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?" |
