Israel Matzav

NGO: 'Settlements' are legal and we'll go to court to prove it

An Israeli NGO has sent a letter to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton threatening a class action lawsuit if she continues to call Jewish cities and towns in Judea and Samaria 'illegal settlements.' The letter, which was also sent to Prime Minister Netanyahu, argues that the 'settlement freeze' is illegal under a 1924 treaty in which the United States recognized that Judea and Samaria were part of the British Mandate for 'Palestine.'

The Office for Israeli Constitutional Law, a non-governmental legal action organization, sent a letter to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week, warning that by labeling Jewish settlements in the West Bank illegal, she is violating international law.

The little-known Anglo-American Convention, a treaty signed by the US and British governments in 1924, stipulated that the US fully accepted upon itself the Mandate for Palestine, which declared all of the West Bank within its borders.

"The treaty has been hidden," said OFICL director Mark Kaplan. "But if you look at the House [of Representatives] deliberations during World War I, people are saying, 'Look, we've invested a lot of money in Palestine, and we expect that this treaty will be upheld.'"

Though the United Nations' 1947 partition plan declared the West Bank an Arab territory, the mandate's borders still hold today.

"The mandate expired in 1948 when Israel got its independence," Kaplan said. "But the American-Anglo convention was a treaty that was connected to the mandate. Treaties themselves have no statute of limitations, so their rights go on ad infinitum."

"The UN partition plan was just that-a plan," said OFICL chairman Michael Snidecor in a statement. "The General Assembly has no authority to create countries or change borders."

Hmmm.

Read the whole thing.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:19 PM