For decades now, the Palestinian Arabs have been repeating, mantra-like, the claim that their terrorist war against Israel is a legitimate war of liberation, a struggle most freedom-loving people would approve. Israel has done little to challenge this falsity, even after Oslo, when over 95% of Palestinians became subjects of the Palestinian Authority.

True, Israel occasionally invaded parts of the PA, but only temporarily in response to terrorist atrocities that the PA either did not bother to stop or actually encouraged. No one could, legally or otherwise, brand such temporary incursions, designed to capture terrorists, not to acquire territory, an “occupation.”

The Big Lie is that Israel is guilty of stealing or occupying Palestinian territories. Before Oslo, Israel occupied indeed disputed territories that are in small part (about 7% of the area) inhabited by Palestinians. After Oslo it occasionally invaded them. But this is, legally, a very far cry from the claim that there were actually at any time Palestinian territories that Israel illegally occupied, violated, or “stole.”

And yet, two bodies that claim that they respect the law falsely accuse Israel of violating international law because it does this or that to so-called occupied “Palestinian Territories.”

A little history: Until the end of World War I, the territories that were to become the Palestine British Mandate were a deserted province of the Turkish Empire. As Bernard Lewis noted, “From the end of the Jewish state in antiquity to the beginning of British rule, the area now designated by the name of Palestine was not a country ”

In the post-WW I agreements that settled the disposition of former Turkish lands, 99% of the Middle East’s Turkish territories were assigned to the Arabs, on condition that 1% will be designated a Jewish national home.

This was the one and only internationally approved legal dispensation by consent of these territories. Britain received a League of Nations mandate over Palestine (that included then Jordan) only because it undertook to establish a Jewish national home there.

In 1947 the UN recommended the partition of Palestine contingent on the parties’ agreement. But the Arabs rejected the recommendation, rendering it null and void. Jordan then occupied and arbitrarily annexed the West Bank. So when in 1967 Israel ejected Jordan, the West Bank territories reverted, legally, to the status of disputed land, with the Jewish people having the prime legal claim to it.

The disputed territories were never Palestinian Arab – neither as national patrimony nor as private property. To this day, 93% of the land in Israel, in Jordan, and in the West Bank (the original area of the internationally legally sanctioned Jewish National Home) is not privately owned.

For centuries it belonged to the Turkish sultan, then the British Mandate, and subsequently to the State of Israel, in parts. The West Bank remains in legal dispute pending a settlement. Israeli settlements – occupying a mere 3% to 4% of government-owned land in the West Bank – cannot therefore be considered illegal.

THESE SIMPLE facts were ignored by the Hague judges, who condemned Israel for building its anti-terrorist protective fence on what they imagined were “Palestinian lands,” and they were ignored by the learned members of the Commons Committee debating a report on “Occupied Palestinian Territories.”

Much has already been written about The Hague’s anti-Israel bias, so let us briefly examine the conduct of last April’s Commons debate.

It opened with the usual disclaimer prefacing now all attacks on Israel by declaring Israel’s right to exist etc., even its right to defend itself.

Few apparently notice (not even a warm and true friend like Prime Minister Tony Blair, who recently also reiterated this right of Israel to exist) what it denotes – that a mere six decades after the Holocaust, Israel, alone among the world’s states, has to have its legitimacy confirmed and given assurances that it deserves to exist.

The MPs’ protest that their report does not “give an iota of succor to suicide bombers” but object to suicide bombing not because it is wrong but because it is “a catastrophic tactic that has done great harm to the Palestinian cause.” They spin a long litany of charges against Israeli offences without barely mentioning cause and effect.

Anyone reading the report would be convinced that the wicked Israelis “willfully destroy” and occupy Palestinian lands, starving, torturing, and killing its population, especially children, despite ample evidence to the contrary.

Only one participant in the debate, Conservative Party MP Quentin Davies, had the decency to remind the mostly Labor MPs (some Jewish, alas) who were condemning Israel alone that Israel was forced to react against a brutal terrorist war.

The MPs failed to mention that it was Arafat’s war that brought ruin on what remained of the Palestinian economy and society after he and his gang of criminals despoiled it with corruption and plunder. It is a sad sight to see representatives of the great British democracy lobby so vehemently for Arafat’s murderous dictatorship.

Blanket condemnation of Israel only is bound to justify what Israel’s enemies do, including terrorism. It also perpetuates the Arabs’ feelings of victimhood that prevents them from taking charge of their destiny.

British colonialism did some good. But it also had some disastrous consequences. It is therefore understandable why some British may feel guilty toward their former subjects, especially the Arabs who have to live with the horrible dictatorships that the British left behind and kept supporting. But is this reason to scapegoat the Jews once more?

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