The Legal Case for Palestine - A Critical Assessment 

Thanks for the Truth! Having studied this area for a long time, I recognise Truth as opposed to media driven misinformation.

I am missing the argument that according to the principle of international law known as Uti Possidetis Juris, Israel inherited the whole territory of ex-Mandatory Palestine. Hint: In the Jorda-Israel peace treaty, these borders (the outer boundaries of the ex-Mandatory Palestine) are recognized as the official borders between Jordan and Israel. Which means that statements and demands presented by the Arabs, various governments, and organizations (e.g., the UN) accusing Israel of occupation have no legal basis. Based on this fact, the UN resolution 242 not only contradicts international (Uti Possidetis Juris) but also contradicts the principle that is enshrined in multiple documents of international law according to which war of aggression is illegal. The Arabs captured Israeli territories (see the UPJ) in a war of aggression, and 242 asked Israel to give up those territories in favor of the aggressor.

Good video - this needs wider distribution.

Fantastic, honest, comprehensive presentation. Thank you! Unfortunately, most people don't really care about truth, history, justice or law.

Great video. I am German and I stand with Israel.

This was not what I expected when I opened this video... Super interesting, thanks!

Putting aside those who stupidly think that IDF was patrolling Gaza pre-October 7, and there are many, many say that Israel is occupying Gaza because they consider the strongly guarded borders at the perimeter to be a de facto occupation. And that might be arguable if Hamas had not shot thousands of rockets into Israel over the past 20 years. It is mind numbing that people pretend that Israel should not keep her border secure for the safety of her people.

The british mandate of palestine included also the area where Jordan is today, so the arabs of palestine already have a state since 1947 and it is 3 times bigger than Israel. It is weird that none mention this.

The problem began with the mandate's NAME "Mandate of Palestine" (taken from the Roman Empire,) instead of the name "Mandate of Israel". There was no such thing as a Palestinian statehood (or Kingdom, OR political entity) at all, Roman PROVICE, yes (that was changed from Israel and Judea two thousands years ago.) Arabs did, of course, migrated from the peninsula to the Levant since the Roman Empire's time, but they were under entity after entity since.

One point regarding the Jerusalem "corpus seperatum" proposed in UNGA 181, it was explicitly to exist for no more than ten years. The international status was to end, had the proposal been implemented, in 1957 at the latest. The security council refused to implement 181 because the UN did not have the authority or jurisdiction to impose sovereignty upon peoples as it wishes. The suggestion that Jerusalem be internationalized put forth in UNGA 194, among other suggestions, essentially proposing that Israel relinquish sovereignty it had already asserted, was unquestionably beyond the jurisdiction of the UN to demand. With regard to Uti Possidetus Juris, the ICJ VP asserted in her dissenting opinion that it absolutely applies. There is simply no basis for the Palestine Arab claim to any territory, much less the use of the term "Palestinian territory" with regard to territory liberated in 1967. All of Mandatory Palestine was Palestinian, and all those who resided in Mandatory Palestine were Palestinian: Palestine Jews and Palestine Arabs alike.

Thank you very much for such informative talk.

An excellent presentation with just one concern. He talks, right at the end, about the ICJ's advisory that the Israeli 'occupation' of 'the West Bank' is illegal. Surely it needs to be said that Israel controls Area C under the Oslo Accords, so is therefore by definition not illegal. Indeed, it is not 'occupation'.

An excellent presentation. One question I have relates to the San Remo Agreement which was not repealed or rescinded when the League of Nations effectively became the United Nations after WW2. In fact it remains in force today and is the elephant in the room as far as any discussion (including the recent court case) over any dispute in respect of settlements (described as close settements in the Agreement). My question is why have continuous Israeli governments, starting with Ben Gurion's government right up to today, consistently seemed to ignore Article 6 and the rights it gives to the jews of the land?

Excellent. Thank you

Thank you for clarifying the legal position. It's a pity the UN is no longer a rational, unbiased organisation.

Thank you for this solid and informative talk. I’ll be reading your book and recommending to others as the false narratives need to be outed.

You does a big work. Thank you.

What a wonderfully argued presentation. This needs to go viral!

Thank you Steve for your thorough, and well-researched presentation/book. You give Israel a voice of truth in a hostile world.

Thanks much for this clear-eyes analysis. The partial concurrence-partial dissent of Judge Cleveland, the U.S. jurist on the ICJ, is shameful. She lends credence to some of the worst aspects of the ICJ’s opinion, which sought to add a legal veneer to a broader effort to disestablish the State of Israel.

Oh that's him! I read two of his books

There are so many tunnels between Egypt and Gaza that I wonder what the heck that massive fence is resting on.

You did not use the argument of Uti possidetis juris, the application of which is heavily relied upon in International Law. hence the borders of Iraq Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Why the UN doesn't see those facts?

As a practical matter, societies that start and lose wars tend not to have their interests met or advanced. The Ottoman Empire controlled Palestine prior to WW1. The Arab-Muslim leaders and population living in Palestine actively supported the Kaiser against England/France/US in WW1. They picked the losing side. During WW2 the Arab Muslim leadership in Palestine actively supported and fought on behalf of Hitler and the Axis Powers. They were on the losing side. By contrast, Jews living in the region supported and fought for the allies. In 1948, 1967, 1973 Arab-Muslim nations launched wars of eradication against Jews and Israel, supported by the majority of local Arab-Muslim-Palestinian population. Again and again they started a war, lost the war, were offered and rejected sovereign land, and wonder why they have a weak hand.

There has NEVER been a Palestinian leader prior to 1948 nor a king or prince or any kind of leader ever.

Brilliant, thank you… 🙏🇮🇱💙

In 1922 the 51 member countries of the League of Nations unanimously voted to recognise the Jewish people's right to the land of Israel, not by sufferance (i.e. not in compensation for the brutality done to the Jewish people for millennia) but by historical *right*. In Article 5 of the Mandate it explicitly states, “The Mandatory shall be responsible for seeing that no Palestine territory (meaning Israel) shall be ceded or leased to, or in any way placed under the control of the Government of any foreign Power.” That is binding in international law to this day. In 1924 in the Anglo-American Convention the text of the Mandate was signed also by the Americans affirming the rights of the Jewish People, including recognising the right to settle in all parts of the Land of Israel. Once the League of Nations was dissolved and the United Nations took its place, the member states agreed to maintain all agreements and not “alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments to which Members of the United Nations may respectively be parties” (article 80, U.N. Charter). This means that the non-binding recommendations of the UN regarding Israel, or claims made by the ICC or ICJ, are in fact ILLEGAL. The various agreements made since then between Israel and Arabs, as Israel was bending itself into a pretzel trying to find a way to lasting peace and an end to the ongoing aggression and terrorism by the Arabs, agreements Israel put forth under threat of continuous murder of her citizens by the Arabs, was made under severe duress, and of course agreements made under threat are rendered null, but also in contradiction to international law which grants irrevocable political rights to all the Land from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean to the Jewish People of Israel alone. Jordan's illegal occupation of Judea and Samaria, and Egypt's illegal occupation of the Gaza strip, both taken in wars of aggression but then reclaimed rightfully by Israel later on, do not constitute transfers of ownership of Israel's land. 3,500 years of continuous habitation in the Land of Israel by the People of Israel, despite a very long series of wrongful and brutal occupations of the Land of Israel by various empires, who during their occupations did endless crimes against the Jewish People of Israel present in the Land... and the world still wants to sit and equivocate about, or outright deny the Jewish People of Israel's rights to her own Land ... is SO absurd and profoundly unjust. N.B. Astonishingly one of the Jewish People's greatest Rabbis in history, known as Rashi, who lived in France between 1040 and 1105, wrote in his commentary on Genesis, that the Torah, which is The Law Book of Israel, in theory should have commenced with (Exodus 12:2) “This month shall be unto you the first of the months” which is the first commandment given to Israel. Rashi rhetorically asks why then did the Torah begins with the account of the Creation? And he explains that G-d gives an account of the work of Creation as a form of deed and title to the Land of Israel so that in the future when the nations of the world call the People of Israel robbers, claiming that Israel took the land from other peoples living in the land, that the Torah is our document and the true owner is G-d Almighty, Who bestowed ownership of this Land as the eternal inheritance of the People of Israel. Here we are 1000 years after that commentary was recorded...

Great NARRATIVE Thank you

ty this was well worth the watch... why is youtube deleting comments?

Let’s hope many legal students from around world are shown this by their faculty leads and debated accordingly rather than violent chants of nonsense stimulating others to follow like sheep. ❤

Excellent presentation, How do I get hold of the slides that he used? Yah bless

"In 1948, Israel's border ran along the Eastern border of the British Mandate for Palestine. It included East Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, later called the West Bank. In 1948, in a war of annihilation that was waged on Israel, Jordan illegally occupied that territory and ethnically cleansed it of it's Jews. In 1967, in another war of attempted annihilation waged on the Jewish State, Israel legally recovered that territory. Now let's consider a parallel in International Law. Ukraine's borders were formed under the rule of UTI POSSIDETIS JURIS. And that is why there is an international consensus that Russia is illegally occupying the Crimea. Now, if Ukraine were to recover the Crimea in the same way that Israel had recovered the West Bank in 1967, would anyone here really accuse Ukraine of illegally occupying the Crimea ? Of course not. So why the double standard for the Jewish State ? The fact is THAT THERE IS NO OCCUPATION UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW !!! That is a libelous political term with absolutely no legal basis. ` NATASHA HAUSDORFF, Oxford educated worldwide acclaimed expert on International Law

A lot of good points. And doesn't Israel include all of Judea/Samaria and Gaza under principle of ute possidetis juris?

They need to turn this into a 5-10 min video and run this on a loop

I wish I would have been live so that I could have asked a question which is this. Why would the Uti Possedetis Juris principle apply to all the other Mandate territories but not to Israel?

Is the "oocupied land" really Palestinian? Isn´t it Jordanian (Westbank), Egypt(Gaza) and Syria(Golan)? A result of the 1967 war, where these countries were the aggressors. From that point the "occupation" would be legal, one would think, and the diplomacy to resolve on this would be with these countries, not with an Arab population called Palestinians previously Egyptians, Jordanians and Syrians?

I pray and hope that this vedio is shared around the world by the grace and mercy of God .l am surprised why Biden and his administration didn't read or purposely ingnored the truth for their own benefits.

There appears to be (at least) two different movements for establishing a Palestine, one that follows the two state solution/Oslo conception, and another that involves one version or another of the dissolution of the Jewish state of Israel, a one state solution. What are the Palestinian and Palestinian supporter organizations that are clear about pursuing only the two state solution?

@UKLFI where are the slides he said he would give to you to provide us??

Solution = 2 states = ISRAEL and JORDAN

Wasn't the Palestine mandate border with Egypt at Wadi El Arish?

East YERUSHALAYIM, Holiest city of the Jewish people, is where the most ancient Jewish sites are. Why give control to islamists? Makes no sense

International Law An oxymoron