That is the gist of an essay written by my grandfather, Ze'ev Jabotinsky, some 97 years ago. He was the first Zionist leader to understand that we are facing a steadfast Arab refusal to acknowledge the Jewish revival in the land of Israel.

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One cannot overestimate the magnitude of the achievement marked by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in singing peace treaties with moderate Sunni states.

He masterfully wove together ties with the moderate Arab states and knew how to recognize – and utilize – the developments in the Middle East in favor of Israel's interests, striking peace in a region all too familiar with wars.

Other than the diplomatic boon, the peace treaties with the UAE and Bharani are also expected to bolster Israel's economic resilience and will surely see its technological industries flourish even further.

The prime minister's actions – praised even by the opposition leader – have proven that the notion presented some 97 years ago still stands, and it stands in stark contracts to dogmas seeking to appease the Palestinians, such as "land for peace."

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In response to the decision, Shimon Sheves, director general of the Prime Minister's Office under then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, said the lease agreement was signed for 25 years in the hope that it would be upgraded upon its expiration, not downgraded. The king's decision, which was unveiled on the 23rd anniversary of Rabin's assassination, proves that agreements between states, and particularly concessions on sovereignty, must not be based on hopes that appear realistic at the time of the signing but are susceptible to erosion over time.

In this case, the vagaries of time included, among other things, then-King Hussein appointing his son Abdullah as the new crown prince and heir apparent, replacing his brother, Hassan, who supported the accord. The Arab Spring and the emergence of the Islamic State group in the arena can also be counted. Regarding ISIS, the group's primary enemy is the Hashemite king, who is considered in the religious hierarchy the direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad and therefore precedes the leader of ISIS – who anointed himself caliph, the heir to the prophet.

But with all due respect and understanding to the king's problems, he assumes that cooperation between Israel and his regime is assured regardless and that he can therefore inflict a modicum of damage to its citizens (in this case the farmers of the Arava region), without a response from Israel.

The Israeli government now has a choice between trying to appease the king at its own expense and an aggressive response that will preserve the letter of the accord in the driest sense.

Today, Jordan receives from Israel far more than what the accord stipulates. Israel provides these things because it wants to strengthen the relations, which Rabin was so hopeful about and which led him to sign the temporary lease, according to Sheves.

In the field of water, for example, the accord stipulates that Israel must provide Jordan 50 million cubic meters of water a year, while in actuality it provides almost twice that amount yearly. The difference can be drastically reduced if the Sea of Galilee continues to dwindle beyond all the predefined emergency levels. The plunging water level is critical; natural water aquifers could be contaminated. Once they are salinized, it won't be possible to reverse the process. Salinization of the Sea of Galilee will be a hydrologic catastrophe for us and Jordan alike.

The government has to be proactive and examine the process of supplying more than the agreed-upon amount of water to Jordan in order to avoid this hydrologic disaster. There's no question that a serious assessment of this sort will quell the king's enthusiasm about adhering to the strict letter of the accord while abandoning the hopes upon which it was predicated.

According to the current predominant paradigm in Israel, a Hashemite king presiding over a dictatorship is preferable to a representative government. This paradigm or conception rather, motivated Israel in September 1970 to intervene on behalf of the Hashemite rulers and help them stave off a coup attempt by PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat. Perhaps the time has come to examine whether this conception endangers us in a changing Middle East.

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Britain's ties to Zionism began when the Zionist movement sent thousands of Jewish volunteers from around the world to fight with British forces against Germany and its allies in World War I. Thanks to their joint efforts during the war, Zionist leaders like Joseph Trumpeldor and my grandfather and namesake were able to establish the Jewish Brigade they had always dreamed of.

The Zionist movement's enlistment to the war effort was also why the Zionist Organization was invited to the Versailles Peace Conference. In February 1919, Chaim Weizmann led a large group of representatives of the Zionist Organization to the conference and presented their draft resolutions for Palestine for its consideration. All of these draft resolutions were added to the British Mandate for Palestine, an international agreement authorized by the San Remo conference in 1920 and formally ratified by the League of Nations on July 24, 1922. This ratification made the British Mandate for Palestine international law, and it remains valid today.

The United Nations, which was established following the demise of the League of Nations, had nearly three years in which to apply its international trusteeship system to the land of Israel. Had the U.N. decided to apply the trusteeship system, it would have been able to restrict the rights of the Jewish people. But as the U.N. chose not to act, it preserved the Zionist Organization's rights to exclusive sovereignty over Palestine as laid out in the mandate.

Britain did not take advantage of this window of opportunity to cancel the British Mandate for the Jewish state either. The establishment of the State of Israel was declared just eight hours before the mandate over the land of Israel came to an end. Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, wanted the new country to be a realization of the mandate for Palestine, thereby inheriting the rights to exclusive sovereignty over all of the land that had been allocated in the mandate for the Zionist Organization. Because Britain chose not to act against the declaration of Israel's independence, the State of Israel gained the exclusive right to sovereignty over all of the land of Israel, including all of Jerusalem. This right is fully anchored in international law and remains valid today.

For a majority of the British Mandate period, the British administration adopted a policy that violated international law, in that it violated its written commitment to encourage Jewish immigration to the land of Israel. Britain's policy since the 1967 Six-Day War is also a violation of international law, and its description of Jerusalem as "occupied territory" on the official itinerary for William's visit is a blow to our right to exclusive sovereignty over Jerusalem.

One can only hope that the Israeli leaders who meet with the Duke of Cambridge will convey the message that Israel wants to move past Britain's disrespectful treatment of our rights and, to the extent it is possible, assist Britain in its withdrawal from the European community. For their part, the British will recognize the rights of the State of Israel and its full sovereignty over the western part of Greater Israel, as it is written in the mandate they themselves formulated. One must hope Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin, who takes care to express our right to sovereignty over Jerusalem at every opportunity, explained this to William, even if he may not have enjoyed hearing it.

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