The legal bridge over which we returned home
Yesh Atid
States are a three-dimensional event: there is a people, there is a country, and there is law. The third part sounds less important, but is necessary. Without recognition of the law, no state is a state. There is an expression for this, No Man's Land - "Nobody's territory". Israel, contrary to the claims of our enemies, is not the territory of no one, it is not the state of all its citizens - it is the land of the Jewish people. Our right to it is historical, it is a product of our military and economic power, and it is also a result of Israel being a legal entity. It is ours by virtue of the law.
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Legal recognition of Israel was born in the Balfour Declaration, but the San Remo Conference was the stamp on the passport. Instead of a letter sent to Chaim Weizmann by Lord Balfour, there was undisputed international recognition here. This conference, in the city that later became famous for a festival of sweet songs, made the final leap over the abyss of exile. For more than two thousand years, the people were in one place, and the land was in another. In one short conference, the legal bridge was built on which we walked back home.
In the legal world, it is customary to take precedents seriously. So here it is. Before anyone claimed ownership of this land, the world had already recognized our right to it. Formally, legally, in every other sense. I very much hope that after they signed the decision, they went to "La Pignese" trattoria in Sardi Square and ate the restaurant's famous strawberry cake. They deserved it.
Ours, thanks to power and not dependence
Yemina
The San Remo Conference was and remains a groundbreaking historical event where the Balfour Declaration, which recognized the historical right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel, was reaffirmed. 101 years later, as the State of Israel celebrates 73 years of existence and we live the dream that our ancestors longed for 2,000 years - it is our duty to look at that event from other angles.
The conference in San Remo proved what the Minister of History teaches us over and over: the strong decide. Military power, however, is not a measure of justice or truth, but of one simple thing: power.
The decision of the Allies in San Remo was constitutive for the Jewish people, but woe to us if we draw our moral, historical and value justification for the Land of Israel from the nations of the world, who will one day stand by us and another day despise us, and will demand that our soldiers be put on trial and our leaders prosecuted.
The San Remo Conference is an important reminder that the Jewish state was not given to us by the grace of any power. Much blood has been shed here – heroes who heroically defended the settlements and the lines of defense. Survivors of the Nazi inferno, who with their remaining strength wore uniforms and held weapons.
101 years since the San Remo Conference are a reminder to each and every one of us: the Land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel by right and not by grace, based on strength and not dependence or weakness, and on the recognition of our historic and ongoing role as a people who have dreamed and fought tirelessly for the right to a sovereign and independent state.
Looking proudly at 101 years of international recognition
The Labor Party
This month, as we mark 101 years since the resolutions of the San Remo Conference, we can once again proudly look at the conduct of the Zionist movement in those days that led, in a smart and balanced way, the world powers to ratify Britain's commitment to establishing a national home for the Jewish people in Israel along with the Balfour Declaration. The British mandate that began immediately afterward, the White Papers and the establishment of the state, are all a product of the decisions made at that conference.
Looking back at the days of the 1920 conference through the prism of our lives today in Israel 2021 can teach us quite a bit. We can learn about the tremendous importance of having a close and trusting relationship with the world powers. We can learn about the fact that Israel and the Zionist movement must be part of the international game, not a lone player. And we can proudly look at more than 100 years of international recognition of the Land of Israel as a home for the Jewish people, a task that the Zionist movement began several decades earlier.
Although the conference was the beginning of the British Mandate for the Land of Israel, it is only part of a long line of international efforts led by the leaders of the Labor movement at the time to ensure that the State of Israel could be established and for Herzl's vision to take shape. Today, 101 years later, we know the importance of those moments when the world signed the mandate for the British, with an explicit mention of the Balfour Declaration given three years earlier.
While today there are parties and movements in Israel that bear the name of Zionism in vain, and in fact endanger the existence of the Zionist enterprise and the State of Israel, the renewal of the Labor Party at this time is meant to ensure the party returns to the role it led then. Today it will lead to the renewal of the trust of countries around the world in Israel, to the demarcation of a secure border that will ensure the continued existence of the state forever and to the promise that the home for the Jewish people will be a home of equality and a just society.
Settlement: a divine and constitutional right
The Religious Zionist Party
After 2,000 years of exile, the people of Israel returned to their land. As part of the divine redemption process taking place before our eyes, the San Remo Conference is an important cornerstone, as a basis for the consent of the nations of the world to the process of the Return to Zion.
The League of Nations that convened in San Remo ratified the Balfour Declaration and gave a mandate to Britain to establish a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine, and to establish a "close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands". In doing so, the League of Nations turned Britain's promise regarding the future of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel into broad international agreement. This is the cornerstone, according to international law, for the establishment of the State of Israel.
National-political ownership of the Land of Israel was granted exclusively to Jews, and the rest of the country's residents received only personal and religious human rights.
This decision also serves as a basis for the UN Charter. Article 80 of the Convention ratifies the San Remo Decisions and states that no decision taken by the UN in the future can be construed as detracting from rights already granted in previous international resolutions. In other words, the UN Charter, which is a kind of constitution, ensured the continuity and validity of the decisions of the League of Nations to establish a national home for the Jewish people in the territories of the British Mandate in Israel.
It should be stressed that settlement in all parts of our country is of course based on our right to the land according to God's promise and the Bible. But in the aspect of the consent of the nations of the world, it is based on the decisions of the San Remo Conference.
In terms of international law, not only do Jews have the right to establish a state in the Land of Israel and settle in all its territories, but the UN and the nations of the world have a duty to assist the people of Israel in this important process.
Fulfilling the dream of the prophets
New Hope
The 101 years that have passed since the decision of the San Remo Conference to allow Jews to re-establish their national home in the Land of Israel. Since then, the world in general and the Middle East in particular have experienced unprecedented upheavals and changes, but the truth about the right of Jews to return to their land and achieve independence has not changed.
This truth, enshrined in the natural and historical right of the Jewish people, was first shaped as a principle in international law in the decisions of the San Remo Conference and was realized 73 years ago in the declaration of independence of the State of Israel.
San Remo was a cornerstone in the just and worthy struggle of an ancient people, a struggle that continues to this day against those who do not recognize the right of the Jewish people to self-determination and the exercise of this right in the Middle East.
In San Remo, an historic and precedent-setting international decision was made. After nearly 2,000 years of exile of the Jewish people from their land, at the end of 400 years of Ottoman rule in the country, 40 years after the beginning of the first aliyah and a quarter of a century after the official establishment of the Zionist movement, representatives of the victorious powers in the First World War saw that the time had come to allow the Jews to fulfill the dream of the prophets.
The San Remo resolution was subsequently ratified by the League of Nations by its 51 member states, and translated into a detailed mandate outlining the plan for the establishment of the National Home of the Jewish people. Later, after World War II, the British Mandate, born in San Remo, was anchored in the United Nations Charter that replaced the League of Nations. Jewish independence in the Land of Israel became the part of law of the nations.
They pledged to respect our right to sovereignty. We undertook to establish a model state, to be a light unto the nations.
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