The top court of the United Nations, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s presence in territories it captured in the June 1967 Six Day War is illegal. Specifically, it decided that “Israel’s presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory unlawful.” ICJ’s President Nawaf Salam said that “Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the regime associated with them, have been established and are being maintained in violation of international law.”

To arrive at such conclusion, the ICJ must believe that Jordan is Palestine.

The “West Bank and East Jerusalem” were captured in a defensive war that Israel fought after Jordan (Transjordan at the time) attacked it from those lands in 1967. TransJordan had annexed those lands in April 1950 after it fought a war to destroy the nascent Jewish State. Only Britain, Pakistan and Iraq recognized that annexation.

It would appear that the ICJ has now recognized that annexation as well.

The San Remo Conference of April 1920 set the outline for carving up the defeated Ottoman Empire into a number of mandates, including the Mandate of Palestine which covered today’s Israel, Gaza, West Bank and Jordan. According to the British Mandate which took effect in July 1922, Britain had the right to separate Mandate Palestine into two areas: one for the Jews west of the Jordan River and one area east of the river, according to Article 25. It did so on May 23, 1925 in the area that became Trans-Jordan. Trans-jordan declared its independence on May 25, 1946.

Britain was having difficulty dealing with the eastern Palestinian Mandate and turned to the United Nations for assistance. In November 1947, the UN General Assembly voted to partition the remaining eastern Palestine into a Jewish State and and Arab State, with the area of Greater Jerusalem and Greater Bethlehem to be held by the United Nations in a Corpus Separatum, an international zone.

The UNGA and the Jews accepted the planned division but the Arabs rejected it. When Britain left the region in May 1948 and the Jews declared a new State of Israel, the Arab world attacked. At the end of the war, Transjordan seized the area that became known as the “West Bank”, the eastern part of Jerusalem and all of greater Bethlehem. Israel took the western part of Jerusalem. Transjordan ethnically cleansed its annexed lands of all Jews and gave citizenship to everyone who lived in those lands in 1954, except if they were Jews (Article 3).

Palestine did not exist as a distinct country pre-1948, but was a subset of Greater Syria as part of the Ottoman Empire until 1917, and then under British rule. Under the British, the land was separated into a portion west of the Jordan River set up to be a reestablished Jewish homeland, and east of Jordan River to be Transjordan. After the Israeli war of independence, there was still no “Palestine” but an expanded Jordan which seized the western shores of the Jordan River which were to be part of the Jewish homeland, and eastern Jerusalem which was designated to be an international city.

Whether during the Ottoman Empire, British Mandate, or during Israeli and Jordanian rule, there was never a country called Palestine. Further, “East Jerusalem” a fragment of the city which existed only during 18 years from 1949-1967 under Jordanian rule, was never contemplated to be part of Palestine in any formulation.

Israel fought a defensive war with Transjordan in 1948-9 and then again in 1967 in land that was specifically designated in the San Remo Conference and the British Mandate to be an integral part of the Jewish homeland. In order to consider the “West Bank and East Jerusalem” to be “occupied” and “illegal”, one would have to declare that:

• the British mandate to have been illegal
• the annexation of the seized land west of the Jordan River by Transjordan in 1949 to be legal
• Jordan’s ethnic cleansing of Jews from those lands and barring them from citizenship to be legal
• Jordan to be Palestine

In no other configuration could the ICJ conclude that Israeli Jews living in eastern Jerusalem is illegal and should be expelled.

The ICJ ruling is revisionist history and deeply antisemitic. It shows the moral rot of the United Nations which still has “Zionism is racism” in its lifeblood.

Related articles:

Jordan’s Deep Hypocrisy and Stupidity About Jerusalem (September 2023)

The Flawed and Inconsistent U.S. Position On Israelis Living In The West Bank (May 2023)

The U.N. Openly Declares Opposition To Jews in Jerusalem (February 2023)

Hey Beinart! Arabs In Jerusalem Can Apply For Israeli Citizenship (May 2022)

Eight Attestations On Jerusalem (December 2021)

The Obama Administration Weaponized the Jerusalem Consulate (October 2021)

Evicting 70,000 Dead Settlers From Jerusalem (August 2021)

The UN on the Status of Jerusalem (June 2021)

Jerusalem Population Facts (May 2021)

NY Times Manufactures “Palestinian East Jerusalem” Narrative (April 2021)

Will the UN Demand a Halt to Arabs Moving to Jerusalem? (December 2020)

Trump’s “eastern Jerusalem” and Biden’s “East Jerusalem” (May 2020)

The 1967 War Created Both the “West Bank” and the Notion of a Palestinian State (May 2020)

The Green Line Through Jerusalem (May 2020)

American Leaders Always Planned on Israel Absorbing Much of the West Bank (January 2020)

“Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem” (November 2019)

Considering Carter’s 1978 Letter Claiming Settlements Are Illegal (November 2019)

Abbas’s Harmful East Jerusalem Fantasy (September 2018)

I call BS: You Never Recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s Capital (April 2018)

The New York Times Inverts the History of Jerusalem (December 2017)

Corpus Separatum Ended Forever in 1995 (December 2017)

“Settlements” Crossing the Line (November 2016)

“East Jerusalem” – the 0.5% Molehill (July 2014)