A UN coalition sought to rewrite history by labeling the Territories ‘Occupied Territories,’ thus endowing them with an aura of bogus statehood and a false history. They used capital letters for ‘Occupied Territories’ and then shifted to ‘Palestinian Occupied Territories’ and ‘Palestine,’ as if title or ownership could be assigned out of thin air.

No legal binding authority has empowered any UN organ, including the International Court of Justice (ICJ), to decide that the unallocated territories of the West Bank, known as Judea and Samaria, and the Gaza strip could be transformed into ‘Occupied Palestinian Territories’ or ‘Palestine.’ UN organs' use of these dishonest, loaded terms empowers terrorism and the Palestinians with the right to use all measures to expel Israel. Kofi Annan’s use of the phrase ‘illegal occupation’ is a “perilous threat to the diplomatic search for peace,” says Professor George Fletcher, an expert in international law.¹

“The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has been insistent, not least as regards questions of territorial title, that the rules and concepts of international law have to be interpreted ‘by reference to the law in force’ and ‘the State practice’ at the relevant period.”²

The General Assembly attempts to legislate changes in the status of the Territories against Israel and the Rule of International Law.

One can easily trace the General Assembly’s attempts to legislate changes in the status of the Territories, doctoring the definition of the status of the Territories. These attempts are well documented on the website of the Palestinian delegation to the United Nations that posts landmark pro-Palestinian decisions. Examination reveals how over the years in the UN General Assembly resolutions and the wording of resolutions by sub-committees moves from “territories” to “occupied territories” to “Occupied Territories” and “Arab territories” and from “occupied Palestinian territories” to “Occupied Palestinian Territory” and “Occupied Palestinian Territory, including Jerusalem”:

• Resolution 3236 (XXIX) passed in November 1974 speaks of “the question of Palestine”;
• Resolution 38/58 in December 1983 speaks of “Arab territories” and “occupied territories”;
• Resolution 43/176 passed in December 1988 expresses sentiments suggesting Palestinian entitlement – speaking of “the Palestinian people['s] right to exercise their sovereignty over their territory occupied since 1967”;
• Resolution 51/133 passed in December 1996 adds Jerusalem in particular – speaking of “occupied Palestinian territory, including Jerusalem, and the occupied Syrian Golan…”;
• Resolution 52/250 passed in July 1998 fully “assigns title” – speaking of “Occupied Palestinian Territory,” a designation that is frequently used in subsequent resolutions.

None of these terms have a legal foundation any more than declaring “The world is flat” makes it so. Yet the International Court of Justice cites these terms as if they were legal documents. Even junior jurists know better.

It should be noted: The coining of the term “Occupied Palestinian Territory” by the General Assembly, and all the more so its ‘adoption’ by the International Court of Justice, is contrary to, and totally incompatible with, Article 12 of the UN Charter which states:

“While the Security Council is exercising in respect of any dispute or situation the functions assigned to it in the present Charter, the General Assembly shall not make any recommendation with regard to that dispute or situation unless the Security Council so requests.” (emphasis added)

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Not until the late 1980s did the Arab Palestinians adopt ‘Anthem of the Intifada’ as their national anthem, two decades after Israel took over the West Bank. The use of the word ‘Palestine’ was adopted by the Arabs specifically for political gain, to brand Israelis as invaders and to claim the geographic area called Palestine as exclusively belonging to the Arabs.

The artificiality of a Palestinian identity is reflected in the attitudes and actions of neighboring Arabs who never established a Palestinian state or advocated one prior to the Six-Day War in 1967. What unites Palestinians has been their opposition to Jewish nationalism and the desire to stamp it out, not aspirations for their own state. Local patriotic feelings are generated only when a non-Islamic entity takes charge – such as Israel did in 1967 after the Six-Day War. It dissipates under Arab rule, no matter how distant or despotic, as it was under the rule of Jordan prior to 1967.

Culturally, Palestinians are not distinct from other Arabs. The sole contributions Palestinians can take credit for are the invention of skyjacking for political purposes in the 1960s, and lately a special brand of suicidal terrorism that uses their own youth as delivery systems for bombing pizza parlors, discos, and public commuter buses.

Ironically, before local Jews began calling themselves Israelis in 1948 (the name Israel was chosen for the newly established Jewish state), the term ‘Palestine’ applied almost exclusively to Jews and the institutions founded by new Jewish immigrants in the first half of the 20th century, before independence. Some examples include:

• The Jerusalem Post, founded in 1932, was called the Palestine Post until 1948.³
• Bank Leumi L’Israel was called the “Anglo-Palestine Bank, a Jewish Company.”
• The Jewish Agency – an arm of the Zionist movement engaged in Jewish settlement since 1929 – was called the Jewish Agency for Palestine.
• The house organ of American Zionism in the 1930s was called New Palestine.
• Today’s Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, founded in 1936 by German Jewish refugees who fled Nazi Germany, was called the Palestine Symphony Orchestra, composed of some 70 Palestinian Jews.⁴
• The United Jewish Appeal (UJA) was established in 1939 as a merger of the United Palestine Appeal and the fundraising arm of the Joint Distribution Committee.
  

Princeton University professor of Semitic literature Philip Hitti (1886-1978), one of the greatest Arabic historians of the ninth century and author of ‘The History of the Arabs,’ testifying on behalf of the Arab cause, told the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine in 1946:⁵ “There is no ‘Palestine’ in history, absolutely not.”

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The definition of the term “occupied territory” that appears in the U.S. Department of Defense’s Dictionary of Military Terms⁶ demonstrates an awareness of the widespread misuse of the term ‘occupied territory’ and notes the inappropriateness of the term in situations such as in the West Bank. The definition says:

“Territory under the authority and effective control of a belligerent armed force. The term is not applicable to territory being administered pursuant to peace terms, treaty, or other agreement, express or implied, with the civil authority of the territory.”

Since the end of World War II, no border dispute in the world has been defined ‘occupied territories,’ except Israel. In virtually every other disagreement concerning borders and territories,⁷ the most common terms applied are ‘territorial disputes’ or ‘contested borders.’ This includes Bosnia-Herzegovina, East Timor, even the Western Sahara and Kashmir. U.S. Department of State documents speak of Kashmir as ‘disputed areas’ and describe clashes between Azerbaijan and Armenian separatists as an issue of ‘disputed areas’; Morocco’s military incursion into the Western Sahara is not commonly labeled an ‘occupation’ and Turkey’s presence in Northern Cyprus is not branded ‘occupied territory.’⁸

Indicative of this bias – which extends to academe, the compilers of a collection of documents and maps devoted to Palestine from 1946 to 1964⁹ didn’t consider Jordan’s invasion, occupation and illegal annexation of the entire West Bank – 5,875 sq. kilometers – important enough to justify a mention in the overview. However the collection’s timeline notes “Israeli occupation of Jordanian territory, Jisr Majami,” a reference to control of a 4.5 acre island in the middle of the Jordan River, whose control under the 1949 armistice was subject to dispute and ballooned into a diplomatic crisis and a domestic crises in Jordan in September 1950.¹⁰

The use of the term ‘occupied territories’ is a misleading, politically loaded pejorative – a red herring designed to rob Israel of any legal or moral rights and empower Palestinians with the right to “use all measures”¹¹ to expel Israel.

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“Palestine” is a geographic designation¹² – like the Great Plains; not a polity. In fact, Palestine has never been an independent state belonging to any people nor did a Palestinian people, distinct from other Arabs, appear during 1,300 years of Muslim hegemony in the “Palestine” under Arab and Ottoman rule. Local Arabs during that rule were actually considered part of and subject to the authority of Greater Syria (Suriyya al-Kubra).

Like a mantra, Arabs, the UN, its organs and now the International Court of Justice have claimed repeatedly that the Palestinians are a native people – so much so that almost everyone takes it for granted. The problem is that a stateless Palestinian people is a fabrication. The word ‘Palestine’ is not Arabic.

In a report by His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to the Council of the League of Nations, on the administration of Palestine and Trans-Jordan for the year 1938, the British made it clear - Palestine is not a State but is the name of a geographical area.

Below is a copy of the original document as filed at the British National Archive.
The delineation of the geographical area called Palestine:

Paragraph 1 of Article 22 of the Covenant of the “League of Nations” reads:¹³

The Palestinian Royal Commission Report of July, 1937 addresses Arab claims that the creation of the Jewish National Home as directed by the Mandate for Palestine violated Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations:¹⁴

“As to the claim, argued before us by Arab witnesses, that the Palestine Mandate violates Article 22 of the Covenant because it is not in accordance with paragraph 4 thereof, we would point out (a) that the provisional recognition of “certain communities formerly belonging to the Turkish Empire” as independent nations is permissive; the words are “can be provisionally recognised”, not “will” or “shall”: (b) that the penultimate paragraph of Article 22 prescribes that the degree of authority to be exercised by the Mandatory shall be defined, at need, by the Council of the League: (c) that the acceptance by the Allied Powers and the United States of the policy of the Balfour Declaration made it clear from the beginning that Palestine would have to be treated differently from Syria and Iraq, and that this difference of treatment was confirmed by the Supreme Council in the Treaty of Sevres and by the Council of the League in sanctioning the Mandate.

This particular question is of less practical importance than it might seem to be. For Article 2 of the Mandate requires “the development of self-governing institutions”; and, read in the light of the general intention of the Mandate System (of which something will be said presently), this requirement implies, in our judgment, the ultimate establishment of independence.

(3) The field [Territory] in which the Jewish National Home was to be established was understood, at the time of the Balfour Declaration, to be the whole of historic Palestine, and the Zionists were seriously disappointed when Trans-Jordan was cut away from that field [Territory] under Article 25.” (That excluded 76% of the original area - east of the Jordan River, what became later Trans-Jordan.)

The “inhabited … peoples” of the territory for whom the Mandate for Palestine was created, who were “not yet able” to govern themselves and for whom self-determination was a “sacred trust,” were not Palestinians, or even Arabs. The Mandate for Palestine was created by the predecessor of the United Nations, the League of Nations, for the Jewish People.¹⁵

The second paragraph of the Mandate for Palestine therefore reads:

Because, Palestinians have been so successful in co-opting for themselves the term ‘Palestinian’ over the past few decades, the world appears to be ignorant of the fact that “Palestinian” was once a “Jewish” term.

The Mandate for Palestine clearly differentiates between political rights – referring to Jewish self-determination as an emerging polity, and civil rights – referring to guarantees of equal citizenship and personal freedoms to non-Jewish residents as individuals and within select communities. Not once are Arabs as a people mentioned in the Mandate for Palestine. At no point within the entire document is there any granting of political rights to non-Jewish entities (i.e. Arabs) because political rights to self-determination as a polity for Arabs were guaranteed in three other parallel ‘Class A’ mandates – in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. (Transjordan - today Jordan, became an independent Arab state in 1946, by a provision approved by the League of Nations under Article 25 of the Mandate for Palestine). Article 2 of the Mandate states explicitly that the Mandatory should create:

Eleven times in the Mandate for Palestine, the League of Nations speaks specifically of Jews and the Jewish people, calling upon Great Britain to create a nationality law “to facilitate the acquisition of Palestinian citizenship by Jews who take up their permanent residence in Palestine,” to establish a parliament, and to develop economic and cultural institutions befitting a future nation-state (Article 7).

There is not one mention of the word “Palestinians” or the word “Palestinian Arabs,” as exploited today. Alas, the “non-Jewish communities” the Mandate speaks of were extensions (or in today’s parlance ‘diaspora communities’) of another Arab people for whom a separate mandate had been drawn up at the same time – the Syrians.¹⁷ It is important to note that not only Britain and France were Mandators (e.g. official administrators and mentors), but also Belgium, New Zealand, South Africa and Japan elsewhere – mandates that created Cameroon, Rwanda, Samoa and New Guinea (today’s Papua New Guinea).

Consequently, it is not surprising that Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, a local Arab leader, testified in 1937 before a British investigative body – the Peel Commission - saying:

The term ‘Palestinian’ had only been invented in the 1960s to paint Jews – who had adopted the term “Israelis” after the establishment of the State of Israel – as invaders now residing on Arab turf.

To the average reader lacking a profound historical knowledge of this conflict, the term ‘Mandate for Palestine,’ sound like an Arab trusteeship, but such expression changes neither the history nor the legal facts about Israel.

Arabs categorically rejected the Mandate for Palestine! In the July 22, 1947¹⁹ testimony of the President of the Council of Lebanon, Hamid Frangie, the Lebanese Minister of Foreign Affairs, speaking on behalf of all the Arab countries, declared unequivocally:

Article 20 of the PLO Covenant, adopted by the Palestine National Council in July 1968, never legally revised²¹ and proudly posted on the Palestinian delegation’s UN website²² (which can be accessed via the UN’s main website²³) states:

The PLO’s Article adds that Jews do not meet the criteria of a nationality and therefore do not deserve statehood at all, clarifying this statement in Article 21 that Palestinians,

In a recent ruling by the ICJ in connection with a request for an advisory opinion,²⁴ the International Court of Justice (ICJ) figured it could talk of a ‘stand-alone’ Mandate for Palestine established in 1922 and assume that most readers – including jurists, journalists and policy makers reading the decision but not being historians - would believe “Mandate for Palestine” was the foundation for a Palestinian state, and never be the wiser. Or the learned judges simply didn’t do their homework and remained unaware that the Mandate for Palestine was earmarked specifically and exclusively for the Jewish People.

The ramifications of the ICJ’s citation in that case, fallaciously justified after examine an abridged version of the Mandate for Palestine are tremendous, effectively going beyond the ‘embarrassment’ of assuming the Mandate for Palestine was for present day Palestinians to actually creating a lie that can only contribute to deeper bias and incitement.

International law, the UN Charter, and Article 80 of the UN Charter implicitly recognize the Mandate of the League of Nations. This Mandate granted Jews the irrevocable right to settle in the area of Palestine - anywhere between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

The Jewish right to settle in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip remains intact, writes Professor Eugene V. Rostow, U.S. Undersecretary of State in 1967.²⁵

Why is it so important that neither option was acted on? One could simply stick to legalities and the binding nature of the Mandate. There is, however, another dimension: The failure to amend the Mandate demonstrates that the Mandate for Palestine was not a naive vision, briefly embraced by the international community in blissful unawareness of Arab opposition to the very notion of Jewish historical rights in Palestine. While the Mandate for a Jewish Homeland was, indeed, penned and adopted in 1922-3, it weathered the test of time: The League of Nation’s Mandate for Palestine was adopted by the United Nations in 1945 ‘as is,’ despite the option to revise it as a United Nation’s trusteeship under new terms. Thus, in 1945, the international community, in essence, reaffirmed the validity of this international accord and reconfirmed that the terms for a Jewish Homeland were the will of the international community, even a “sacred trust” – despite the fact that by then it was patently clear that the Arabs opposed a Jewish homeland, no matter what the form. Again, in 1947 the idea of a trusteeship was briefly floated, but not acted on.

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The British objectives in ‘mentoring’ a national home for the Jewish People' under the Mandate for Palestine were not based solely on the 1917 Balfour Declaration. While international support for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine was set in motion by this landmark British policy statement, international intent rested on a solid consensus, expressed in a series of accords and declarations that reflected the 'will' of the international community, hardly the product of a colonial empire with its own agenda.

The Mandate itself notes this intent when it cites that the Mandate is based on the agreement of “the Principal Allied Powers” and declares:

A June 1922 letter from the British Secretary of State for the Colonies, Winston Churchill, reiterated that

In his first Report of The High Commissioner on the Administration of Palestine 1920-1925 To the Secretary of State for the Colonies, published in April 1925, the most senior official of the Mandate for Palestine, the High Commissioner for Palestine, underscored how “international guarantee[s]” for the existence of a Jewish National Home in Palestine were achieved:

It is remarkable to note the Report of The High Commissioner on the Administration of Palestine, addressed to the Right Honourable L. S. Amery, M.P., Secretary of State for the Colonies’ Government Offices in 22nd April, 1925, describing Jewish Peoplehood:

Far from the whim of this or that politician or party, 11 successive British governments, Labor and Conservative, from David Lloyd George (1916-1922) through Clement Attlee (1945-1952) viewed themselves as duty-bound to fulfill the “Mandate for Palestine” placed in the hands of Great Britain by the League of Nations.²⁶

At no point in the “Mandate for Palestine” is there any granting of political rights to non-Jewish entities (i.e. Arabs), only civil rights, because political rights to self-determination as a polity for Arabs were guaranteed in four other parallel mandates for Arab peoples, initially in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq and later in Transjordan.

Professor Rostow, examining the claim for Arab Palestinian’s self-determination on the basis of law, concludes:

Apart from the legal rights bestowed in the Mandate for Palestine, International Law, distinguished legal scholars and more recent history, confirm that based on Arab aggression in 1948, 1967 and 1973 Israelis have rights to the territories of the West Bank and Gaza.

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Israel has fought four major wars in self-defence against unlawful acts of aggression committed by her Arab neighbors.

Throughout the history of Mandate Palestine, Jews were law-abiding, peaceful people defending themselves against Arab aggression. In a 1946 report, the Anglo-American Committee reported its observation regarding Jews living in the land of Palestine:

About six months before the War of Independence in 1948, Palestinian Arabs launched a series of riots, pillaging, and bloodletting. Then came the invasion of five Arab armies from neighboring states attempting to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state in accordance with the UN’s 1947 Partition Plan, a plan the Arabs rejected. (See “Resolution 181: Legitimizing Jewish statehood” in the chapter ”United Nations Resolutions.”)²⁹

The Jewish state not only survived; it came into possession of territories – land from which its adversaries launched their first attempt to destroy the newly created State of Israel.

In the first critical weeks after the British left the region and Israel declared its independence, the combined Arab armies had about 270 tanks, 150 field guns and 300 aircraft on four fronts³⁰ (Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt) aimed at a small Jewish militia with three tanks and five artillery pieces. Israel had no air force, and until arms were rushed in from abroad³¹ and a regular army could be organized, it relied on the only strength it had: 70 years worth of social solidarity inspired by the Zionist endeavor.

Israel’s citizens understood that defeat meant the end of their Jewish state before it could even get off the ground. In the first critical weeks of battle, and against all odds, Israel prevailed on several fronts.

The metaphor of Israel having her back to the sea reflected the image crafted by Arab political and religious leaders’ rhetoric and incitement. Several car bombs had killed Jews and massacres of Jewish civilians underscored Arab determination to wipe out the Jews and their state.

There were 6,000 Israeli dead as a result of that war, in a population of 600,000. One percent of the Jewish population was gone. In American terms, the equivalent is 2.8 million American civilians and soldiers killed over an 18-month period.³²

Under the pressure of war, Palestinian society collapsed in disarray.³³ Both sides were left to cope with hundreds of thousands of refugees – Jewish and Arab. Yet the way the Arab world dealt with their refugees contrasts glaringly with the way Jews welcomed their owns. This same contrast parallels how Jews and Arabs have approached the notion of compromise over the past 85 years.

The Israel War of Independence in 1948 was Israel war of self-defence as may be reflected in UN resolutions that named Israel a “peace loving State”³⁴ when it applied for membership at the United Nations. Both, the Security Council (4 March, 1949, S/RES/69) and the UN General Assembly (11 May, 1949, (A/RES/273 (III)) declared:

Arab losses caused by their own unlawful acts of aggression in 1967.

In June 1967, the combined armies of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan attacked Israel with the clear purpose expressed by Egypt’s President: “… Destruction of Israel.” At the end of what is now known as the Six-Day War, Israel, against all odds, was victorious and in possession of the territories of the West Bank, Sinai and the Golan Heights.

International law makes a clear distinction between defensive wars and wars of aggression. More than half a century after the 1948 War and nearly four decades since the 1967 Six-Day War, it is hard to imagine the dire circumstances Israel faced and the price it paid to fend off its neighbors’ attacks.

A core issue leading to those wars are the borders, and one of the key questions is whether borders can be established that do not invite aggression.

In 1967, the combined Arab armies had approximately 465,000 troops, more than 2,880 tanks and 810 aircraft,³⁵ preparing to attack Israel at once. Israel, faced with the imminent threat of obliteration, was forced to invoke its right of Self-Defence, a basic tenet of international law, enshrined in Article 51³⁶ of the United Nations Charter. Israel launched a surprised pre-emptive air strike against Egypt on June 5, 1967.

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That objective is very much in the minds of the majority of Palestinian Arabs – in the leadership and the general population, as well as in the minds of their brethren in other Arab countries - though their tactics may have changed.³⁷

1948: Arab League Secretary-General Azzam Pasha exulted: “This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades.”

1954: Saudi Arabian King Saud ibn Abdul Aziz: “The Arab nations should sacrifice up to 10 million of their 50 million people, if necessary, to wipe out Israel... Israel to the Arab world is like a cancer to the human body, and the only way of remedy is to uproot it, just like a cancer.”

1967: Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser: “Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel.” (May 27, 1967, nine days before the start of the Six-Day War.)

1973: Libyan President Mohammar Qadaffi: “The battle with Israel must be such that, after it, Israel will cease to exist.” (al-Usbu al-Arrabi, Beirut. Quoted by Algiers Radio, Nov. 12, 1973.)

1980: PLO representative in Saudi Arabia Rafiq Najshah: “There has been no change whatsoever in the fundamental strategy of the PLO, which is based on the total liberation of Palestine and the destruction of the occupying country.... On no accounts will the Palestinians accept part of Palestine and call it the Palestinian state, while forfeiting the remaining areas which are called the State of Israel.”

1996: Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat: “[Our aim is] to eliminate the State of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian one.” (In a closed meeting with Arab diplomats in Europe, quoted in the Middle East Digest, March 7, 1996.)

1996: PLO spokesperson Bassam abu-Sharif: “The struggle against the Zionist enemy is not a matter of borders but relates to the mere existence of the Zionist entity.” (In an interview with the Kuwait News Agency, May 31, 1996).

2001: PA Minister for Jerusalem Affairs, Faisal al-Husseini: “The strategic goal is the liberation of Palestine from the Jordanian [sic] River to the Mediterranean Sea, even if this means that the conflict will last for another thousand years or for many generations.” (In an interview with the Egyptian paper al-Arabi, June 24, 2001.)

2003: The late Dr. Abdel Aziz Rantisi, the key leader of Hamas: “By God, we will not leave one Jew in Palestine. We will fight them with all the strength we have. This is our land, not the Jews.” (In a telephone interview with Al Jazeera television. Reported in the Jerusalem Times, June 10, 2003.)

2005: “Among those to whom Mahmoud Abbas’s [EH, The elected Palestinian President] victory in Sunday’s PA leadership election was dedicated were the ‘Palestinian’ homicide bombers who have taken the lives of hundreds of Israeli men, women and children, and permanently maimed thousands more. (Reported by Jerusalem Newswire Editorial Staff. January 11, 2005)

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UN Charter Article 51 clearly recognizes “the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations” by anyone.

The suggestion that a small country such as Israel should be expected to absorb the shock of a first strike against horrendous odds or be branded an aggressor abridges both the spirit and intention of Article 51. It also is untenable in practice, as demonstrated in the existential threat and horrific cost in human life that Israel suffered in the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

Recall that Israel decided against a preemptive air strike just hours before the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War in 1973, choosing not to jeopardize her support from Washington, after the Nixon Administration warned Israel to allow the Arabs to fire the first shot³⁹ and not make “provocative moves.” The results for Israel’s “good” behavior: 2,222 Israeli dead and 5,596 wounded.⁴⁰

Arab leaders ‘bundle’ the countries who fought Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War into one ‘entity’ in order to cloud the issues. They point to Israel’s surprise pre-emptive attack on Egypt as an act of unlawful aggression, and add that this “unlawful aggression” prevents Israel from claiming the Territories under international law.

Professor, Judge Stephen M. Schwebel⁴¹ states the following facts:

Before Israel’s pre-emptive and surprise attack on the Egyptian air force, a series of belligerent acts by the Arab state justified Israel’s resort to arms in self-defence, as justified by the Law of Nations (see UN General Assembly Resolution 3314 in the chapter “Definition of Aggression”). The Egyptians were responsible for:

The expulsion of UN peacekeepers from Sinai – stationed there since 1956 to act as a buffer when Israel withdrew from Sinai;
The closure of Israel’s outlet from the Red Sea in defiance of the Geneva Conference of 1958 on free navigation “through straits used for international navigation between one part of the high seas and … the territorial sea of a foreign nation” (For 16 years Egypt illegally blocked Israeli use of the Suez Canal);
the failure of the international community to break the blockade; and
the massing of Egyptian forces in Sinai and moving them toward Israel’s border.⁴²

In 1957, when Egypt provoked Israel by blockading the Red Sea - crippling her ability to conduct sea trade with Africa and the Far East - the major Western powers negotiated Israel’s withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula, and agreed that Israel's rights would be reserved under Article 51 if Egypt staged future raids and blockades against Israel.⁴³

In 1967, Egypt’s closing of the Straits of Tiran to Israeli ships before June 5, was an unlawful act of aggression. The Israeli response was a lawful act of self-defence under Article 51 and Resolution 3314. [italics by author]

Israel’s enemies and critics ignore or conveniently forget the facts, as Arabs and their sympathizers continue to blame Israel for ‘starting’ the 1967 war.

Were the acts by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1967 against Israel aggressive enough to warrant Israel’s exercise of her right to self-defence?

The answer can be found on the official website of the Jordanian Government under the heading ‘The Disaster of 1967.’ It describes the events of the days prior to June 5, 1967 and clearly indicates that Jordan, at least, expected Egypt to launch the offensive war against Israel:⁴⁴

Jordan initiated a first strike against Israel in 1967. Thus, Israel acted lawfully by exercising its right of self-defence when it redeemed and legally occupied the West Bank known as Judea and Samaria.

Israel did not enter the West Bank until it was attacked. This fact is admitted on the official website of the Jordanian Government under the heading ‘The Disaster of 1967’ that they attacked Israel first:⁴⁵

Israel had clarified to Jordan through UN diplomatic channels that it should stay out of the war. It stated simply: “We shall not attack any country unless it opens war on us.”⁴⁶ King Hussein of Jordan sent a reply via the UN envoy that “since Israel had attacked Egypt, [Israel] would receive his reply by air”⁴⁷ – a ‘message’ that came in the form of Jordanian air raids on civilian and military targets: Shelling Jewish Jerusalem with mortars and long-range artillery on Ben-Gurion Airport and then extending the front to shelling Israel’s ‘narrow hips’ under the mistaken belief that the Arabs were winning. Had Jordan heeded Israel's message of peace instead of Egypt's lies that the Arabs were winning the war, the Hashemite Kingdom could have remained neutral in the conflict, and Eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank would have remained in Jordan's possession. Jordan was far from a ‘minor player’ in the Arabs’ war of aggression as their narrative implies; Israel lost 183 soldiers in battle with Jordanian forces, including a furious and costly tank battle, five kilometers from the Green Line at Israel’s ‘narrow hips.’

Judge Sir Elihu Lauterpacht wrote in 1968, just one year after the 1967 Six-Day War:

Professor, Judge Schwebel’s writing leads to the conclusion that under international law, Israel is permitted to stay in the West Bank as long as it is necessary to her self-defence.

Professor, Judge Schwebel, wrote in What Weight to Conquest:⁴⁸

Most UN General Assembly Resolutions regarding Israel read at the start:

The use of this statement in connection with Israel holding to the Territories is disingenuous, to say the least.

Professor, Judge Schwebel explains that the principle of “acquisition of territory by war is inadmissible” ⁴⁹

Simply stated: Arab illegal aggression against the territorial integrity and political independence of Israel, can not and should not be reworded.

Judge Sir Elihu Lauterpacht, Judge ad hoc of the International Court of Justice, argued in 1968 that:⁵⁰

Professor Julius Stone, a leading authority on the Law of Nations, stated:⁵¹

Because the Arabs were clearly the aggressors, nowhere in UN Security Council Resolutions 242 or 338 – the cornerstones of a peace settlement – is Israel branded as an invader or occupier of the Territories and there is no call for Israel to withdraw from all the Territories. Palestinians’ allegations that the wording of 242 was ‘deliberately ambiguous’ or misconstrued are unfounded.

Columbia University Law Professor George Fletcher further clarified those points, after UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called Israel’s occupation of lands acquired in the 1967 Six-Day War “illegal.”⁵²

Kofi Annan became victim to the ‘Occupation’ mantra his own organization has repeated over and over in its propaganda campaign to legitimize the Arab position.

Because the Arabs were clearly the aggressors, nowhere in UN Security Council Resolutions 242 or 338 – the cornerstones of a peace settlement – is Israel branded as an invader or occupier of the Territories and there is no call for Israel to withdraw from all the Territories.

Resolutions 242 and 338 both rest on the concept of lawful occupations and acknowledge the current legal status of western Palestine as one unit by its reference to the lack of “recognized and secure boundaries.”

Such hostile acts beg the question whether the Palestinian Authority, a semi-autonomous political body, also has responsibilities to respect international law.

Strategically, the West Bank juts into Israel’s densely populated coastal plain, inviting aggression. Consequently, the Palestinians’ guerilla war on Israel is not an isolated case. Palestinian forces repeatedly attacked Jews from Arab-dominated areas of the West Bank before Israel ‘occupied’ the West Bank in 1967: Jenin and Nablus on the West Bank were the heart of the 1936-39 Arab Revolt that targeted both British authorities and Zionist settlements. West Bank villagers played a key role in this first stage of the 1948 war, when organized armed gangs based on geographic and familial affinity cut off or overran isolated Jewish settlements and laid siege to Jerusalem by attacking Jewish convoys with food and other essentials. This stage of the war was also marked by several horrific war crimes, including the April 1948 massacre of a convoy of 78 doctors, nurses, patients, and their guards on their way to Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus and the murder of 127 men and women from the beleaguered village of Kfar Etzion near Bethlehem in May 1948 by a lynch mob of thousands of local Palestinian Arabs, after the defenders surrendered to the Jordanian Arab Legion.⁵⁴ And during the early 1950s the West Bank served as a safe haven for Palestinian infiltrators in a series of cross-border terrorist attacks.⁵⁵

Nearly all of the above legal commentary cited in this chapter regarding ‘wars of aggression’ were written long before the Palestinian Authority, a semi-autonomous political entity, launched a vicious guerilla war against Israel in October 2000, but the insights and opinions voiced beg the question: Should Palestinians, be considered accountable for their repeated aggression when it comes to setting “secure and recognized borders”?