The ramifications of the verdict of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague is explained by American Palestinian attorney Lamis Deek. The highest international court ruled that the Palestine resistance is legitimate, but Israel’s claim of self-defence is not. It’s a pivotal moment in Palestine’s history. Watch her interview by George Galloway.
Some of friends have told me that there was never a country of Palestine. So there were never Palestinians who had a claim on the land we call Palestine.
But it a easily proved fact that the area in question has been called Palestine back to the period of the Romans. Was it a separate country then or later? Perhaps not, but the same can be said of nearly every indigenous or native tribe on every continent.
Australia had over 270 different tribes at the time of European colonisation. Did they all have separately declared countries, with borders they defended and immigration control checkpoints? Probably not. But each tribe was a separate people with a separate language.
You can easily find maps dated before 1900 with a land called Palestine. It might have been under Ottoman control but it existed and it was peopled with Palestinians. See definition below.
The following is excerpted from New World Encyclopedia
Palestine (from Latin: Palaestina; Hebrew: ארץ־ישראל Eretz-Yisra’el, formerly also פלשתינה Palestina; Arabic: فلسطين Filasṭīn, Falasṭīn, Filisṭīn) is one of several names for the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River and various adjoining lands.
Different geographic definitions of Palestine have been used over the millennia, and these definitions themselves are politically contentious. In recent times, the broadest definition of Palestine has been that adopted by the British Mandate, and the narrowest is that used in contemporary politics today, called the Palestinian territories, which are the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Etymology
The term “Palestine” derives from the word Philistia, the name given by Greek writers to the land of the Philistines, who in the twelfth century B.C.E. occupied land between modern Tel Aviv and Gaza. The word in Hebrew is פְּלְשְׁתִּים (Pelishtim), this word is derived from the word פְּלִישָׁה (Pelisha), meaning invasion or incursion.
During the Roman period, the Iudaea Province (including Samaria) covered most of Israel and the Palestinian territories. But following the Bar Kokhba rebellion in the second century, as part of a program of cooptation and forced migration, the Romans tried to erase the Jewish connection to the land of Judea, renaming it Syria Palaestina. The name made its way thence into Arabic, where it has been used to describe the region at least since the early Islamic era.
Palestinian people
“Palestinian people,” “Palestinians,” or “Palestinian Arabs” are terms used to refer mainly to Arabic-speaking people with family origins in Palestine. Palestinians are predominantly Sunni Muslims, though there is a significant Christian minority.
Palestinians are represented before the international community by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The Palestinian National Authority was created as a result of the Oslo Accords is an interim administrative body responsible for governance in Palestinian population centers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It is no longer in control of the Gaza Strip, which is now governed by Hamas, but still claims de jure authority.
The Palestinian National Charter, as amended by the PLO’s Palestine National Council in July 1968, states that “The Palestinians are those Arab nationals who, until 1947, normally resided in Palestine regardless of whether they were evicted from it or stayed there. Anyone born after that date, of a Palestinian father — whether in Palestine or outside it — is also a Palestinian.” It further states that “Jews who had normally resided in Palestine until the beginning of the Zionist invasion are considered Palestinians,” and that the “homeland of Arab Palestinian people” is Palestine, an “indivisible territorial unit” having “the boundaries it had during the British Mandate.”
The most recent draft of the Palestinian constitution expands the right of Palestinian citizenship to include all those resident in Palestine before May 15, 1948, and their descendants, specifying that, “This right is transmitted from fathers and mothers to their children … and endures unless it is given up voluntarily.”
Watch this short video showing a map of Palestine drawn in a book published in 1722.
In Australia the courts have restored to the Indigenous people a lot of land rights, recognizing their prior residence. They were living here when the Europeans arrived. Then why don’t the Palestinian Arabs, Muslim or Christian, have land rights to their own land? They were also living in Palestine before the European Jews arrived. Yes, there were some Sephardic Jews also living in the land. All these people should have their rights recognised whomever they are. You just can’t import millions of Europeans with no connection to the land and claim that they had a prior claim dating back 2 or 3 thousand years.
The ICJ in a declarative finding has recognised the fact that the Palestinian people have a right to return to their homeland and that all Israel settlements in their lands (West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem) are illegal and need to be dismantled and given back to the rightful Palestinian owners.
In Australia there is no division of the nation like there is under the Israeli apartheid system, at least legally there shouldn’t be. All Australians live within the same borders and live under the same laws.
Ideally that is the only solution for Palestine, but without the people all turning their minds and hearts to Jesus Christ, such an idea is a total impossibility. Only Christ can break down the ethnic hated and suspicion that now divides the people in that land.
Recommended Reading
- Book: Apocalypse Now: On the Revelation of Jesus Christ
- Book: Merchants of Death: Global Oligarchs and Their War On Humanity
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One response to “The International Court of Justice and the Legal Rights of Palestinians”
Make sure of yourself. If you draw the ire of God Himself, He can silence you quickly.
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