After hearing an American publisher compare the claim that the Jewish people has a legal right to Judea and Samaria to flat-earth theories, Prof. Abraham Sion decided that he had to compile all the historical documentation in a book that would prove the silenced truth of international law.
102 Years to the San Remo Conference:
In his new book To Whom Was the Promised Land Promised, Prof. Abraham Sion drilled down into the constitutional nucleus from which the State of Israel emerged in international law. After a close study of hundreds of documents, certificates, minutes and articles, he presents the reader with an unequivocal statement whereby there can be no doubt as to whether the Land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people according to international law.
The catalyst that moved Prof. Sion to conduct his research was the determination that has become fixed in the international mind that Judea and Samaria are Arab territories stolen by the State of Israel. “This conception is the source of all the trouble,” he says, explaining that in the beginning, he looked for a publisher in the USA and the UK for his book, and he couldn’t understand why one publisher after another refused or ignored his inquiries. When he personally approached one of the publishers, he was told, “It’s the same reason why I won’t publish a book claiming that the earth is flat.” That answer clarified for him the extent to which the Palestinian narrative had taken over the international mind, and also precisely why he had to make sure his book saw the light of day.
In his book, Prof. Sion provides authentic letters, memoranda and protocols from the British cabinet and the British Foreign and Colonial Offices, as well as numerous international documents proving that from the early twentieth century, the Land of Israel was designated by binding international resolutions and agreements, which became part of international law, to become the national home of the Jewish people. At that time, the Arabs living in Eretz Israel were given civil and religious – but not national – rights. Those Arabs were considered residents of southern Syria.
A national home for Jews still dispersed around the world too
At the San Remo conference, the Allied Powers that won World War I, Britain, France, Italy, Japan, and the United States, as an influential observer, decided to divide the Middle East between the two peoples that had aided them in World War I against the Turks: Middle Eastern Arabs represented by the Sherif of Mecca (later King Hussein of Hedjaz) and the Jewish people as a whole, represented by the Zionist Organization. The Arab nation received independence in the entire Middle East except for Palestine (Eretz Israel), after 440 years of living under the Turkish yoke, and the Jewish people was promised that the Land of Israel on both sides of the Jordan would serve as its national home on the way to becoming an independent state. Prof. Sion’s research emphasizes that while the Arabs were promised independence for the indigenous inhabitants of the region, the national home was promised to the Jewish people, even though the vast majority of its members lived outside Eretz Israel. This meant that any Jew anywhere could consider themselves belonging to the national home in Eretz Israel.
Prof. Sion rejects the claim from the Arab side that the allied powers did not have the authority to carry out the partition. This claim is baseless, he maintains, because “Sovereignty in the regions of the Middle East passed from the Ottoman power to the World War I Allies because the Turks ceded their sovereignty over these areas to the Allies in the Treaty of Sèvres.”
Prof. Sion further notes that according to the accepted international law at the time, a country that occupied enemy territories in war was entitled to annex those territories without having to obtain the approval of any international body. However, after World War I, the Allies, under the influence of US President Woodrow Wilson, decided to abandon this practice, and in the spirit of the Covenant of the League of Nations, resolved to establish mandatory regimes in these territories.
The purpose of these mandates was for the Mandatory powers to prepare the local residents for independence until they were able to function as independent countries. However, with regard to the Jewish people and the Land of Israel, the wording and purpose of the mandate were different from the other mandates. While the mandates for Mesopotamia (Iraq), Syria and Lebanon, was worded so that residents of these areas would be immediately entitled to independence subject to certain conditions, the mandate for Eretz Israel stated that Palestine-Eretz Israel would be entrusted to the British government for one purpose only: to establish a national home for the Jewish people in the Land of Israel.
In this way, tier upon tier, Prof. Sion describes in his book how in the five years after the Balfour Declaration, through the San Remo Resolution and the Treaty of Sèvres, up to the charter of the British Mandate, which was unanimously confirmed by the League of Nations’ 54 members, the rights of the Jewish people to Eretz Israel were put in place. “Each stage reinforced the stage that preceded it,” he emphasizes.
"If the Arabs ask now why we were given the Land of Israel, we will ask why they were given the rest of the Middle East, because it was a combined partition resolution, and if the Jewish part of the partition is called into question, then the Arab part of it must inevitably be called into question as well.”
On the manner in which all the many details of the information he gathered for his book have been and continue to be silenced, Prof. Zion says: "No one can contend with these claims and no one contended with them in the past. They ignore international law as if it does not exist.”
Why then has no Israeli government, right or left, presented these facts and this historical truth?
“Netanyahu and the right-wing governments did not want to deal with this because they were afraid. They were afraid of condemnations from all over the world and questions that if it is not Palestinian territory, then what do you want to do? That’s why he’s been walking on eggshells.”