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July 3, 2009
The holy city belongs to Jews
Lawyer's arguments include Weizmann-Faisal agreement.
DAVE GORDON
Religiously and historically, Jews have always pointed to Jerusalem as the epi-centre of Jewish spirituality. As for legal ownership, however, there is confusion for many in the haze of recent United Nations resolutions, international courts and world opinion. Based on 25 years of research, Dr. Jacques P. Gauthier has concluded that the entire area of Jerusalem legally belongs to the Jewish people – and, for that matter, the entire West Bank, as well.
In a lecture called Jerusalem's Sovereignty: Myth to Fact, presented on June 17 at Toronto's First Canadian Place, he outlined the key agreements that lay the foundation for who owns the legal title to the Holy Land.
"Do Jews have a legitimate claim to Jerusalem and other parts of the Holy Land?" Gauthier asked. "It is a complex puzzle with 10,000 pieces. You really have to understand the claims to know who owns what." The Speaker's Action Group, the Canadian Jewish Civil Rights Association and Bennett Jones LLP coordinated the talk.
Gauthier, who is not Jewish, has completed a doctoral thesis of the history of Jerusalem's Old City, which documents the legal status and right of the Jewish people to claim its sovereignty. "It is an intractable, controversial and sensitive topic," he said.
Gauthier is currently vice-chair of the board of directors of Canada's International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development. He has been an active member of the Ontario section of the Canadian Bar Association, where he served on the council and chaired several committees.
In his thesis of more than 1,100 pages, he cites some 3,000 footnotes, each one having taken him weeks to verify. The discussion on who owns the land has historical, religious and legal consequences, said Gauthier. "As a lawyer, if you're going to pass judgment, likely you'll make the wrong call if there is a distortion of facts."
Archeologically speaking, he noted that Jews ruled Jerusalem going back three millennia, and had a Temple present there, probably, at least 2,000 years ago. "If anyone questions it ... I invite them to Rome, to see the Arco di Tito [the Arc of Titus], the depiction of sacred Temple instruments, carried by Jewish captives in Rome."
In modernity, many people point to Great Britain's Balfour Declaration of 1917 as the principle document to validate the Jewish homeland. But it was issued by one state and not legally ratified, argued Gauthier. "It's mistakenly treated as though it was an edict from the world," he said.
However, starting roughly two years after the First World War ended, discussions took place surrounding the status of the territories of defeated nations, continued Gauthier. Gathering in France, at the Quai d'Orsay, five main Allied powers carved up the Ottoman Empire, which had stretched along the Mediterranean and Middle East, he explained. "Something changed after World War One. They took away title from the defeated nations."
A Zionist delegation, led by Chaim Weizmann, and the Hashemite family (the ruling family of pan-Arabia at the time) met to decide to whom the land belonged within, and surrounding, Palestine, said Gauthier. He explained that Faisal bin Al Hussein, considered the spokesman for both the Hashemites and the Arab world at the time, negotiated with Weizmann, eventually hammering out a written deal. Faisal agreed to support the Zionist claim of Palestine, including what is now known as Israel proper, Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and Trans-Jordan (now Jordan); in return, Weizmann agreed to recognize Syria and Iraq as Arab territory.
"The way that law works is that the land isn't yours unless the judges recognize the claim," said Gauthier. In this case, the legal world powers of the day – the United States, Great Britain, France, Italy and Japan – authored and signed the Treaty of Trianon in 1920, honoring the Faisal-Weizmann deal. In a follow-up meeting at St. Remo, on the Italian Riviera, in April 1920, the 51-member League of Nations further approved the deal, in the Treaty of Sévres. In it, there is no legal ambiguity and the document even touts the Jewish "historical connection ... grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country," said Gauthier.
UN General Assembly Resolution 181, the Partition Plan of 1947 that called for Jews and Arabs to share Palestine – a plan to which Jews agreed but the Arab delegation did not – has no legal basis, Gauthier said.
"It was just a 'plan' and not law. Both parties had to agree to it to be binding," he continued.
On April 3, 1949, after Israel's War of Independence, an armistice agreement was signed, with no motion tabled to amend the legal standing of the Holy Land from existing treaties, said Gauthier. "No one ever revoked or annulled previous agreements," he added.
Meanwhile, Jordan annexed the West Bank, claiming it without legal basis, according to Gauthier, while the demarcation border with Israel became known as the Green Line. "The Green Line comes up, as though it is some magical law," he said.
In final status agreements for peace in the region, Gauthier contended that the precedents, treaties and agreements must not be discarded or forgotten. "Do you understand what dividing Jerusalem entails? Where is the dividing line? Where? How?"
Dave Gordon is a freelance writer in Toronto. His website is DaveGordonWrites.com.
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