Israel Announces It Will Build 19 More Settlements in Judea and Samaria

And much of the world is ready to condemn what it proclaims, with one ill-informed voice, as a “violation of international law.” No, it isn’t. More of this tragicomical story can be found here: “UK, Canada, Germany, others condemn Israel’s West Bank settlement plan,” Reuters, December 24, 2025:

Countries including Britain, Canada, and Germany, and others on Wednesday condemned the Israeli security cabinet’s approval of 19 new settlements in the occupied West Bank, saying they violated international law and risked fueling instability.

Let’s stop right there: “settlements in the occupied West Bank.” What can that possibly mean? Territory can be “occupied” if it is recognized as belonging to a sovereign state. When Jordan won Judea and Samaria (Judah and Shomron) in the 1948 war, its claim to the territory, as opposed to mere possession, was recognized only by two countries in the world — Great Britain and Pakistan. No one else thought it belonged to Jordan. Then to whom did it belong? We’re getting to that.

“We call on Israel to reverse this decision, as well as the expansion of settlements,” said a joint statement released by Britain, which also included Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, Iceland, Ireland, Japan, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, and Spain.

“We recall that such unilateral actions, as part of a wider intensification of the settlement policies in the West Bank, not only violate international law but also risk fuelling instability,” the statement added.

It is not Israel that is violating international law, but rather, all those countries who claim that in exercising its right to Judea and Samaria, Israel is doing so.

Let’s rewind the tape. When the Ottoman Empire collapsed as a consequence of World War I, the victorious allies joined in the League of Nations. One of the League’s tasks was to create, from the Ottoman domains, the conditions for the creation of new nations. The mandates system was fashioned by the League, according to which Great Britain and France, as holders of various mandates, would guide their inhabitants to statehood. France held the Mandates for Syria and Lebanon. Great Britain held the mandate for Iraq and for Palestine. The Mandate for Palestine was created in order that it might become, in time, the Jewish state, the State of Israel.

The League considered the 3500-year history of the Jews in the land that the Western world has, since Roman times, called “Palestine,” and concluded that the Jewish claim to its ancestral homeland was far superior to any other claim that the Arabs, who only entered the area of “Palestine” more than two thousand years after the Jews, might make.

There was a discussion in the League about the territory which should be included in the Mandate for Palestine. At first, it seemed the Zionists might have their claim to the land on both sides of the Jordan River recognized. But in the end, for strategic reasons of its own, the British decided to decree that all the territory east of the Jordan River and “out to the desert” would instead be closed off to Jewish immigration and would become the Emirate of Transjordan, headed by the Hashemite Abdullah. This constituted 78% of the territory originally intended to be included in the Mandate for Palestine. Some Jews were horrified at this result, including Zev Jabotinsky and those called “Revisionists,” but they were helpless to prevent the British move. In any case, the Jews were left with all of the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, still part of the Palestine Mandate.

That claim was not extinguished when the Arab Legion of Jordan managed to seize the territory of Judea and Samaria in the 1948 war, and in 1950 renamed it as “the West Bank” in an attempt to efface the Jewish connection to the land, much as 2000 years before, the Romans had named the Kingdom of Judah “Palestine.”

The League of Nations’ demise, and its replacement by the United Nations, did not extinguish any part of Israel’s claim. By Article 80 of the UN Charter — known informally as the “Jewish People’s clause” — that organization was obligated to fulfill the terms of the League of Nations’ mandates still in existence. Howard Grief spells this out in detail here:

In the entire debate now taking place on whether the United Nations Security Council or General Assembly has the right to approve the application of the “Palestinian Authority” to be recognized as a new member state of the UN, almost no mention is made of the legal fact that the UN itself is barred by its own Charter from acting upon or approving such an application. The reference here is, of course, to Article 80 of the UN Charter, once known unofficially as the Jewish People’s clause, which preserves intact all the rights granted to Jews under the Mandate for Palestine, even after the Mandate’s expiry on May 14-15, 1948. Under this provision of international law (the Charter is an international treaty), Jewish rights to Palestine and the Land of Israel were not to be altered in any way unless there had been an intervening trusteeship agreement between the states or parties concerned, which would have converted the Mandate into a trusteeship or trust territory. The only period of time such an agreement could have been concluded under Chapter 12 of the UN Charter was during the three-year period from October 24, 1945, the date the Charter entered into force after appropriate ratifications, until May 14-15, 1948, the date the Mandate expired and the State of Israel was proclaimed. Since no agreement of this type was made during this relevant three-year period, in which Jewish rights to all of Palestine may conceivably have been altered had Palestine been converted into a trust territory, those Jewish rights that had existed under the Mandate remained in full force and effect, to which the UN is still committed by Article 80 to uphold, or is prohibited from altering.

As a direct result of Article 80, the UN cannot transfer these rights over any part of Palestine, vested as they are in the Jewish People, to any non-Jewish entity, such as the “Palestinian Authority.” Among the most important of these Jewish rights are those contained in Article 6 of the Mandate which recognized the right of Jews to immigrate freely to the Land of Israel and to establish settlements thereon, rights which are fully protected by Article 80 of the UN Charter.

All the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea was recognized by the international community in 1922 as by right belonging to the Jewish people. That claim was not extinguished, but continued under the successor to the League of Nations, the United Nations. Many people who wish to defend Israel against this preposterous charge of “violating international law” by building more dwellings for Israelis in Judea and Samaria do not sufficiently understand this point. So brush up, please, those who would make the case for Israel, on this essential history, and then come out swinging.