not alter the more fundamental position, from the law on the use of force and self-determination, that Israel lacks any valid authority to do anything, and whatever it does is illegal, even if compliant with or pursuant to the conduct-regulatory rules.

13. THE WORDS OF REFAAT ALAREER

I will close by quoting Palestinian academic and poet Refaat Alareer, from his final poem posted 36 days before he was killed by Israel in Gaza on 6 December 2023:

If I must die, you must live to tell my story […]

If I must die
let it bring hope, let it be a story.37

Thank you for your attention.

The PRESIDENT: I thank the delegation of the League of Arab States for its presentation.

Footnotes

7 This statement draws on the following two documents submitted in the present case: Written Statement by the League of Arab States, 20 July 2023, and Written Comments on the written statements made by States and organizations by the League of Arab States, 25 Oct. 2023, both obtainable from https://www.icj-cij.org/case/186/written-proceedings.

8 11.06 per cent to be exact. Government of the United Kingdom, Report of J. B. Barron, Superintendent of Census, Palestine: Report and General Abstracts of the Census of 1922, 10 Feb. 1923, p. 5, table I, available at https://content.ecf.org.il/files/M00785_1922PalestineCensusEnglish.pdf.

9 See Written Statement of the League of Arab States, Sec. 8, pp. 16-19, Part 3 generally, pp. 19-38, especially Sec. 16 therein, pp. 37-38.

10 See generally Written Statement of the League of Arab States, p. 8, para. 13 (1); Written Comments of the League of Arab States, Sec. 6c, pp. 27-32; and Ralph Wilde, “Tears of the Olive Trees: Mandatory Palestine, the UK, and accountability for colonialism in international law”, Journal of the History of International Law (2022), available at https://brill.com/view/journals/jhil/aop/article-10.1163-15718050-12340216/article-10.1163-15718050-12340216.xml? language=en (hereinafter “Wilde, Tears of Olive Trees”).

11 Treaty of Peace Between the Allied and Associated Powers and Germany, signed in Versailles, 28 June 1919, entry into force 10 January 1920, (1919) UKTS 4 (Cmd. 153), Part I, League Covenant 1919: Covenant of the League of Nations, 28 Apr. 1919, available at: https://www.ungeneva.org/en/about/league-of-nations/covenant.

12 Mandate for Palestine, text approved by the League of Nations Council 19th Session, 13th Meeting, 24 July 1922, UN Library reference C.529. M.314. 1922. VI., available at: https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert- 201057/, entry into force on 29 Sept. 1923, Minutes of the Meeting of the League of Nations Council held at Geneva on 29 September 1923, UN Library reference C.L.101.1923.VI., available at https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto- insert-204395/.

13 Wilde, Tears of Olive Trees, pp. 402-403.

14 State of Palestine, Palestinian Liberation Organization Negotiation Affairs Department, Borders, https://www.nad.ps/en/our-position/borders#:~:text=During%20the%20June%201967%20war,Palestinian%20half% 20of%20the%20city, and United Nations, The Question of Palestine, History, https://www.un.org/unispal/history/.

15 Nasreen Haddad Haj-Yahya, Muhammed Khalaily, Arik Rudnitzky and Ben Fargeon, Statistical Report on Arab Society in Israel 2021, The Israel Democracy Institute, 17 Mar. 2022, available at https://en.idi.org.il/articles/38540.

16State of Palestine, Palestinian Liberation Organization Negotiation Affairs Department, Borders, https://www.nad.ps/en/our-position/borders#:~:text=During%20the%20June%201967%20war,Palestinian%20half%20 of%20the%20city. See also Statement of HE Mr Mahmoud Abbas, President of the State of Palestine, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization and President of the Palestinian National Authority before the United Nations General Assembly’s Sixty-Sixth Session, New York, 23 Sept. 2011, https://gadebate.un.org/sites/ default/files/gastatements/66/ps_en_25.pdf.

17 Written Statement of the League of Arab States, Sec. 13, pp. 26-33.

18 Ralph Wilde, “Using the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house: international law and Palestinian liberation”, Palestine Yearbook of International Law, Vol. 22 3 (2021) (hereinafter “Wilde, Master’s Tools”), pp. 35-39.

19 Written Comments of the League of Arab States, Sec. 6, pp. 23-32; Wilde, Master’s Tools, pp. 40-41.

20 Written Comments of the League of Arab States, Sec. 6, pp. 23-32, esp. Secs. 6a and 6b, pp. 23-26.

21 Ibid., Sec. 11 (p. 21-3); Wilde, Master’s Tools, p. 40.

22 Written Statement of the League of Arab States, Sec. 13, pp. 26-33.

23 See generally Written Statement of the League of Arab States, Sec. 4.c., pp. 9-10, Sec. 10, pp. 20-21, Sec. 11.d., pp. 22-23; Wilde, Master’s Tools, Secs. IV-VIII, pp. 35-73).

24 See Ralph Wilde, International Territorial Administration: How Trusteeship and the Civilizing Mission Never Went Away (OUP 2008), Chap. 8.

25 UNGA res. 1514 (XV), 14 Dec. 1960, UN doc. A/RES/1514 (XV), para. 3.

26 See Written Statement of the League of Arab States, Sec. 12, pp. 23-26; Written Comments of the League of Arab States, Sec. 7, pp. 32-33; and Wilde, Master’s Tools, Section III, pp. 21-35.

27 Treaty of Peace between Egypt and Israel, 26 March 1979, UNTS, Vol. 1136, p. 100; Treaty of Peace between the State of Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, 26 October 1994, UNTS, Vol. 2042, p. 351.

28 Written Statement of the League of Arab States, p. 25, paras. 70-71; Wilde, Master’s Tools, pp. 25-26.

29 Ralph Wilde, “Israel’s War in Gaza is Not a Valid Act of Self-defence in International Law”, Opinio Juris, 9 Nov. 2023, https://opiniojuris.org/2023/11/09/israels-war-in-gaza-is-not-a-valid-act-of-self-defence-in-international- law/.

30 See Written Statement of the League of Arab States, p. 24, paras. 63-66, p. 25, paras. 72-73; Written Comments of the League of Arab States, Sec. 3, pp. 5-17; Wilde, Master’s Tools, pp. 27-31.

31 See Written Statement of the League of Arab States, Sec. 12.b, p. 24; and also Written Comments of the League of Arab States, Sec. 3, pp. 5-17.

32 See also Written Comments of the League of Arab States, p. 16, para. 54. 33 Ibid.

34 Ibid., Sec. 3.b, pp. 6-8, paras. 54-55, p. 17 and pp. 19-20, paras. 62-63.

35 Written Statement of the League of Arab States, Sec. 15.b, pp. 34-36. 36 Ibid., Sec. 15, pp. 34-37, and Sec. 17, pp. 38-41.