(JNS) It’s been almost two years since Hamas and other Palestinian Arab terrorists invaded southern Israel, murdered more than 1,200 people, and kidnapped 251 others, dragging them into the Gaza Strip. Two years since those terrorists committed rape and other unspeakable atrocities, as well as fired as many as 5,000 rockets into the Jewish state as part of the barrage on Oct. 7, 2023.

Much like the Nazis, Hamas’s goal and war aims were explicitly disclosed and not hidden. It was the elimination of Israel and its citizens.

The Hamas Covenant is overtly antisemitic. It requires an armed jihad against Israel to eliminate it. Indeed, Hamas officials have since expressly vowed to replicate Oct. 7 using similar attacks until Israel is completely eradicated. It is all part of an ongoing genocidal plan to eliminate the Jewish people, and then destroy America and the West.

Instead of fully backing Israel in its defensive war against Hamas and its cohorts and helping to utterly defeat Hamas and save the hostages, France, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia (collectively, the “Perfidious Quartet”), and now others, have declared their intent to recognize a so-called Palestinian state, in violation of international law, and thereby reward the murderous terrorist Hamas. They would also be inducing a material breach under Article XXXI, Section 7 of the Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, signed in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 28, 1995, an agreement better known as the Oslo Accords.

The Perfidious Quartet is bound by international agreements regarding the sovereign State of Israel, which is delineated as the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, under the 1920 San Remo Resolution, unanimously confirmed by the League of Nations in 1922. This was reconfirmed in the 1924 Anglo-American Convention with the United States. The San Remo Resolution was also a part of the Treaty of Sèvres with the Ottoman Empire and, in effect, ratified by the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923 with Turkey.

It’s ironic that four former colonial countries, each with its own internal issues, are focused on dismantling Israel—the homeland of the Jewish people, the genuinely indigenous people of the land. The Islamic Waqf’s own 1924 “Brief Guide to the Temple Mount” confirms its identity with the site of Solomon’s Temple and that, in the year 637 C.E., Omar occupied Jerusalem. Consider, too, that the Mount of Olives Jewish Cemetery is more than 3,000 years old. There’s no comparable Arab cemetery in Israel; the oldest dates back only to the 11th century.

It is reported that Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, emboldened by the pronouncements of the Perfidious Quartet, hopes to declare a Palestinian state at the United Nations. However, the United Nations did not create Israel. In point of fact, U.N. General Assembly Resolution 181 was merely a recommendation that was never implemented. It was unequivocally rejected by the Arab world, which invaded Israel and sought by force of arms to eliminate any possibility of a Jewish state in any part of Israel, then referred to as the Mandate of Palestine. Thank God, Israel defeated them.

It is important to note that there is no reference in Resolution 181 to a so-called “Palestinian people.” The label was invented more than a decade and a half later. There was also no reference to a so-called “West Bank.” This was also an artificial construct by Jordan, which illegally annexed it to distinguish it from Jordan proper on the eastern side of the Jordan River. Resolution 181 just referred to the area as the hill country of Samaria and Judea.

It is critical to appreciate that the U.N. Charter explicitly provides, in Article 80, that:

“ … nothing in this chapter shall be construed in or of itself to 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.”

Thus, the rights of the Jewish people to Israel described above, under the San Remo Declaration, as unanimously adopted by the Council of the League of Nations, take precedence over any U.N. resolution.

The League of Nations council resolution effectively confirmed the Jewish people as the recognized indigenous people of Palestine for more than 3,500 years and rejected the claims of others. This demolishes the fallacious claim that Jews are just modern-day colonialists.

The resolution did not purport to grant the Jewish people a newly minted right to Palestine; rather, it recorded that recognition had been given to the “grounds for” reconstituting their national home. Thus, it was a pre-existing legal right that was recognized and acknowledged. Consistent with this principle, it called for “reconstituting” the Jewish people’s national home in their homeland of Palestine.

The use of the term “country” in the council resolution is also cogent. It was no longer referred to as a geographical territory in the former Ottoman Empire; rather, Palestine was now referred to as a country. The sovereignty and legal title to the country of Palestine were vested in the Jewish people.

Most importantly for this discussion, Article 5 of the council’s resolution provided that: “[N]o Palestine territory shall be ceded or leased to or in any way placed under the control of the government of any foreign power.”

In essence, the title to the country of Palestine granted to the Jewish people at San Remo could not be revoked or granted to another by the mandatory authority or the League of Nations. This legally includes the United Nations as the successor to the league.

The treaties, formally and legally, recognized the right of the Jewish people to sovereignty over all of Palestine, between the Jordan River on the east and the Mediterranean Sea on the west, including, of course, Jerusalem. The rights thereunder also survive under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.

The Perfidious Quartet, by virtue of the treaty obligations summarized above and international law, may not promote a so-called Palestinian state in any part of the State of Israel, between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, including in Judea and Samaria, which perforce includes Jerusalem.

Despite having title to and sovereignty over all of Israel, it is not the Jewish people seeking to dispossess the invading Arabs, who in 1964 suddenly self-identified as “Palestinians,” a label contrived as part of an illegal effort to steal the Land of Israel. It’s the so-called Palestinian Arabs who are seeking to eliminate the Jews.

It should also be noted that after Jordan illegally conquered Judea and Samaria, including the eastern portion of Jerusalem, in 1948, it sought to legitimize its conquest of these areas, which it proceeded to rename the West Bank of Jordan.

On Dec. 1, 1948, it organized a conference in Jericho that was attended by representatives of numerous constituencies within these areas. Among other things, the Jericho Resolutions were adopted, which confirmed the desire of the Arab residents of the so-called West Bank to be immediately annexed to Jordan.

Thus, instead of seeking to have an independent state in the areas that Jordan conquered and occupied, they ceded any rights they may have had to Jordan. The Arab (not Jewish) residents of these areas were granted Jordanian citizenship (including voting rights) and participated in Jordanian Parliamentary elections. Jews were forcibly expelled from the areas conquered by Jordan—their homes seized and their synagogues demolished.

On April 24, 1950, the newly elected parliament, noting it represented both the eastern bank and western bank (the so-called West Bank) of the Jordan, formally approved annexation of the areas of Judea and Samaria conquered by Jordan, including the eastern part of Jerusalem. It unified them into the single state of Jordan, as confirmed by the king of Jordan.

The Palestinian Liberation Organization recognized Jordan’s sovereignty over the so-called West Bank. It expressly provided in Article 24 of its original Charter of 1964 that it exercised no sovereignty over the West Bank that belonged to Jordan or over Gaza.

Like any other sovereign state, Jordan could negotiate and barter away sovereignty over any of its land, which it did under the Jordan-Israel Treaty of Peace, dated Oct. 26, 1994. Under Article 3, the international boundary between Jordan and Israel was demarcated as the Jordan River, which effectively ceded sovereignty over the West Bank to Israel. Section 2 of Article 3 declares this boundary to be the permanent, secure and recognized international border between Israel and Jordan. Article 2, Section 1, requires each party to recognize and respect each other’s sovereign territorial integrity and political independence. There is no explicit carve-out for any claim of sovereignty by the so-called Palestinians to the West Bank.

Section 3 of Article 3 goes on to say that the parties recognize the international boundary, as well as each other’s territory, territorial waters and airspace, as inviolable. Furthermore, Section 6 of Article 3 provided for each party to deploy on its side of the international boundary. These sovereign rights are not made subject to or otherwise expressly qualified by any claims of so-called Palestinians.

The Perfidious Quartet should not be allowed to undermine the sovereign State of Israel. The United States should take the initiative and recognize Israel’s sovereignty over Judea and Samaria.

The U.S. policy of peace through strength is a proven one. Instead of flirting with failed policies of appeasement, the free world must wake up and support Israel in its defensive war to defeat the evil that is Hamas and to free the hostages.

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