arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

Did The Balfour Declaration in l9l7and the U.N. Partition Resolution In 1947 Give Zionists a Legitimate Claim to Palestine?

It is difficult to imagine how a letter from a British Foreign Minister, Lord Balfour, to a British Zionist leader, Lord Rothschild, could be the legal basis for dispossessing an indigenous population in the Middle East.

If anything, Balfour's letter was a political maneuver meant to further British imperial interests in the Middle East during World War II by rallying Jewish support for the Allied effort.

According to the American diplomat Sol Linowitz, "Great Britain had no sovereign rights over Palestine; it had no proprietary interest; it had no authority to dispose of the land. The Declaration was merely a statement of British intentions and no more." [See C. Wright, Facts and Fables: The Arab Israel Conflict, Kegan Paul, 1989, p. 159.1

Nor does the U.N. Partition Plan of 1947 give Zionists legal claim to Palestine because:

(1) the U.N. Plan, which granted 55% of Palestine to the Jews, who were then 30% of the population and owned 6% of the land, violated Article 1 of the U.N. Charter. This is the Article that sets forth the principle of self-determination for all peoples on earth, including the 70% of Palestinians who then owned 94% of the land;

(2) the Resolution was not binding since it was not passed by the Security Council but by the General Assembly, which can only recommend rather than legislate;

(3) the Resolution, like the Balfour Declaration, was a product of great power machinations, orchestrated by the United States, rather than the result of political idealism. [See A. Lilienthal, The Zionist Connection: What Price Peace?, Dodd, Mead, 1978.]