Palestine and Britain's Mishandling of Mandate

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                                

        
The Brits, led by General Allenby,  occupied Jerusalem in December 1917 during World War I.

After World War I, the Middle East, an Ottoman Empire possession, went to the winners of the war.  Britain was given the mandate for Palestine which was to last for 30 years.  They were to police the land and help the Jews create their Jewish Homeland, as Palestine was to go to the Jews.  Jews  had lost their land, Judea and Israel to the Romans in 70 CE  and had been homeless for 2,000 years.  They had been suffering from anti-Semitism wherever they went, so this had been legally arranged.

The Brits, in order to carry out this mandate, chose High Commissioners to govern Palestine.  They were Chief executive officials.  The first man to be appointed was a Jew, Sir Herbert Samuel (1870-1963) whose time ran from 1920 to 1925.  This appointment evoked great hopes among the Jews, especially as he was known to be a supporter of Zionism.  Samuels was the first Jew to be a member of a British cabinet and did so by 1909.  He had held office in the Liberal government from 1905 to 1916.  After being a High Commisioner in Palestine, he was in the national government from 1931 to 1932.  His memorandum to the Cabinet in 1914 influenced the Balfour Declaration.  He became the leader of the Liberal Party in the House of Commons from 1931 to 1935 and in the House of Lords from 1944 to 1955.

His initial task was complicated by the delay in confirming the Mandate and by Arab violence.  He suspended Jewish immigration, the very thing he was to allow and help to happen.  Why?  Arab violence had started in 1921.  Why did they riot?
                                                                           

One of the first things Samuel did, obviously to get in tight with the Arabs who probably scared him, was to appoint Haj Mohammed Amin el-Husseini (1893-1974) as the Grand Mufi of Jerusalem and if that wasn't enough, also the head of the Supreme Moslem Council in 1921.  Husseini therefore had the title of Sherif of Jerusalem and The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.  Samuel showed Husseini much benevolence.  Was it because he came from a long standing Jerusalemite Arab family that had traced their genealogy back to the grandson of Mohammad?    Why did he do this when he knew that in 30 years it was all to become a Jewish state?
                                                                               

Emir Feisal (1883 Mecca, Saudi Arabia-1933 Switzerland)third son of Hussein bin Ali, the Grand Sharif of Mecca, later King of Syria in 1920, then King of Iraq from 1921-1933, member of Hashemite Kingdom like today's King of Jordan, a descendant from Mohammad

Husseini was in direct opposition and competition with Emir Feisal, who was THE spokesman for all the Arabs.  He was for the Jews' return and had high hopes that they would be able to improve his people just by living there and showing them more modern ideas and ways.                                                                                                                                                                        

Chaim Weizmann

Chaim Weizmann, Emir Feisal 

Emir Faisal's delegation at Versailles, during the Paris Peace Conference of 1919

Feisal had had meetings with Chaim Weizmann (1874 Belarus-1952 Israel).  Chaim had helped the English to win the war with his invention that made ammunition far better than the enemy had, and so was being rewarded for this by being heard.  It was all agreed upon.  All except the stone in the mix; Husseini,  who didn't want to give up his position as a very important man in Jerusalem and was afraid this would happen once more Jews moved there  and become a Jewish city once again.  He instigated riots in 1921.

This may have brought about the White Paper in June 1922. which followed a statement by Winston Churchill who was the present day secretary for the colonies.  It stated that the aim of the Balfour Declaration was to establish a Jewish National Home, but not Jewish domination.  He said that the Jews were there by right and not on sufferance.  It also made Jewish immigration into Palestine dependent on absorptive  capacity.  As a direct result of the White Paper, Transjordan was affected.   It detached Transjordan from Palestine and came as a large disappointment to the Jews.  The Balfour Declaration had included the area of  Transjordan.

The Balfour Declaration was part of the legal complexities that Jews had been wading through in order to be able to go back to their original land of Israel and Judea legally.  It was an official statement issued on November 2, 1917 at the end of World War I by the British secretary, Arthur James BALFOUR.  It had declared that the British government favored the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and would use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that NOTHING shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country (thinking of the Jews of England who would not like to be rooted up from their homes and shipped off to this home.) such as Samuel.  Actually, this was setting up an unrealistic but idealistic Garden of Eden where Arabs would step aside for returning Jews.

This Declaration came about after LONG negotiations initiated by Chaim Weizmann, Nahum Sokolow and others shortly after the outbreak of World War I, with the support of Herbert Samuel, Chief Rabbi J.H. Hertz, the Haham Moses Gaster, and others.  There was much discussion on the formula of the Declaration and its timing.  Balfour visited the USA in Spring of 1917 and met with President Wilson who supported the efforts of the American Zionists who were headed by Louis Brandeis which expedited the final decision of the British government.

We had Jews at that time who were afraid of it happening and were against the idea.  They were the presidents of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and of the Anglo-Jewish Association.  DL Alexander and CG Montefiore issued a statement that the Zionist aspirations were calculated to endanger the Jewish position in all countries.  All countries meant the Western of USA and England, evidently, for pogroms and anti-Semitism were going great in France and Russia.  All this rebuttal made Britain even more cautious, so they didn't accept the wording from the Zionists that said:
1. To recognize Palestine as "the national home of the Jewish people"
2. For providing a "Jewish National Colonizing Corporation" for the resettlement and economic development of the country.

The Declaration, after having finally been approved by the British cabinet, was sent to Lord Walter Rothchild who was asked to convey it to the Zionist Federation.  It was approved by other Allied governments and incorporated in the Mandate in 1922.

Samuel did a few helpful things such as erecting the structure of the new Palestine, creating a solid governmental machinery and turning a chaotic country into an organized state, good for England but not for the future of the Jews.  The foundations of the Jewish National Home were  firmly laid down during his term of office.

Lord Plumer was the 2nd High Commissioner from 1925 to 1928.  He, on the other hand, refused to restrict Jewish immigration and displayed much administrative energy.  Under his rule, Palestine citizenship provisos were laid down.  A water supply for Jerusalem was installed.  Public works schemes were inaugurated to meet the threat of unemployment.

Sir John Chancellor was the 3rd High Commissioner from 1928 to 1931.  1929 was a year of much rioting and deaths of Jews, instigated again by the Grand Mufti.  Chancellor condemned the 1929 Arab massacres in outspoken terms.  They had happened when he was away on leave, but later was inclined to temporize.

Sir Arthur Wauchope was the 4th High Commissioner from 1931 to 1937.  He was sympathetic to Jewish aspirations while being scrupulously fair to the Arabs.   I note that Nazis were gaining power in Germany at this time, and by 1937, things were terrible for Jews living there.  They were trying to emigrate from Germany and many wanted to come to Palestine and found it difficult to get in there or to the USA.  During Wauchope's period of office, the stream of immigrants rapidly increased, naturally.

This led to Arab restiveness which he tried to pacify by promising a Legislative Council.  He failed to quell the Arab revolt of 1936, again led by the Grand Mufti and this led to the end of his position.  In 1936, Husseini was chairman of the Arab Supreme Council so  had organized the Palestine disturbances for which he was sentenced to exile in 1937.  He fled to Lebanon.
                                                                             

Grand Mufti meeting with Hitler in Germany-November 1941

Sir Harold MacMichael (1882-1969)  was the 5th High Commissioner from 1938 to 1944. He was 56 when he took the post.  These were the war years.  He was the man in office during the war who refused to admit Jewish refugees from Europe.  This made him very unpopular with the Jewish population.  He was blamed for sending at least 768 Jewish refugees aboard MV Struma to their deaths. It was an "illegal" immigrant ship which left Romania in 1941 for Palestine and reached Istanbul, Turkey but were turned back.  It was MacMichael who had refused them entry into Palestine. The boat floundered in the Black Sea with the loss of all on board.  Seven unsuccessful attempts, mainly by Lehi (Stern Gang/Stern Group) , were undertaken to assassinate him during his sojourn in Palestine. In the last, both he and his wife narrowly escaped death in an ambush Lehi mounted on 8 August 1944 on the eve of his replacement as High Commissioner.

Viscount Gort was the 6th High Commissioner from 1944 to 1945.  He was sympathetic for the Jews, but was unable to make a fundamental change in the British government's policy.

Sir Alan Cunningham was the 7th and last High Commissioner from 1945 to 1948.  On May 14, he and his soldiers left.  He governed the country throughout the eventful happenings which culminated in the British withdrawal from Palestine.  By 1946, the population of Jerusalem reached 165,000 of whom 100,000 were Jews.  The city expanded and the Hebrew University was erected on Mt. Scopus.  This was a period of Jewish resistance to the  British Mandatory government.  The UN partition resolution of November 29, 1947 provided for the creation of an independent area of Jerusalem under the UN administration.  Arab outbreaks which were exactly like warfare were between the Haganah and the Arabs who had developed into the Arab Legion of Transjordan  seemed to put an end to this international scheme.  During that time, the Jewish quarter in the Old City had to be evacuated and was destroyed.  The rest of Jerusalem fell into Jewish hands.  The Arab Legion was shelling and starving the Jews in trying to get them  to surrender, but that was foiled by the fortitude of the Jews and by the opening of the Burma Road which restored the connection between Jewish Jerusalem and the coast.

Husseini, the Grand Mufti,  participated in Rashid Ali's pro-Axis coup in Iraq during World War II before he went to Europe, where he assisted Hitler and was largely responsible for the liquidation of the Jews in the Moslem areas of Bosnia.  In 1946 he escaped to Egypt.  Now we see Gaza was also affected by him.  After 1948, he set up a Palestine Government in Gaza, but it was short-lived.  Later, he set one up in Cairo, Egypt.  All this power was given to him by Samuel.  Evidently Samuel didn't vet him.

Ressource: The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haj_Amin_al-Husseini
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faisal_I_of_Iraq
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/muftihit.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_MacMichael

Jews Cheated Out of Land to be Jewish Homeland: Facts of History of Palestine and Israel

                                                                                                                                                                                   
Nadene Goldfoot
All of Palestine was designated as a "Jewish National Home."  This was done legally through international law at the end of WWI in the Balfour Declaration on November 2, 1917.  What happened and how come the Jews wound up with only 20% of land to be theirs once again?  The Jews even had the agreement of King Feisal, king of Iraq and Syria  that it would work out for the Jews to return to their land.  He was one of the leaders who fought against the Ottomans.

"Understanding that Jews and Arabs would have to live together in the Land of Israel, Weizmann strove to create peaceful coexistence between the two peoples. Thus he met in Aqaba with Emir Faisal, leader of the Arab national movement. Faisal expressed sympathy for the Zionist cause, which he felt was similar to the Arabs’ national aspirations."  Weizmann was influenced by Theodore Hertzl, a secular Jewish Austrian reporter  who envisioned a Utopia for Jews.  Hertzl had written "Der Judenstaat" (The State of the Jews) outlining his ideas.

The British held the mandate and were trusted to follow out the rules.  Instead, they gave state domain lands, allocated for the "Jewish National Home,"  to those Arabs who were landless.  They did not own any land, but they claimed they were being "displaced by Jews" in Western Palestine.  The outcome was that land outside the limited Jewish-settled area of Western Palestine was then treated as "Arab" land which was more than 80% of the promised to the Jews' land.

These same Arabs did not think of themselves or even call themselves "Palestinians."  The bulk of all the Arab peasantry in the area came from East Palestinian, Syrian, Iraqi, Egyptian and other neighboring states and had been landless due to the feudal-like societal structures of their own native-born people.  That, along with natural disasters, heavy taxation and corrupt loan sharks kept them poor.  It was not the Jews who were native to the land or the Jews who arrived in the 1880's that who made the Arabs landless.

The traditional land of Palestine included land both east and west of the Jordan River.  The few Arabs that lived there thought of themselves as Ottomans or Turks, as the land had been held by the Ottomans for the past 400 years.  Some also thought of themselves as southern Syrians or as Arab people..  None said they were Palestinians.

They were imbued with religious prejudice, and erupted into anti-Jewish violence often whenever their Muslim leaders would incite them.  This happened way before Israel was created in 1948.   After 1917 with the British in the area, they were referred to by the British as being "Nationalistic"-which was in truth subterfuge  to be  anti-Semitic.  The effendis and the Mufti tried to also incite this "nationalism" which meant attacks on Jewish civilians.  T.E. Lawrence did his part also in creating nationalistic feelings among the Muslims, a leftover from inspiring them to fight with him.

The charges from Palestinian leaders of today that the Palestinian people have had an identity with the land that goes back thousands of years is false.  A few nomadic people lived in the land in the 1860's (note Mark Twain's book "The Innocents Abroad".)  It was he and his friends who were the innocents, wanting to visit Palestine who answered the flier saying to join the excursion to the Holy Land and Egypt, the Crimea, Greece, and intermediate points of interest starting in Brooklyn, February 1, 1867.  They took a first-class steamer that would hold 150 passengers.  He gave an excellent description of what he saw.

The charge that alien Jews returned after 2000 years in 1948 to "displace" the Arabs in the new Jewish state is not true.  First of all, Jews hadn't all left in 70 CE.  There were a remnant who remained and were there to greet newcomers who returned throughout the 2,000 years.  Secondly, the plans Chaim Weizmann drew up for Israel included Arabs who were on the land at the time.  It was to be a state second to none as a Utopia. Instead, they were consistently greeted with gunfire.

Palestinians charge that there was no place for them in 1948.  The land to which Arab refugees moved in 1948 included lands that many Arab refugees had only recently left in order to gain the economic  advantages of the small Jewish region within Palestine.  These homelands where they originated included Jordan.  Those who deprived these Arab refugees of homes were the Arab-Muslim leaders.  Neighboring Arab states refused to grant citizenship to those they called their Arab brothers, so they wound up in camps where they reside today.  .  Arab who did not leave when their leaders told them to became citizens of Israel.

Unfortunately, the British treated the land designated to be the Jewish National Home as Arab Land.  The Jews who tried to immigrate during WWII before and after were brutally restricted while the Brits allowed illegal Arab immigration to enter.  Therefore the Brits violated the International League of Nations Mandate by facilitating Arab settlement onto Jewish-settled land and treating the Jews terribly.  (Read "Exodus" by Leon Uris).  They helped to build up the Arab population this way.
                                                           Weizmann and King Feisal

Perhaps King Feisal was not alone in his ability to see that Jews re-entering and developing their homeland would be good for Arabs as well, but these good people have been overcome by religious zealots who have pieced out the anti-Semitic clauses in the Koran and uphold them more than even the Arab countries that hosted Jews for the past 2,000 years as Dhminnis.  All good intentions of Weizmann and other Zionists of his day have been attacked by hatred from the Arab people, except that we see 1.4 million Arabs living as citizens in Israel today and living far better than their neighbors.    Weizmann and Feisal's dreams are working.

Resource: book:  From Time Immemorial by Joan Peters page 392-393.
The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain
http://www.eretzyisroel.org/~samuel/feisal1.html  about King Feisal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration
http://www.mygen.com/users/ufo/Israel_gets_the_Bomb.html
http://suite101.com/article/theodor-herzl-the-dreyfus-affair-and-modern-zionism-a407378

The Holiest Places to Jews: In Judea and Samaria

Nadene Goldfoot
Israel was originally designed by G-d as found in the Bible (Torah, Old Testament) . Moses, living in about 1271 BCE was led there by G-d.   The original Promised Land covered about 58,000 square miles and was occupied by the Israelites under Kings David and Solomon The total surface was 17,500 square miles of which 45% was in Transjordan.  It included most of Syria. .  Under the British Mandate, it was formed by the area west of the Jordan.  The armistice agreements of 1949 left Israel with 8,000 square miles.  After the 1967 Six Day War Israel came to occupy all of Judea and Samaria, the Golan Heights and the Sinai up to the Suez Canal.  The Sinai has been given back to Egypt for peace.

Judea and Samaria (West Bank)  is home to about 500,000 Jews who are living in East Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria.  These 2 areas are said to be the places where the Palestinians want their state of Palestine.  The huge problem with this is that they want no Jews to continue living here.  They want  all 500,000 to be moved out.  They also want to include East Jerusalem as well, which is a part of the whole city of Jerusalem, the capital of Israel.  It was in the past and is now the Jews' eternal city.

Brandon Marlon's article printed in the Jewish Press about Judea and Samaria is well worth reading today.  Why these 2 places are not included in the whole package of Israel was not Chaim Weizmann's fault.  They were included and should have been the boundaries of Israel being they were the very places Israel existed and was attacked by the Assyrians  back in 722 BCE when 10 of the 12 tribes were taken away.  Unfortunately, our leaders lost 80% of the land intended by world opinion to become the Jewish Homeland to Transjordan, which became Jordan and the world did not raise the rebellion about it that they should have.  The Brits had flubbed up by promising land to both Jews and Arabs at the same time.  They also flubbed up because they were to be the ones to create the Jewish Homeland and did not bring this about with the promised larger section of land.

The report is that Jewish young men living in these places  are now our best Israeli warriors.  Their parents dared to settle there where Arabs have taken up residence as well.  The areas are loaded with holy places for Jews.  It has meaning.  This was the very  heartland of the Jews.

First there was Israel in the 11th century BCE. .  King Saul of the tribe of Benjamin was Israel's first king.  David followed and then his son, King Solomon.   Later on they divided the Israel , sort of like a Democrat-Republican problem, into Israel and Judah.  Judah was where Jerusalem was.

Judah was the southerly of the 2 kingdoms.  It was divided into the 2 kingdoms in 933 BCE when King Solomon died.  The tribe of Judah and most of Benjamin as well as a lot of Simeon lived here.  It held Jerusalem so was important.  The rulers were from the house of David.  The Assyrian attack in 722 was checked before the walls of Jerusalem, but fell to the Babylonians in 586 BCE.  The name was changed by the Romans around 135 CE to Judea.

 Samaria was also called Shomron and was the capital of the of the then northern kingdom of Israel.  It was founded in 880 BCE by Omri on a hill bought from Shemer.  It was on a piece of elevated land that dominated a wide countryside and sat on 25 acres.  Omride kings of Israel such as Omri, Ahab, Joram, etc ruled there.  It was the ancient center of the wine and oil industry.  It had wonderful orchards.  The city was later ruined and owned by King Alexander Yannai, a Hasmonean and renamed Sebaste, then Sabastiyah by Herod the Great.  Finally it was under Roman occupation and settled by others.  The prophet Elisha is buried there.  So is John the Baptist.

Gilgal is the first camp and base of Joshua and the Israelites when they entered Canaan.  Joshua erected 12 stones there from the Jordan River.  People came here to celebrate Passover and they circumcised those born in the desert.  Samuel the prophet judged Israel here.  King Saul was crowned at this site.  It was a city of the Levites in the time of Nehemiah.  It is very very Jewish.

Mount Ebal or Eval is where Joshua built an altar to G-d after the fall of Ai and where  the Torah was read to all the Israelites in the presence of the Ark of the covenant, a very sacred Jewish event.  Mt. Gerizim is where the other half of Israel stood listening to Joshua.  These places are holy only to Jews.  These are only a few of the special places within Judea and Samaria.

The history of the Jews is what brought serious aliyah back home after at least 2 thousand years of  suffering from anti-Semitic nations.  No one should wonder why people are sticking their necks and lives out from living in Judea and Samaria today.  It was all planned to be done as peacefully as possible with benefiting the natives who might not be Jewish but instead have been met with hostility every inch of the way.  Of course Jews remember how they were met in foreign lands.  They followed their own Golden Rule to do unto others as they want to be done to, but these others certainly have not been cooperative.

Resource:http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2010/10/judeasamarias-jewish-population-growing.html
 http://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/front-page/what-judea-samaria-mean-to-the-jewish-people/2013/01/16/
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/164243#.UPcD5R1LXqE
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://ivarfjeld.wordpress.com/category/israel-jews-in-judea-and-samaria/
http://www.factsandlogic.org/ad_77.html

Israel's Loftiest Goals Met By War: 1947

Nadene Goldfoot
Israel stated their goals of the new state clearly on May14, 1948 in their Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel.  "The state of Israel will be open for Jewish immigration and for the in-gathering of the exiles.  It was created by idealists with a Utopia in mind.  After all, here they were establishing a country with the principals of Judaism at the heart of it in a modern age.

 They did their very best.  This was at a time that many Jews were living in refugee camps, survivors of the Holocaust with no country to go to, except the hope of Israel.  Remember the book, EXODUS by Leon Uris?  In 1947 the British forced the ship Exodus 1947, carrying 4,500 Holocaust survivors headed for Palestine, to return to Germany

In 1945:  "With few possibilities for emigration, tens of thousands of homeless Holocaust survivors migrated westward to other European territories liberated by the western Allies. There they were housed in hundreds of refugee centers and displaced persons (DP) camps such as Bergen-Belsen in Germany. The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) and the occupying armies of the United States, Great Britain, and France administered these camps."

It will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants.  
It will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel.
 It will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all the inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex. 
 It will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture.  It will safeguard the holy places of all religions and
It will be faithful to the principles of the charter of the United Nations."

November 29, 1947 was the date the UN voted to establish the Jewish state and was about 2 years after the end of World War 2 when 6 million Jews had been slaughtered by the Nazi regime.  They wanted to  divide the land originally planned to go to the Jewish Homeland into 2 sections; one for the Jews and the other for the Arabs which the Arabs refused. This was because the Arabs had raised the riot act when they realized it was all going to go to the Jews.  and they now wanted it all for themselves.    The next day the Arabs attacked the Jews in the land and war was on.  The United States was the first under Harry Truman to recognize Israel, born on May 14, 1948, the date the British mandate was up.  It was accepted by the United Nations.  However, the Arabs continued to fight against the new state and the war continued for another year, known as "The War of Independence."  It wasn't over until 1949 with an Armistice Agreement referred to as the "Green Line."  

May 14, 1948 was the date the British Mandate was up and they left the country.  Jews were on their own to defend their newly reclaimed land.   The population of Jews was 650,000 that May. We had the right number to start off with.  Most were living in Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem.  It is remembered that Moses left Egypt with 600,000.  At the birth in 1948 many Jews were forced out of the Arab homes and immigrated to Israel. .  By December  1952 we had 1,629,500.  By the 1972 census there were 3,164,000 Jews in Eretz Israel.    Today we have about 6,500,000 Jews living in Israel.  1.4 million Arabs also call Israel home and are citizens.  The Druze and Circassians even serve in the IDF at their insistence. Otherwise, Arabs are not required to serve.   

In another section of the declaration, it said that " We appeal to the Jewish people throughout the Diaspora to rally round the Jews of Eretz-Israel in the tasks of immigration and upbuilding and to stand by them in the great struggle for the realization of the age-old dream--"The Redemption of Israel."  Placing our trust in the Almighty, we affix our signatures to this proclamation...in the city of Tel Aviv, on this Sabbath eve, May 14, 1948.  38 people signed this including David Ben Gurion, Golda Myserson (Meier), and David Zvi Pinkas.

To redeem means to buy back,  to repurchase, to get or win back, to liberate by payment; ransom, to free by force, to change for the better, reform, repair, restore, reclaim, to make good, to offset the bad effect of to make worthwhile, rescue, and that the Jews did.  They bought land legally from Arab landowners many times over, and these landowners weren't living on the land anymore.  They had found greener pastures in France and other countries abroad to enjoy their life.

Amos the Prophet had stated: Amos 9:14-15
I will bring back my exiled people Israel; they will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them. They will plant vineyards and drink their wine; they will make gardens and eat their fruit. I will plant Israel in their own land, never again to be uprooted from the land I have given them,” says the Lord your God.

Another section states: "  After being forcibly exiled from their land (in 70 CE) , the people kept faith with it throughout their dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom......This right was recognized in the Balfour Declaration of the 2nd November 1917, and re-affirmed in the Mandate of the League of Nations...gave international sanction to the historic connection between the Jewish people and Eretz Israel and to the right of the Jewish people to rebuild its national home."   Israel did whatever they had to in establishing the homeland once more.  It was all legal.  It was on ancient, forgotten, neglected, unwanted land.  They have done what Amos prophesied.

Resource: Facts About Israel, Published by the Division of Information, Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Jerusalem
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Peace+Process/Guide+to+the+Peace+Process/Declaration+of+Establishment+of+State+of+Israel.htm
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005129
Webster's 7th New Collegiate dictionary
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Arab%E2%80%93Israeli_War
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/Dec_of_Indep.html
http://www.watchmanbiblestudy.com/Articles/1948PropheciesFulfilled.htm

The Very Cradle of Jewish Civilization: Judea and Samaria

Nadene Goldfoot
Judea and Samaria were the cradle of Jewish civilization and had an unfailing Jewish presence until the 1948 War when the many people living there were killed and about 10,000 survivors  were expelled by the Jordanians, who held rule illegally until the 1967 War with Israel.  Jordan  renamed the two states "West Bank."  , being they lay on the west side of the Jordan River.

The Kingdom of Judah, renamed Judea by the Romans,  had existed in 933 BCE when Eretz Yisrael was divided after King Solomon had died.  It was the southerly of the two.  The tribe of Judah and parts of Benjamin and Simeon lived there.  It was the poor and less important Kingdom with no access to the sea.  It did contain Jerusalem and the Temple, however and was able to keep Mosaic monotheism in a pure form.  Solomon's son, Rehoboam took over as King of Judah.  Samaria had been the capital of the northern kingdom of Israel, founded in 880 BCE by King Omri.  He was king of Israel from 887 to 876 BCE.  Omri had been Elah's general and directed the operations against the Philistine city of Gibbethon.  He was the founder of a dynasty.

The British actually were the last legal sovereign authority for Judea and Samaria.  Jordan and  had illegally held them  as well as Egypt illegally holding Gaza Strip between 1948 and 1967.  They remain unallocated portions of the British Mandate since no government formally replaced the Mandate's jurisdiction.  It's guidelines called for Jews to settle the area.  That's what they did from 1967 on.

Arabs wanted to hold onto these lands to attack Israel.  They kept launching attacks against Israel from the "Territories'" strategic locations.  UN Resolution 242 had planned for bilateral negotiations that would give Israel more secure borders and lead to greater regional stability.  When Israel pulled out of Gaza for the sake of making peace, the Arabs used it as a closer place to shoot their rockets, missiles and mortars into southern Israel.

Until 1988, the PLO continued to call for a Palestinian state to REPLACE Israel, not for a a separate state that would exist alongside it.  They still will not recognize Israel and the Muslim Brotherhood continues to push with their goal of replacement, not peace and coexistence.

80% of the Israeli settlers in Judea and Samaria live in communities close to the Green Line, which are suburbs of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.  The Jews have a right to settle the land.  It is a legal right assured by treaty and specifically protected by Article 80 of the U.N. Charter...."the Jewish right of settlement in the area is equivalent in every way to the right of the existing Palestinian population to live there" says Eugene Rostow, former U.S. Under Secretary of State, 1990.

Israelis had built communities after 1967 in undeveloped, uninhabited areas. Arabs have legitimate claims to ownership over some of the land.  Many are longtime inhabitants who felt they have no political rights and self-determination.  Israel  disputes their territorial claims and also has even stronger claims to the land.

Israel was forced to continue having a presence in Gaza and the West Bank from 1967 to 1993 because no Palestinian leader stepped up as a peace partner.  Blame International law and custom that required Israel to be the administrators.  They're just obeying the laws.  .  From 1993 to 2007 Israel gradually ended the "Occupation."  by turning civilian administration over to the newly created Palestininan Authority (PA) in 1994.

Did anyone complain when the Jordanians expelled our 10,000 Jews who were living there?  Why is it that the Jews get the short end of every stick?

Resource:  Israel 101 from StandWithUs
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia