Talk:All-Palestine Government

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Problemo. on one hand, the article explicitly states that after the government was annulled, the land was under egyptian control. however, now we lose 'continuum' towards the Palestinian Authority article, the current holder. then again, we cannot discount the fact that the territory was controlled by egypt and that should be reflected. any suggestions how to make this noticable, while keeping the continuum? perhaps a section in the UAR article? MiS-Saath (talk) 19:14, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Re: Legal Fiction

According to the Montevideo Convention, and customary international law, every state is a artificial person (a legal fiction). The fictional independence of all the Class A mandates had been provisionally recognized for decades, so the establishment of a state under the protection of a neighboring Arab state was no less legitimate than the League of Nations British regime had been. Sovereignty has never been a requirement for the recognition of a state. In the case of the Great Powers, even the lowest Ottoman administrative sub-divisions were deemed capable of granting concessions or negotiating treaties, e.g. Kuwait had agreements with Great Britain.

The convention says:

The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications:

• (a) a permanent population;
• (b) a defined territory;
• (c) government; and
• (d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states.

harlan (talk) 05:53, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

This article does not reflect that even before Gamal Abdel Nasser dissolved All-Palestine in 1959, nobody took it seriously. Gaza Strip was under Egyptian military occupation, not an independent state or significant autonomy. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.219.126.72 (talk) 15:33, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

A loose tribal confederation of families living in a legal system based on the laws of sharia was sufficient to qualify as a British protectorate. The declaration of establishment of the state of Palestine and its charter have been published in the Brill international law journal and the Foreign Relations of the United States. The All-Palestine government was recognized by all of the members of the Arab League except Jordan. A typical British or French Protectorate had no more, or less, legitimacy under international law than a state under the protection of the Arab League or Egypt. The existence of a state in international law has nothing to do with complete independence or significant autonomy.

Several landmark cases involving "sovereign" immunity for "acts of state" have involved non-sovereign or dependent states. See for example Clayco Petroleum Corporation and Bruce Clayman, Plaintiffs-appellants, v. Occidental Petroleum Corporation, Occidental of Umm Alqaywayn, Inc., and Armand Hammer, Defendants-appellees Footnote 1:

This court has held that the government of Umm Al Qaywayn is a foreign sovereign for purposes of the act of state doctrine. Occidental v. Buttes, 331 F.Supp. at 113. This determination was made when that nation was one of the Trucial States; the sheikdom is now part of the United Arab Emirates. This change does not warrant a redetermination of the sheikdom's status

The Great Powers routinely concluded treaties with administrative sub-districts of the Ottoman Empire (Tripoli, Kuwait, etc.) and in many instances didn't bother to forward the treaties to the sultan for ratification.

Prior to the treaty of Versailles, the neutralized state of Belgium couldn't even make a sovereign decision to defend its own the homeland. That doesn't mean it didn't exist, or that it couldn't enter into relations with other countries.harlan (talk) 02:39, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Face it, this article is heavily biased, and does not reflect that this was merely a puppet government for Egypt. It was not an attempt to create a truly independent Palestinian state in any sense. And only Arab countries recognized with, except Jordan. This article should reflect is puppet status.Tallicfan20 (talk) 03:06, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

In 1949 most of the third world was comprised of puppet states. Haiti and Cuba were puppet US-protected states, but that doesn't mean they weren't states. The Arab High Committee (AHC) informed the Security Council that it was just a coalition of local national councils that was represented in the Arab League. The AHC advised that it had requested the assistance of the other Arab states, and that Palestine had not been invaded. see THE DECLARATION OF THE ARAB HIGHER COMMITTEE FOR PALESTINE, May 24, 1948. The Security Council representatives for Belgium, France, Great Britain, and the US had already met privately to discuss the "Arab invasion" before it ever happened. They agreed that the Jewish militias were the aggressors and that the Arab states were simply coming to the aid of their beleaguered brethren.

After the armistices were signed, Israeli Ambassador Abba Eban explained that "Israel holds no territory wrongfully, since her occupation of the areas now held has been sanctioned by the armistice agreements, as has the occupation of the territory in Palestine now held by the Arab states." see "Effect on Armistice Agreements", FRUS Volume VI 1949, 1149 But the civilians in Gaza had never been under belligerent Egyptian occupation.

That fact was evident during the negotiations for UN resolution 242. FRUS, 1964-1968, Volume Arab-Israeli Crisis and War, 1967, Page 1015 scroll down to Document 515. It records a meeting about the wording with King Hussein, President Johnson, and Secretary of State Rusk. It says:"King Hussein tried his best to get precision on the clause with respect to withdrawal of Israeli forces. The President replied that it was difficult to be precise in one part and not on the others. There were imprecise statements in the resolution in several respects. The King then said that if it was impossible to be precise as to when or where withdrawal should take place, he hoped that it would be possible to be precise with regard to the question of who was to withdraw. The phraseology of the resolution calling for withdrawal from occupied territories could be interpreted to mean that the Egyptians should withdraw from Gaza and the Jordanians should withdraw from the West Bank. This possibility was evident from the speech by Prime Minister Eshkol in which the Prime Minister had referred to both Gaza and the West Bank as "occupied territory".

The President agreed to talk with Ambassador Goldberg in New York and he and Secretary Rusk told the King that we would be back in touch with him by noon the following day with respect to his suggestion for inclusion of the word "Israeli" before the word withdrawal in the resolution. harlan (talk) 04:02, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

not a state. You've proved nothing, but you did show one person's opinion letter. Sorry, but the world except the Arabs labeled the invasion by the Arabs as aggression in the end. Period. Also, do you think South Ossetia and Abkhazia are states, just because someone says they are? Even tho like the APG, barely anyone else saw it like that?Tallicfan20 (talk) 06:44, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Worth mentioning that while 1948-members of the Arab League did indeed recognize All-Palestine with prominent exception of Transjordan, no other Arab / Muslim state did (Libya, for example, was already an independent state at the time and did not recognize All-Palestine, even after joining the Arab League in 1953). Politically, All-Palestine was Nasser's way of poking a stick in The Hashemite's plan of taking over the Arab areas of mandatory Palestine, including at his border. During the Sinai War of 1956, Israel took over the Gaza Strip for a short period of time, which further demonstrates the absurdity of considering All-Palestine as anything but a legal fiction. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.219.126.72 (talk) 16:13, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

any reputatable sources other than Avi?

because this guy is plain biased, and I can find few other sources online other than pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli sources which talk of thisTallicfan20 (talk) 03:09, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Many countries followed the diplomatic practice of the US. You can find all of the official information about that in the FRUS. The State Department Legal Advisor, Ernest Gross, had provided the White House with a written opinion that explained that the communities in Palestine had a legal right to declare governments in the territories that they inhabited when the mandate ended, on 15 May 1948. He also advised that recognition was a matter of sovereign and executive discretion, i.e. the United States was not bound to recognize either state simply because it had voted for partition. He advised against recognition of any party that claimed jurisdiction over all of Palestine.

Ben Gurion tried to leave the matter of borders open to developments. The Truman White House talked Elihu Epstein into saying that the Jewish state had been established within the boundaries adopted in the United Nations resolution. He was instructed by Clark Clifford to mention that in the text of Israel's request for US recognition.

The termination of the Palestine Mandate gave the local Arab councils of Palestine the opportunity to exercise their right to self-determination. It seems that you either loved the Mufti, or hated him. The US government was officially in the latter camp. Through their consulates, they offered the "friendly advice" that the All-Palestine government not be recognized. That was done for two reasons: because of the Mufti's involvement with the enemy during the war, and the fact that the government had claimed jurisdiction over all of the territory of Palestine. That was an open invitation for the Revisionists to urge the Government of Israel to do the same, and prolong the war. The US considered the Egyptians and Jordanians to be military allies of the Palestinians, not occupying powers. The US recognized the decisions of the Jericho, Nablus, and Ramallah conferences to form a political union between Central Palestine and Transjordan, and the decision of the Mufti's followers to form an independent government under the auspices of an Arab League-backed trusteeship, to be administered by Egypt in the Gaza Strip.

NPOV says that the article should fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by a verifiable source, and should do so in proportion to the prominence of each. That doesn't mean that you have to write articles that say some people thought Hitler was a nice guy, and that he was kind to his mother. On the other hand, the German people didn't loose the right to lawfully inhabit their own territory or exercise their right to self-determination because they elected him. The same holds true for the Palestinians in Gaza. harlan (talk) 21:30, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

you missed my point. There are other authors out there other than Avi, and NPOV doesn't allow for overtly slanted articles. Also, Palestine was never a state. Palestinian Arabs wanted Greater Syria before "Palestine," and they rejected the partition over land that was British and then the UN's, not theirs. Palestine never existed as a state before, and did not during the mandate.Tallicfan20 (talk) 06:39, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Flags

After the Arab Revolt was declared in 1916 by the Sharif of Mecca the Kingdom of Syria, Transjordan, and the various Palestinian governments adopted it's flag, or minor variations based upon it.

• Pan-Arab Flag
• History of the Syrian Flag
• Various Palestine Flags including the one used by the All-Palestine government. harlan (talk) 19:57, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Thats the wrong flag 2A0D:6FC2:6041:7C00:BDB0:B391:2681:211A (talk) 15:49, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

All-Palestine government

should link here.--189.33.2.165 (talk) 12:27, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Done harlan (talk) 12:59, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Post WW I use of the term "state" for the territories of the mandate

To User:Harlan wilkerson:

For the time being, I am going to yield to you on this matter. Nonetheless, I suggest that you find a more accessible source to lean on. I've tried to access the source you're using to support your point, but don't see how to do it without turning over a credit card number, which I'm not prepared to do. Without it, I cannot even verify that this term refers to post WW-I events, as opposed to post WW-II events.

But regardless of that, and even accepting that this does refer to the post-WW I period, I would argue that, in the absence of a generally verifiable source, that the use of the word "territory" is simply more acceptable. It carries less specific connotations than does "state", and in point of fact, the planned entities, regardless of their legal status, were undeniably "territories", but whether they constituted "states" is a matter of definition, and over this there is likely to be some dispute, even with the source you provide.

I ask you to consider changing the term to a more neutral term, such as territory. 74.178.230.17 (talk) 03:40, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

State is the neutral term for any territory with an organized population, and a government with the capacity to engage in foreign relations. Great Britain delegated the conduct of Palestine's foreign affairs to the local government. It entered into several international treaty agreements, including postal union agreements with Italy, the United States, and others. Many of those agreements are available online via the UN Treaty Organization. See for example [1]

West's Encyclopedia of American Law says: "Various terms have been used to describe different types of dependent states, such as condominium, mandate, protectorate, and vassal state. ("Dependent States." West's Encyclopedia of American Law. The Gale Group, Inc. 2005. Encyclopedia.com. (October 25, 2009). [2])

For example, U.S. TITLE 8, CHAPTER 12, § 1101. Definitions says "(a) As used in this chapter— (14) The term “foreign state” includes outlying possessions of a foreign state, but self-governing dominions or territories under mandate or trusteeship shall be regarded as separate foreign states.[3]

There is a subsection of the British Mandate of Palestine article devoted to the subject:

Article 434 of the Treaty of Versailles stipulated that Germany was required to recognize the dispositions made concerning the territories of the former Ottoman Empire, "and to recognize the new States within their frontiers as there laid down." The text of the treaty is available online [4]

Article 241 of the Treaty of Sèvres and Article 46 and 47 of the Treaty of Lausanne provided that the newly-created States in Asia in favor of whom territory had been detached from Turkey would participate in the repayment of the Ottoman Public Debt, and provided that the League of Nations was responsible for establishing an arbital court to resolve any disputes. The text of the treaties is available online here [5] and here [6]

International arbitral and judicial awards are a "subsidiary means for the determination of the rules of law" as provided in Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice. [7] Whiteman cited the Ottoman Public Debt case and the Mavrommatis Palestine Concessions case in a portion of the State Department Digest devoted to the legal status of the Mandates. The French text of the award is available in Volume I of the Reports of International Arbitral Awards (United Nations, 1948), "Affaire de la Dette publique ottomane. Bulgarie, Irak, Palestine, Transjordanie, Grèce, Italie et Turquie. Genève, 18 avril 1925", pages 529-614 [8] The case concerned the apportionment of the annuities of the Ottoman Public Debt among the various States whose territories, in whole or in part, had formerly belonged to Turkey. It was decided by an Arbitrator appointed by the Council of the League of Nations pursuant to the provisions of article 47 of the Treaty of Lausanne. The costs of the arbitration, including the fees of the Arbiter were supposed to be borne in equal shares by the State parties to the arbitration. The ruling on that particular matter said:

"The difficulty arises here how one is to regard the Asiatic countries under the British and French mandates. Iraq is a Kingdom in regard to which Great Britain has undertaken responsibilities equivalent to those of a Mandatory Power. Under the British mandate, Palestine and Transjordan have each an entirely separate organisation. We are, therefore, in the presence of three States sufficiently separate to be considered as distinct Parties. France has received a single mandate from the Council of the League of Nations, but in the countries subject to that mandate, one can distinguish two distinct States: Syria and the Lebanon, each State possessing its own constitution and a nationality clearly different from the other."

The 1925 Judgment No. 5 of the Permanent Court of International Justice in the Mavrommatis Palestine Concessions case required a similar interpretation of the terms used in Protocol XII of the Treaty of Lausanne. The Court held that the government of Palestine, not Great Britain, was responsible (subrogated) as the successor state. The judgment is available online [9] The Attorney General of Palestine, Norman Bentwich, published an article in the British Yearbook of International Law which was also cited by Whiteman. Bentwich explained that the Courts of Palestine and the UK had decided that title to the properties shown on the Ottoman Civil list had been ceded to the government of Palestine as an allied successor state. The article is available online, See Professor N. Bentwich, "State Succession and Act of State in the Palestine Courts", XXIII British Year Book Of International Law, 1946, pages 330-333. [10] harlan (talk) 06:03, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

The term "successor state" is not the same as "state". A State has a particular meaning in international law. Besides other things, it must be recognised as such by other countries. In international law, a "State" is a "legal person". The Convention on Rights and Duties of States defines a State as possessing the following qualifications: (a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) a capacity to enter into relations with other states. In the case of devolution agreements, where the term successor state arises, the United Kingdom especially made such agreements in relation to former colonial powers (in this case Turkey). These only apply to the signatory parties. The International Law Commission has commented that these agreements do not bind any third parties. See also the Vienna Convention on Succession of States in respect of Treaties of 1978.Ewawer (talk) 23:03, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Neither of the Conventions you cited existed in 1925 and are not retroactive in effect. There were no Turkish "colonies" in Palestine, hence no such devolution agreement. The Treaties of Versailles and Lausanne were multilateral international agreements that established the constitution and organs of an international organization. They detached territories from states and authorized the creation of new states by international boundary commissions. They established international tribunals to resolve any disputes. Those treaties still have legal consequences today. The International Court of Justice cited the Covenant of the League of Nations as the origin of the permanent responsibility of the United Nations for the Question of Palestine. The terms of the Treaty of Lausanne still effect the status of territory involved in international disputes, e.g. the subsequent acquisition of sovereignty over territory and the delineation of maritime boundaries. See for example, The Eritrea-Yemen arbitration awards 1998 and 1999 in the journal of the Permanent Court of Arbitration [11]

You did not cite a legally binding definition of the term "State" that contradicts the sources that I cited in the article. In fact Dr. Whiteman helped draft the Convention and edited the International Law Digest. The Montevideo Convention merely says that a state "should" possess those qualifications. Section 201 of the Restatement (Third) of the Foreign Policy Law of the United States explains that the application of that criteria isn't compulsory in every instance. In any event, that Convention doesn't create obligations for non-contracting states. The Montevideo Convention (itself) explains that recognition by other states is NOT a requirement for statehood. The United States is a signatory of the Montevideo Convention, and the Digest of International Law is an official US government publication which says that Palestine and Transjordan were states. You've also overlooked the fact that the treaty of Versailles obligated Germany to recognize the new States created in the territories of Ottoman Asia.

The International Law Commission has avoided the problem of defining the term "state". "International law: achievements and prospects" from the UNESCO Series was written and edited by members of the International Law Commission, jurists of the International tribunals, and recognized publicists. It explains that there is no definition that is binding on all the members of the community of nations on the criteria for statehood, and that in practice the criteria are mainly political, not legal. [12] You can't "square the circle" by citing a source of international law, like the Vienna Convention, which relies on recursion to an undefined term. It merely says that “successor State” means the State which has replaced another State on the occurrence of a succession of States. [13] Article 7 of the Convention sets forth the principle of the intertemporal law. It requires that events occurring at a particular period be judged by the law applicable at that time. Arguments, like yours, that rely on legal developments not accepted at the time are misplaced. harlan (talk) 23:56, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

The English Wikipedia avoids using the term "state" for non-sovereign territories. Hence, using the term in this article implies that we are talking about a sovereign independent state, which is not the case. The fact that other sources use the term "state" in a different manner is irrelevant. We should be consistent with the terminology that have developed on en-wp. The fact that a court ruled that the British Mandate should respect property rights granted by the former Ottoman rule, did not make the British Mandate a sovereign state, let alone an Arab state. Quite the contrary, the mandate's charter and laws explicitly determine the the goal of the mandate as establishing a national home for the Jewish People. The international court merely ruled that the British authorities may not use this fact as an excuse to deprive a person of his proprietary rights. Citing opinionated articles is not a "joker" that allows introduction of political propaganda as if it were "verifiable". In fact this is a blunt abuse of the Wikipedian system. DrorK (talk) 05:42, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

(outdent) You misapply the terms sovereignty, and independence like most people with no legal training. After an exhaustive analysis of the literature James Crawford concluded that the concept of sovereignty is inapplicable to international regimes of divided competencies such as the mandate and trusteeship.

The English Wikipedia has an article named the Trucial States, about the Gulf region British protectorates. Several landmark cases involving "sovereign" immunity for "acts of state" have involved non-sovereign or dependent states, including the Trucial States. See for example, Clayco Petroleum Corporation and Bruce Clayman, Plaintiffs-appellants, v. Occidental Petroleum Corporation, Occidental of Umm Alqaywayn, Inc., and Armand Hammer, Defendants-appellees. Footnote 1 says:

This court has held that the government of Umm Al Qaywayn is a foreign sovereign for purposes of the act of state doctrine. Occidental v. Buttes, 331 F.Supp. at 113. This determination was made when that nation was one of the Trucial States; the sheikdom is now part of the United Arab Emirates. This change does not warrant a redetermination of the sheikdom's status

The League of Nations adopted the policy of the open door for trade among its members and the mandates. That meant they did not become territories of any other state. Hersh Lauterpacht wrote an advisory opinion for the Jewish Agency which noted that the British Government had decided that Palestine was a third independent state for the purposes of the most-favored-nation-clause. He suggested a legal challenge in the ICJ. But as Lauterpacht's son, Elihu, noted in the preface to the opinion, the ICJ upheld the independent status of the mandates in the Southwest Africa cases. [14]

Years ago I made sure [15] that the Wikipedia article on Sovereignty quoted an expert on international law on that subject: "There exists perhaps no conception the meaning of which is more controversial than that of sovereignty. It is an indisputable fact that this conception, from the moment when it was introduced into political science until the present day, has never had a meaning which was universally agreed upon." 1 Lassa Oppenheim, International Law 66 (Sir Arnold D. McNair ed., 4th ed. 1928)

Prof. Akweenda said "Most writers on the mandate system have avoided the problem of sovereignty. Some are ambiguous and not particularly illuminating. In the opinion of Justice Evatt of the High Court of Australia (Chairman of the UN Ad Hoc Committee on Palestine) 'sovereignty is neither a question of fact, nor a question of law but a question that does not arise at all. See Sovereignty in cases of Mandated Territories, in "International law and the protection of Namibia's territorial integrity", By S. Akweenda, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1997, ISBN: 9041104127, page 40 harlan (talk) 23:56, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

This is getting silly. There were two contentious cases brought before international tribunals, including the World Court, under the terms of the treaties to settle the disputes over the determination of statehood. The decisions were final and the matter is "res judicata". The Courts ruled that Palestine and Transjordan were "States". Disgruntled Wikipedia editors cannot setup a court on an article talk page and rewrite history. harlan (talk) 09:44, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Let me repeat - and I think everybody is now repeating themselves - a treaty does not of itself create an entity which in international law is considered a "state". A treaty can use any term it wishes - such as party, member, country, entity, successor, previous, new or whatever. Such a description only applies to the treaty and to the parties that signed it. That, I repeat, does not make an entity a state in international law. Ask yourself this question - who in the 1920's and 30s described Palestine as a state? How many ambassadors were sent there or were sent by it? (Answer - none) What army did it have? (Answer - the British one) What government did it have? (Answer - a colonial one.) For all purposes, Palestine was a British colony, though it was under the Mandate system. Find me a reputable source of that period that clearly described Palestine as a state and I'll back off. I have not seen any; and it would be a negation of the whole concept of statehood, or at least my understanding of it. Ewawer (talk) 10:37, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Your statement is self-contradictory. Please check your facts, according to Article 38(1) of the ICJ statute, treaties and judicial decisions are Sources of international law. The Statue of the PCIJ contained similar provisions. All of the sources I've cited are from 1925-1946, e.g. Lauterpacht, Bentwich, the Arbital Court, and the PCIJ. They all said that Palestine was a State. The treaties that Whiteman, the Courts, Lauterpacht, and Bentwich are talking about happen to be the applicable international law that established and governed the Mandates on behalf of the League of Nations. Those treaties established "new States" in the territories of Ottoman Asia. The Mandate and the Anglo-American Palestine Convention of 1925 both required the establishment of a new nationality for the population, assigned responsibility for establishing the boundaries, and set out the terms for administering the "Country" and settlement of new immigrants on its "State" land a waste land. The Bentwich article was written during the Mandate and he explained that those State lands belonged to the government of Palestine, because it was the legal successor state. BTW, the Arab Legion happened to be an army, and it was employed to patrol and police Palestine.

You either need to cite a reliable published source that actually discusses Palestine, or you need to back off. The sources that I've provided meet the Wikipedia criteria for inclusion, your edits most certainly do not. Wikipedia has a List of sovereign states in 1919 that contains Semi-Sovereign States, Protected Independent States, Guaranteed States, Neutralized States, Vassal States, and Colonies. See the list published by the US Government that same year: Types of Restricted Sovereignty and of Colonial Autonomy No one is over there claiming they weren't "States" as defined by international law simply because they didn't have their own army, or because the governments were staffed with personnel from the Colonial Office.

After the Crimean War the Ottoman Empire joined the Concert of Europe. The Zionists had to obtain a homeland "secured by public law", because the creation of states was governed by public international law and international treaty agreements. Serbia, Montenegro, and Romania were created by the Treaty of Berlin in 1878. The unborn Polish and Czech states were created and recognized during WWI, long before they had any borders or government control. Albania was created in 1912 and didn't have any borders or government until 1920. In the North Sea Continental Shelf case the ICJ noted that fact" "There is for instance no rule that the land frontiers of a State must be fully delimited and defined, and often in various places and for long periods they are not, as is shown by the case of the entry of Albania into the League of Nations (Monastery of Saint Naoum, Advisor): Opinion, 1924, P.C.I.J., Series B, No. 9, at p. 10)".[16] harlan (talk) 13:01, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Harlan, you are a good lawyer, but you are here to help writing encyclopedic articles. You are not here to plead in favor of the Palestinian People, and you have no right to impose your political views on us. You bring many sources that are totally irrelevant. The term "state" is used on en-wp only to describe an independent sovereign state. There might be sources that use this English word otherwise, but they are irrelevant, because you have to use the "local" terminology. None of the sources you mentioned treat the British Mandate of Palestine as an independent sovereign state. Furthermore, the Mandate goal was clearly set as the establishment of a Jewish national home, hence it had no relation to a future Arab Palestinian state. The name Palestine has been used in various meanings and contexts throughout the history. You are using anachronism and false syllogisms in order to force your political opinion. And what's more, the ICJ whose verdicts you value so much never determined that Palestine was an Arab state. DrorK (talk) 17:42, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

You must be suffering from cognitive dissonance. The PCIJ decision which says that Palestine is a state is available online at the ICJ website. [17] I had already pointed out that the Lauterpacht citation at the link above says Great Britain decided Palestine was a third independent state. Wikipedia uses the term "State" for the Trucial States protectorate, and a dozen or more Semi-Sovereign States, Protected Independent States, Guaranteed States, Neutralized States, Vassal States, and Colonies in its so-called List of sovereign states in 1919. You've never bothered to read the citation from the State Department Digest of International Law, but you've nonetheless bored us your thoughts regarding what you think it does, or doesn't, say. harlan (talk) 20:51, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Arbitrary Break

It seems that historical denial, such as holocaust denial, is a plague in recent history. It seems to be a plague inflicting the Arab world especially, notably Iran. We are now witnessing the opposite of historical denial. Unfortunately it does not have a name. Perhaps one day I will be credited with coining a new term for the phenomenon: historical fiction. A term such as mythology does not claim any mainstream cedibility. Here we have got somebody trying to bestow a higher historical and legal status on a piece of land then was at any time until now even considered. You have still not produced any evidence that Palestine (by which I mean the Mandate Territory of Palestine) was considered to be a state - without any adjective or qualification. In addition to the acts of state which this entity did not exercise, I can also add - was it a member of the League of Nations, did it enter into any international treaties, etc. This ping-pong debate should cease - because no reliable reference exists for the proposition that Mandate Palestine was considered to be a state. All we have is an argument that it should be considered a state. BTW, I have read the PCIJ judgement referred to above, which does not support the conclusion that Palestine was a state. The way I read it, it was a compensation claim against the government of Palestine, and the UK was the government being sued. If I am wrong, indicate the page or quote. Ewawer (talk) 04:11, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Ewawer, the relevant general Wikipedia article is Historiography and nationalism, but the phenomenon of "cleaning up" or "clarifying" history for nationalist purposes is prevalent in a number of areas around the world, dating from long before 1947 or 1919... AnonMoos (talk) 15:15, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

(outdent) You still haven't read the published secondary analysis of the PCIJ judgment from the State Department's International Law Digest. Nonetheless, you are engaging in personal attacks about someone else creating historical fiction. I'm not publishing a synthesis that advances a position. I'm quoting a US government analysis on the legal status of the Mandates which explains that they were States as defined by international law. That analysis is based in-turn upon the final judgments in two international court cases which said that the Palestine Mandate was a State.

Please read the analysis in the sources I've cited, and stop asking me to re-argue the PCIJ case or listen to WP:OR lectures about holocaust denial. The concessions had nothing to do with Great Britain's Mandate, considering the fact that there were provisions for them to remain in force even after it was terminated. The responsibility for the compensation claim was assigned to Palestine on the basis of the fact that an international treaty obligation had entered into force for "the State that acquired the territory" where the concessions had been granted. Great Britain did not acquire any territory, it simply supervised a mandate on behalf of the League of Nations.

There are plenty of sources which don't use any prefix in connection with the term state:

• Protocol XII, Article 9 of the Treaty of Lausanne assigned responsibilities to "the State which acquires the territory".
• U.S. TITLE 8, CHAPTER 12, § 1101. Definitions says that territories under mandate or trusteeship shall be regarded as separate foreign states. [18]
• "Boundaries Delimitation: Palestine and Trans-Jordan", by Yitzhak Gil-Har, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Jan., 2000), pp. 68-81 says "Palestine and Transjordan emerged as modern states; This was in consequence of British War commitments to its allies during the First World War."[19]
• Article 6 of the Palestine Mandate encouraged settlement on "State lands" and waste lands not required for public use.[20]
• The book "State lands and rural development in mandatory Palestine, 1920-1948, By Warwick P. N. Tyler discusses use of State lands under the laws of Palestine. i.e. the Land Transfer Ordinance of 1920, the 1926 Correction of Land Registers Ordinance, the Land Settlement Ordinance of 1928, Land Transfer Regulations of 1940, & etc. [21] The article notes that the laws in force during the mandate were retained by the All-Palestine government.
• The League of Nations Annual Digest said "The arbitrator, after having adopted the principle that the costs have to be equally divided between the States parties to the arbitration, said: 'The difficulty arises here how one is to regard the Asiatic countries under the British and French mandates. Iraq is a Kingdom in regard to which Great Britain has undertaken responsibilities equivalent to those of a Mandatory Power. Under the British mandate, Palestine and Transjordan have each an entirely separate organisation. We are, therefore, in the presence of three States sufficiently separate to be considered as distinct Parties." -- Marjorie M. Whiteman, Digest of International Law, vol. 1 (Washington, DC: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1963) 651, Questia, Web, 14 Apr. 2010.

The PCIJ pdf file has 95 pages that do not correspond to the original page numbers shown on the page itself. The latter are cited by Whiteman in the State Department Digest. On page 39 of 95 of the pdf file, the Court noted the terms of Article 9 of the treaty agreement that had come into force:

"In the territories detached from Turkey under the Treaty of Peace signed this day, the State which acquires the territory is fully subrogated as regards the rights and obligations of Turkey towards the nationals of the other Contracting Powers"

At another point in its decision, page 47 of 95, the Court observed that the international obligations mentioned in the Mandate consisted solely of the Treaty of Lausanne, and that Article 9 was applicable to Palestine:

"The provision, therefore, contained in Article 9 of Protocol XII, to the effect that Palestine is subrogated as regards the rights and obligations of Turkey towards the nationals of contracting Powers other than Turkey, who are beneficiaries under the concessionary contracts entered into with the Ottoman authorities before October 29th, 1914, is applicable to M. Mavrommatis' concessions."

On page 55 of 95 the Court went on to recognize the validity of the concessions granted to the citizens of other contracting states and the responsibility of the successor state:

"The Mavrommatis concessions, having been recognized as valid, must, if they are to hold good as against the successor State in accordance with Article 9 of Protocol XII, be held by a subject of a contracting Power other than Turkey. Now it is common ground that M. Mavrommatis is a Greek subject and that Greece is one of the Contracting Powers in question."

This issue has already been to I/P Coll several times. I'm inclined to ask for ARBCOM clarification, since none of the wikilawyers who say that Palestine wasn't a country or that Palestine wasn't a state ever bother to cite a reliable published source. They simply set-up court on the talk page and spout-off about their own unpublished synthesis, or task other editors to perform endless and unnecessary original research. They never want to add an opposing viewpoint, they simply want to remove well-sourced material with which they disagree. The Wikipedia:Verifiability policy says "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—whether readers can check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true." harlan (talk) 10:53, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Wow. This issue is obviously important to you. To me it is semantic, and a matter of historical and legal accuracy. As for the PCIJ Judgment being referred to - I note that the defendant in the case is "His Britannic Majesty's Government, represented by ... of the Colonial Office". Also on page 7 of the judgment it is said: "The Government of the Greek Republic by an application filed with ... has submitted to the PCIJ a suit arising out of the alleged refusal on the part of the Government of Palestine and consequently also on the part of His Britannic Majesty's Government, in its capacaity as Mandatory Power of Palestine ..."

Where is any reference to Palestine as a State, or as a party to the action in its own right? This is all nonsense, with all respect to the proponents of that view. None of the materials referred to supports that conclusion. Ewawer (talk) 11:19, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

I came across this interesting debate, and I cannot help adding my 10 cents here. Harlan is worried about this issue because he wants to draw a direct line between the British Mandate and the Arab Palestinian leadership, as if the Arab leadership were the legal successor of the mandate. Other than that, I don't see why he insists so much. Actually his motives are purely political. Now, as for his claims - No one would write a serious article about the Mandate not being a state, because this is obvious. Actually, according to Harlan's sources, no one ever claimed that the Mandate was a state. The term "state-lands" does not mean "lands possessed by a state". It means "lands for public used", or "commons" in the language of New England. The court ruling which he values so much, states that the UK should respect previous obligations of the Ottoman rule. It doesn't term Palestine a state, nor does it consider it a sovereign state. The US law that he cited says that mandate territories should be regarded as if they were states for the purpose of the specific law. Actually, Harlan's bases his ideas on thin air, present them as facts, and challenge others to refute them, as if his was the omniscient here. There is nothing to refute, because he proved nothing. Furthermore, the Wikipedian list of sovereign states he mentioned does not mention mandates as states, and needless to say, doesn't mention Palestine as a state, even in the lists relevant to 1923-1947. Gderot (talk) 11:45, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Gderot and Ewawer, I'd advise you both to comment on content and not on other editors. I cited a source, the US State Department Digest. You certainly have not read it, because in pages 598-731 it discusses at great length the legal basis in international treaties for the establishment of the new states in Ottoman Asia under the League of Nations mandate system. It most certainly does say that Palestine was a state, and it cites a number of international and national court cases as the proof. The Digest says "The terms of the Treaty of Lausanne (28 LNTS 11) provided for the application of principles of state succession to the "A" Mandates." and it points out that Norman Bentwich had claimed that the term state in the treaty of Lausanne had the normal meaning:

"Thus, Norman Bentwich, in commenting on the case of Heirs of the Prince Mohamed Selim v. The Government of Palestine (reported in [ 1935- 1937] Ann. Dig. 123 (No. 39)), states: ". . . The Article [60] of the Treaty [of Lausanne] transferred to the Government of Palestine only those properties which were passed from the Civil List to the Ottoman State by the Irades. But there was nothing in the discussions on the Treaty of Lausanne which could upset the natural interpretation of the words of the Article, that the imperial decrees had transferred properties of Sultan Abdul Hamid to the Ottoman State and that these properties were ceded to the allied successor states."(Italics supplied.[by Whiteman]) See Bentwich, "State Succession and Act of State in the Palestine Courts", XXIII Brit. Yb. Int'l L. ( 1946) 330, 333

Article 60 of the Treaty of Lausanne said "The States in favour of which territory was or is detached from the Ottoman Empire after the Balkan wars or by the present Treaty shall acquire, without payment, all the property and possessions of the Ottoman Empire situated therein." Several Israeli Court cases dealt with its own Transition Law. They held that Palestine and Israel were in-their turns the successors in interest to the property and possessions of the Ottoman Empire, not Great Britain. That is not a trivial legal claim.

• I cited Yitzhak Gil-Har and Warwick P. N. Tyler above. Both men said that Palestine was a state. The fact that you claim they didn't certainly appears to be politically motivated.
• The words "as if" do not appear in the US Code that I cited, where does the so-called quote come from if not thin air?
• There were no Mandates in 1919, so there are none in the Wikipedia list.
• According to Mr. Shehaddeh and Kluwer Law International, the laws of Palestine remained in effect after the termination of the Mandate and the establishment of the All-Palestine Government. The State of Israel had a similar Transition Act with the same legal effect and Whiteman reviewed several Israel Court cases regarding the legal status of the Mandate. harlan (talk) 13:03, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Harlan, you keep throwing the ball at your opponents' field, while the burden of proof lies entirely in yours, and you failed to do so. You don't seriously expect us to read 133 pages of legal text about whether or not the UK government should compensate a Greek businessman who did business with the Ottoman government. If you want to make a valid point, you will have to bring a relevant concise citation saying: "Palestine is a sovereign state", or "Despite temporary Mandate government, Palestine should be regarded as a state for any purpose". As long as you don't have such statements, your suggestions are invalid, and the previous version of the article should be immediately restored. Furthermore, if you look at the "All-Palestine Government" statement to the UN you find it saying: "IN VIEW OF THE TERMINATION OF THE BRITISH MANDATE OVER PALESTINE WHICH HAD PREVENTED THE ARABS FROM EXERCISING THEIR INDEPENDENCE" ([22], text originally in all-caps), there is a clear statement on behalf of the UK Government to an Arab-Palestinian delegation: "With regard to Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, I am to observe that this Article, in so far as it applies to territories severed from the Ottoman Empire, has been interpreted by the Principal Allied Powers in Articles 94 to 97 of the Treaty of Sevres, Syria and Iraq are explicitly referred to in Article 94 of that Treaty as having been provisionally recognised as Independent States, in accordance with the fourth paragraph of Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations. Article 95, on the other hand, makes no such reference to Palestine. The reason for this is that, as stated in that Article, the Mandatory is to be responsible for putting into effect the Declaration originally made on the 2nd November, 1917, by the British Government, and adopted by the other Allied Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish people" ([23], letter 2, par. 4). You claim that this statement was contested at the ICJ, but this claim of yours is false. The only thing contested was the UK claim that the Mandate Government was not a successor to previous Ottoman rule. The court said that succession exists. It did not say that Palestine was a state, and no scholar ever interpreted it that way, not even those you mentioned here. As for your other sources, you've already been told by Gderot and Ewawer that they are totally irrelevant. The US law regarded mandates as if they were foreign states, and in any case, it never recognized Palestine as an Arab state. There is more than one way to say "as if", and your insistence on certain phrasing is pathetic. When Churchill made a speech about the "rights of man", a lady shouted at him "and woman!". He answered: "in this case, man embraces woman". Clearly none of us think woman and man are the same thing, but for many legal purposes, man can be regarded as a woman and vice versa. By your logic, we should disregard any difference between men and women, because certain statutes regard them as the same.

Look at all the Wikipedian lists of sovereign states from 1923 to 1947 and show me where you found Palestine, or any other mandate, under the category "state". In this case, you simply lied.

The UK 1948 Palestine Act explicitly said that all mandate legislation is abolished as of 15 May 1948. No successor entity was mentioned. The High Commissioner handed the keys to his office to UN officials. The UN still possesses his former offices in Jerusalem, BTW. The State of Israeli voluntarily declared that it adopted all former mandate legislation until further notice. When negotiations about permanent settlement reached a dead end in 1949, this temporary adoption became permanent. As for the Palestinian - they took their own decision, which were soon abolished by Jordan and Egypt. Again, you put historical facts in extremely misleading context.

Yitzhak Gil-Har is probably Israeli, judging by his name, but I don't know him, and I don't know what he bases his claims on. You named some other scholars, but this is just name dropping, nothing more. People say all kind of things, and academic work demands constant suggestions and assessment of ideas. In many cases, people change their minds, or other point out to problems in their theories. You think that by naming names you prove your point. Sorry, that's not enough. You have to prove that your source is well-established, especially when it makes a very non-orthodox claim. DrorK (talk) 22:36, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

PS - The fact that you are afraid to confront serious arguments and send Nableezy to snipe and silence people who expose your wrong-doings here, does not honor you one bit. DrorK (talk) 22:39, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Drork, the notion that I'm afraid to engage in good faith discussion is absurd. The League of Nations established a system that planned for the complete independence of the "A" Mandates, not their replacement. Hence, the UK was never responsible for naming successor states for any Mandate. Great Britain was only responsible for providing temporary tutelage to nations whose independence had already been recognized in an international agreement. If the Wikipedia list of states contains other semi-sovereign or protectorate states, then it probably should be updated to include the mandatory states. They each engaged in foreign relations and entered into treaties with other countries at a time when those type of instruments could only be concluded between states.

It is a well documented fact that from time-to-time Israeli officials have attempted to expunge Palestine as a legal entity from the pages of history and that US government officials have always rebuffed those efforts. For example, Shaul Bar-Haim of the Foreign Ministry complained that the use of the term "Palestine" is historical fiction; it encourages the Palestine entity concept; and that its "revived usage enrages" individual Israelis. William Crawford of the State Department Near East section responded that it is difficult to see how it "enrages" Israel opinion, because the practice is consistent with the fact that, in a de jure sense, Jerusalem was part of Palestine and has not since become part of any other sovereignty. [24] harlan (talk) 01:19, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Whatever -- lots of things are "legal entities" without being sovereign states, and you're rather conspicuously contradicting yourself, since according to your beloved resolution 181, Jerusalem would NOT belong to the envisaged future Arab state. Some might call your rhetorical strategy of sliding the definition of the word "Palestine" between the two quite distinct and separate meanings "British mandate territory" and "hypothetical Arab state" to be rather disingenuous. Israel is just as much (or as just little) the successor to the British mandate as a future Arab state will be... AnonMoos (talk) 05:25, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Anonmoos the International Court of Justice noted that certain rights and immunities (aspects of sovereignty) were recognized and guaranteed in connection with the Holy Places under the terms of the Treaty of Berlin (1878). The Court said those "existing rights" had been preserved by the safeguarding clauses in article 13 of the Mandate, an entire Chapter on religious and minority protections in the UN Partition plan, and plans developed under the armistice agreement. Carol Fink explained that the Treaty of Berlin established the custom in international law which based grants of title to territory on guarantees regarding religious and minority rights.

Stefan Talmon says the fact that sovereignty is a legal right distinct from independence becomes clear from the fact that it is transferable, a notion that is not applicable to independence. The partition plan called for a plebiscite that would have permitted the inhabitants of Jerusalem to assume sovereignty and settle its final disposition. The armistice agreement conferred "exclusive jurisdiction" on a mixed Israeli-Jordanian Commission to develop future plans in that regard, which the UNTSO was obliged to implement. The armistice agreement was adopted under the terms of a binding Chapter VII Security Council resolution which authorized an armistice occupation pending a final settlement. That is mentioned in the "Legal Fiction" section of the talk page above, and in the thread with Nudve in the partition plan talk page archives.

164 countries have recognized the permanent sovereignty of the Palestinian people over the resources of their territory, including East Jerusalem. That recognition is in line with the commitments contained in the Treaty of Berlin, the Mandate, the Partition plan, and the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples. Sir James Mackintosh provided the textbook explanation of the fact that title refers to sovereignty rather than to independence. Referring to de jure recognition, he said: the true and legitimate sense of the word 'Recognition' as a technical term of international law, is that in which it denotes the explicit acknowledgement of the independence of a country by a state which formerly exercised sovereignty over it. . . . Such recognitions are renunciations of sovereignty. They are a surrender of the power or of the claim to govern. They are of the utmost importance, as quieting possession and extinguishing a foreign pretension to authority: they free a nation from the evils of a disputed sovereignty. harlan (talk) 09:30, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Harlan, this is strange. As a newcomer to the English Wikipedia, I find you using political arguments, and I thought Wikipedia was not political. What you are saying is interesting, but totally irrelevant. You are actually saying that the British Mandate over Palestine was not right, but we do not discuss here whether it was right or wrong. We discuss what it was. First of all, your definition of "Mandate" is not true. Here what the League of Nations Official Journal say:

"A mandate was a self-imposed limitation by the conquerors on the sovereignty which they exercised over the conquered territory. In the general interests of mankind, the Allied and Associated Powers had imposed this limitation upon themselves, and had asked the League to assist them in seeing that this general policy was carried out, but the League was not the author of it; the duty of the League, which was a most responsible and difficult one, was first to see that the terms of the mandates were in conformity with the principles of the Covenant and, secondly, that these terms would, in fact, regulate the policy of the Mandatory Powers in the mandated territories" [25]

There is nothing here saying that a mandate was a state, actually it says that the sovereign is the governing country, and it voluntarily limits itself. Now here's what the mandate's official document say:

"Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country ; and Whereas recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country".

You say that it should not have been this way. That the mandate should have recognized the rights of Arabs and not of Jews, but this is not the question. The question is what the mandate was, not what it supposed to be in your opinion. Another thing - almost all countries in the world recognize Israel. Israel is in what you call Palestine. Israel is a Jewish state like the mandate document wanted to establish, so Israel is successor and not All-Palestine. It is very simple. Now please revert your edits, everybody is wrong sometimes. Gderot (talk) 11:15, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Gderot (Drork), I never said "the British Mandate over Palestine was not right", that is a straw man you introduced in order to insert some warmed over political propaganda that has nothing to do with the legal status of the Palestine Mandate, and the continuity of its laws. harlan (talk) 07:07, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Israel would seem to have a much better claim to be the legal successor of the British Palestine mandate than anything on the Arab side

Leaving aside all the general severe problems which affect any attempt to posit strong legal continuity between the British mandate and what followed (such as the British "law of the jungle" withdrawal, in which they conspicuously refused to hand over authority or territory to anyone; the United Nations tacit endorsement of the British "law of the jungle" withdrawal; and the rejection, by all Arab governments and representative Palestinian Arab institutions which spoke out on the matter, of the official UN-endorsed legal transition proposal, UNGA resolution 181 of November 29, 1947, etc.) -- it would also seem to be the case that Israel has a much better claim to be the legal successor of the British Palestine mandate than anything on the Arab side.

Israel declared independence (under the same leadership which had offered to accept UNGA 181) at almost the same moment that the British completed their "law of the jungle" withdrawal -- and the state of Israel controlled territory de facto from the beginning, and was recognized by a number of countries de facto almost immediately, with de jure recognitions and United Nations membership following relatively soon afterwards. Israel incorporated the bulk of British Mandate Law into its legal system, and its political system has operated continuously in a democratic manner for the last almost 62 years, without significant internal disruptions or breaks in functioning.

By contrast, in the aftermath of May 1948, there was the following on the Arab side:

1. The "All Palestine Government" of Haj Amin al-Husseini -- named according to Voltaire's rules for the Holy Roman Empire ("neither holy nor Roman nor an empire"), since it did not remotely cover all of Palestine and was not really a "government" in any meaningful sense -- which was a unilateral creation of the Egyptian government, and which was unilaterally abolished by the Egyptian government after ten years, when its complete uselessness and ineffectuality had become obvious to any who cared enough to bother to notice.
2. The annexation of the West Bank by Transjordan, which was only recognized by two or three other countries in the world. Jordan lost de facto control in 1967, and renounced all territorial ambitions twenty years ago.

As for developments occurring long after 1948 (and thus of rather minimal relevance to the issue of pre-1948 / post-1948 legal continuity), the PLO also basically originated as an arbitrary Egyptian creation, being decreed into existence at a 1964 summit which Nasser convened on the subject of how to help Syria steal Israel's water, with the ever-glorious Ahmed Shuqeiri installed as its figurehead. In any case, the PLO has never exercised any de facto control over any of the territory it lays claim to. The Palestinian Authoroity was created according to the Madrid Conference principles, and so would appear to be quite remote both chronologically and legally from the British Palestine Mandate.

So it's kind of hard to avoid the conclusion that if there's only one single "legal entity" which has the best claim to be the legal successor to the British Mandate of Palestine, it would have to be Israel... AnonMoos (talk) 05:08, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

This is the second off-topic thread you've started in an attempt to create a forum for your canned battleground speeches. According to Wikipedia:ARBPIA, you do not have the right to engage in sustained editorial conflict or unbridled criticism of other editors across different forums. If you have genuine controversy, you are expected to avail yourself of the dispute resolution mechanism, or drop the matter. Wikipedia's communal approaches require editors to apply the principles contained in neutral point of view, no original research and verifiability) in their editing. If you wish to include an opposing viewpoint in this article regarding the statehood of the Palestine mandate, you will have to cite reliable published sources, not extemporaneous compositions.

The status of Palestine in international law as a country that is the home of a nation, and its statehood, has already been the subject of several RfCs and discussions at I/P Coll. None of those discussions reached the conclusion that Palestine could only be called a "territory" or "administration".

I've cited a number of very reliable primary and secondary sources on this talk page which say that Palestine was state as defined in the applicable international law; that the UK national courts and international courts affirmed that fact on several occasions; and that the Palestinians have a right to their territory and their State. None of the other editors here have offered any serious challenge to the analysis of the treaties, laws, and Court decisions contained in the secondary sources that I've cited: e.g. the US State Department Digest, the British Yearbook of International Law, Hersh Lauterpacht's works, Gil-Har, Tyler, and etc. Refusal to actually read the sources you are debating is NOT a virtue. Even if you had done that, it would only have been appropriate to add that material as an opposing viewpoint, not to demand that other editors remove well-sourced material. harlan (talk) 04:15, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

I again need to repeat that none of your sources say that Palestine was considered a state at any time during the Mandate period, and the repeated assertions that they do is becoming tedious.Ewawer (talk) 12:36, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Sorry Harlan, but everything here is extremely relevant to your broad project (which you have been conducting on this article and elsewhere) to get your innovative personal theories of an extreme legalistic continuity between the pre-1948 British Mandate of Palestine and the post 1948 situation in the middle east (a legalistic continuity which is also extremely selective, since you seem to feel quite free to trim it and tailor it and shape it to meet your particular agenda) accepted into Wikipedia articles. AnonMoos (talk) 13:48, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Once again, you can add material if you want, but the sources I've cited certainly do say that Palestine was considered to be a state during the Mandate. This isn't a legitimate content dispute, since I've quoted several of them and provided links. harlan (talk) 13:54, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

That's nice, but it isn't too relevant to what I was actually asking here. To boil my question down into one sentence: -- "Can you come up with one meaningful substantive non-speculative non-hypothetical reason why any Arab 'legal entity' has a better claim to be the legal successor of the British Mandate of Palestine than Israel does -- since according to most accepted standard criteria governing legal successor-state relationships, Israel would appear to have by far the better claim?" Awaiting your substantive relevant answer... AnonMoos (talk) 18:25, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Some general questions

1. ) What is the difference in law between the "All-Palestine Government" which was established by the government of Egypt on non-Egyptian territory, and was completely a creature of the Egyptian government, which had full control over all aspects of it from top to bottom, and (for example) the Vikdun Quisling regime established by Nazis in Norway? As far as I can tell, the Vikdun Quisling regime had more real substantive autonomy with respect to its occupying power than the "All-Palestine Government" did...
2. ) What substantial legal continuity can exist between the League of Nations mandate of the 1920s and the "All-Palestine Government" of the 1950s when the British government conspicuously refused to hand over sovereignty or territory to any entity on any side during its "law of the jungle" withdrawal in May 1948, and when the "All-Palestine Government" vehemently and vocally rejected UN General Assembly Resolution 181, which was the official United Nations endorsed proposal for legally and politically transforming the mandate situation into something else? -- AnonMoos (talk) 23:40, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Consider this edit of this very talk page by Harlan. Does he have something to hide? DrorK (talk) 00:36, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Maybe evidence of you repeatedly violating WP:NPA and WP:CIVIL? nableezy - 02:46, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Anonmoos this is the article talk page. You are violating Wikipedia policy by trying to turn it into a forum for general discussions and by asking other editors for assistance in conducting your original research. The article already cites a number of reliable published sources on international law, including the U.S. State Department and Kluwer Law International. They each explain in great detail the applicable principles of state succession and continuity of laws. harlan (talk) 03:21, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Harlan, the fact that you use Wikipedia to publish your own thesis and propagate for political causes seem to be okay in your view. The fact that you dare deleting others' comments from this talk page also seem in line with your standards. The fact that someone challenge your thesis and brings evidences to refute it, triggers your reaction that it is an "original research" irrelevant even for a talk page. Of course, your tag team partner is here to massage your back while you fight the "infidels". DrorK (talk) 05:16, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Try me one more time. nableezy - 05:43, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Drork I didn't write the analysis that is contained in the sources that I've cited. Your constant harping on that topic on various talk pages and noticeboards has only earned you unfavorable attention. Please limit your discussion to content, not other editors. harlan (talk) 07:43, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Harlan -- I have no intentions of editing this article in any major way, or of participating in extended debates on this talk page, or of joining in any pre-existing flamewars on either side. However, I remember how you dragged down the "UN Partition Plan" article for months with your abstract metaphysical extended personal interpretations of primary source documents and "original synthesis" of selectively-chosen legal philosophies, and was distantly hoping to save this article from the same fate. If you can't even undertake to offer any kind of direct cogent reply to a few basic simple pointed (but relevant) questions, and instead take refuge in your extended interpretations of primary source documents (the very definition of "original research", as far as I can see), then I'm afraid that's a bad sign... AnonMoos (talk) 07:49, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Anonmoos, you should limit your comments to this article's content and stop trying to score points by making asinine comments about other editors. Please take your discussion about the Vikdun Quisling regime somewhere else. harlan (talk) 11:17, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Whatever, dude -- my questions were short, snappy, and pertinent (and they were about legal questions, usually your favorite subject) -- as opposed to your endless pontifications and personal theory-spinnings. AnonMoos (talk) 15:21, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Harlan managed to intimidate yet another Wikipedian with some help from Nableezy. Apparently, he has taken the role of Wikipedia's Professor Moriarty. Just to make things clear - Harlan, as well as Nableezy, do not really believe in what they write here. They have an anti-Israeli agenda, and they are clever enough to instill it in a way that would look scientific. They also have enough power to intimidate anyone who tries to stop them. DrorK (talk) 16:52, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, but Harlan hasn't "intimidated" me, and I have no real interest in your apparent long-running flamewar with Nableezy (nor any intention of joining it on either side). What I do care about is that Harlan is trying to introduce his own private personal world of abstract hypothetical metaphysical legal-philosophical speculations (largely derived by introspective meditation on original primary source documents) into Wikipedia articles again. And my opinion of the usefulness of Harlan's work to Wikipedia articles is not improved by the fact that Harlan seems to be completely unable to give any satisfactory answers to a few simple pointed skeptical questions (here or elsewhere). In the current context, we all know that Harlan prefers the "All-Palestine Government" to the Vikdun Quisling regime, but I'm not interested in that, nor am I interested in the reasons why Harlan prefers one to the other, nor am I interested in Harlan's subjective emotional feelings of outrage that I dared to compare Vikdun Quisling to Haj Amin al-Husseini (though objectively the two would seem to have quite a bit in common!). What I am actually interested in is what the formal difference in legal status is between the two regimes. Unfortunately, when confronted with this somewhat basic question, Harlan's glib tongue (which normally has no difficulty in running on at great length about such subjects) seems to be suddenly frozen. AnonMoos (talk) 11:04, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Egypt Trustee Decision

Ewawer, Sandford Silverburg cites Chapter 11 in Hussein Hassouna's book which describes the perfunctory efforts of the Arab League to maintain the appearance of a Palestinian governing authority after the establishment of Israel in 1948.

Silverburg says

1. The All-Palestine Government was established by the Arab League in 1948;
2. That this political act was done on behalf of the Palestinians to govern both the West Bank and Gaza Strip;
3. That little came of the 1948 development because Jordan annexed the West Bank in 1950 and Egypt supervised Gaza as a trustee in 1959.

Silverburg did not say that Egypt "claimed" to be a trustee in 1959, or that it only became the trustee in that year. The source that he cited discusses the 1950 Arab League compromise that recognized Egypt as trustee of Western Palestine, but acknowledged Jordan as trustee of Eastern Palestine. Prior to that decision, the government that the Arab League had established in 1948 under the Egyptians was supposed to govern both Gaza and the West Bank. Your use of the term claim is not in line with WP:CLAIM. harlan (talk) 05:30, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

It is quite interesting that Harlan Wilkerson mentions Silverburg. Mr. Wikerson usually rejects Silverburg claims. For example, Mr. Wilkerson explicitly said that the State of Palestine did not exist, nor was the British Mandate a state. "The beginning of what could' evolved into state ... originated as a mandate and was never an 'old state' or an original state interrupted by historical forces to become a 'new state". (basically he says that the British Mandate was a new creation that in other circumstances could have evolved into a state, but didn't. This is not an interpretation, but a summary of the next few lines. "Palestine and international law: essays on politics and economics", Sanford R. Silverburg, McFarland & Company Inc. Publishers, 2002, page 10). "The evolutionary nature of international politics has included the emergence of Palestine as a nonstate actor" (page 23). As for the "All-Palestine Government" Silverburg says that although officially established by the Arab League to govern the West Bank and Gaza Strip (contrary to its name, and he refers to that paradox too in the same chapter), it never had actual control over the West Bank, and it in the Gaza Strip it was entirely subject to Egyptian supervision. So actually, Mr. Wilkerson, you twist Silverburg's words. This is very unethical. Judging by your access to books, you seem to be an academic. Such a conduct is not what one would expect from an honest academic. Kalamiyat (talk) 16:02, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Why does Mr. Wilkerson reintroduces his errors despite the long explanations above? Does he own this article? If so, I think his signature should appear on it. Preferably his real name. Kalamiyat (talk) 17:42, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Kalamiyat, it is not an error that the US government considered the Palestine Mandate to be a state and that two international Courts made binding determinations which said that it was a state.

In international law, recognition of statehood is the process whereby an existing "state" decides to treat another entity as a state. Like the post war treaties, whereby the allied states made Palestine and the other successor states pay-off a share of the Ottoman public debt. Unlike international law professors, governments can legally recognize other states, and enter into binding treaty agreements with them that have legal consequences. The official sources and secondary sources that I've cited say that the US, UK, Italy, and other governments did recognize the Palestine mandate as a state, and that they had bilateral treaty agreements with Palestine. Silverburg doesn't discuss that, but John Quigley mentions that fact in Chapter 2 of Silverburg's book.

In this article, I'm sourcing a statement of fact from Silverburg's essay about the Arab League trustee decision, not his personal opinions. I've never represented that he said Palestine was a state. harlan (talk) 18:14, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Mr. Wilkerson, please read page 40 of the aforementioned book, and this time, please read it carefully. Quigley doesn't say that the British Mandate of Palestine was a state. Quite the contrary, he mentions the fact that the Mandate was not run like other Mandate A state. He mentions some people on UNSCOP criticized this fact, but this is irrelevant to this discussion. He mentions that Israel saw itself as a new state, but so did the so-called Government of All-Palestine. Read its statement to the UN (another editor brought a citation above, I suggest you read it). Quigley doesn't say Italy the UK and the US recognized Palestine as a state. He merely mentions that the Mandate engaged in postal service treaties with other countries, but this is not equivalent to saying it was a sate. There is not a single document of these countries in which Palestine is treated as a state. This is your personal interpretation, nothing more. Quigley says that the UN GA treated the PLO as a state, but this is contradictory to the documents of the UN. The UN lists PLO/Palestine under non-state observers. With all due respect, Quigley is not a prophet, and we don't need to bow before him when he makes poor claims, especially when his views contradict the views of so many other scholars, including the editor of the book in which his article was published. Your claim that two international courts recognized Palestine as a state is merely your personal interpretation. You didn't bring any citation saying "Palestine is a state". You merely brought rulings saying that the UK (the UK! not Palestine) should respect obligations made by the Ottoman Empire with regard to the territory that became the Mandate of Palestine. To sum it up - you make a claim that the moon is made of cheese and bring some sources that say that the moon have the same color like cheese and put them as sources to your claim. Now you ask people here to prove that the moon is not made of cheese. They bring you some sources that the moon is rocky, but you claim it is that a court of law once ruled that the moon is cheese, while the court actually referred to something else. While people scratch their heads thinking what other contradictory sources they can bring you (who the hell would write an article about how the moon is NOT made of cheese, even as a joke?) you wave your hands in victory and say: the moon is made of cheese and this is a fact. Kalamiyat (talk) 20:04, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Kalamiyat, lets get your facts in order. You are deleting citations from the article that have nothing to do with Silverburg or Quiley's essays:

• The sources that I cited regarding the statehood of Palestine in the article are the US government Digest of International Law and Gil-Har's discussion regarding the boundaries established pursuant to the post-WWI treaties. It does not follow that your interpretation of the remarks made by Silverburg and Quigley, in another book, address anything those two sources had to say on the subject.

• The Digest devotes an entire Chapter to the legal status of the mandates, and it says that they were States. I provided a link to U.S. TITLE 8, CHAPTER 12, § 1101. Definitions which provides that territories under mandate shall be regarded as separate foreign states.[26] The US was a party to the Anglo-American Palestine Mandate Convention of 1925 which obligated its citizens living there to give up their consular courts and accept the jurisdiction of the Courts and government of Palestine, not the UK. The US had to recognize a new Palestinian Nationality. For example, in 1963 the US advised Israel of the fact that, in a de jure sense, Jerusalem was part of Palestine and has not since become part of any other sovereignty. In the same discussion the US advised Israel that it still had regulations and legislation on quota nationality that were applicable to Palestine (under the principle of inter-temporal law). See United States Position on Jerusalem [27]

• The Colonial Secretary of the UK, Mr. Churchill, attempted to interfere with, and invalidate, Mr. Mavrommatis' concession in favor of a concession that he had granted to Mr. Rutenberg. So, the Greek government named the UK as the defendant in the contentious case. The Court ruled that the Palestine government, not the UK government, was the State that had acquired the territory, and that the UK as mandatory had to honor Palestine's obligations under the treaty with respect to the the Ottoman concessions.

• In the introduction of his book, Silverburg explains that these are both political essays (page 4). He says that his chapter will cover political efforts to obtain diplomatic recognition of an independent state of Palestine and Quigley's chapter will cover the nature of Palestinian statehood as affected by international law. Silverburg puts forth a political argument about "independence", which is not a legal requirement for statehood. The US State Department Digest explains: "A state in the international sense is generally described as a recognized member of the family of nations, an international person. Authorities differ in respect to the qualifications for such statehood, but there is general agreement on certain basic requirements. Independence is not essential. The requisite personality, in the international sense, is seen when the entity claiming to be a State has in fact its own distinctive association with the members of the international society, as by treaties, which, howsoever concluded in its behalf, mark the existence of definite relationships between itself and other contracting parties" See Marjorie M. Whiteman, Digest of International Law, vol. 1 (Washington, DC: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1963) page 223.

• Silverburg's chapter, "Diplomatic Recognition of States in statu nascindi: The Case of Palestine", is based upon political theory. There is no law defining or governing any such thing as a "State in statu nascindi", much less a law that would prevent another state from extending diplomatic recognition to a State with limited or restricted sovereignty. In fact, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the practice was very common.

• On page 13 Silverburg skims over particulars of the post-War treaties, and despite a bit of obfuscation about extending "a nation-state organizational form", says that the Western Powers demarcated Palestine. No judge would sit still for that sort of thing. The terms of the Treaty of Lausanne provided that States would acquire the territories detached from Turkey, and the Treaty of Versailles called for the demarcation of new States, not "nation-state organizational forms". On page 14 he commits another serious gaffe by impugning the motives of "international legal authorities" who point out that there was a Palestine prior to 1917. However, by that time, the US State Department Consul in Jerusalem had been submitting country reports on Palestine for decades, and the US government had recognized the Ottoman officials, like Raouf Pasha, as the Governors of Palestine for the usual reasons.[28]

• On page 15 Silverburg mentions the 1949 ICJ decision that expanded the category of "Subjects of International Law" to non-state entities for the first time. He did not mention that Palestine had been a subject of international law with its own personality prior to that time. Quigley's political essay on "Palestine Statehood Before WWII" explains that Palestine had entered into bilateral and multilateral treaties with other states at a time when treaties were, by definition, agreements concluded between States. In fact, the customary law codified in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties is still limited in scope to agreements between states. harlan (talk) 08:20, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Mr. Wilkerson, you did not say you were a lawyer, so I presume you are not. I would not recommend anyone to treat a WP article as a legal advice, hence your approach as if you need to convince a judge or a judicial authority here is not appropriate. This is an article about history not about law. Even when we discuss law, we discuss it here in its historical context and not as if we stood before a judge. Now as to your sources:

1. This source [29] is irrelevant. It says nothing about Palestine. You have plenty of sources saying that Palestine was not a regular "mandate A", so you cannot just take a saying about mandate regime and apply it on Palestine. Furthermore, this source does not say that "mandate A" is a state. It says: "The term “foreign state” includes outlying possessions of a foreign state, but self-governing dominions or territories under mandate or trusteeship shall be regarded as separate foreign states." You don't need a PhD to understand these words: A mandate is a possession of another state, HOWEVER for the purpose of this certain law they are regarded as separate states. This is a bit like saying: normally we bake cookies with sugar, but for the purpose of this recipe you may use honey. It doesn't mean honey is sugar.
2. You treat one single sentence of Gil-Har as if it summarize the entire history of the Levant. First of all, you have to read ALL of Gil-Har's publication in order to understand what he means. There is no free access to Gil-Har's publication, but there is a free access to articles of his in Hebrew. In Hebrew he never uses the term "Palestine", rather he uses the term "Eretz-Yisrael", and he never mentions the word "medina" (state) in relation with the mandate regime. Hence, I have a feeling that you took that sentence in English of Gil-Har and put it out of context.
3. There are three official sources (!) two of them British and one of the UN saying that Palestine was not a regular "mandate A". These are Churchill's letter from 1922, the Peel Committee report from 1936, and the UNSCOP Committee from 1947 reiterating and endorsing Peel's observations about the mandate. All of these sources were not related to Mr. Mavrommatis case. You want people here to believe that a court ruling about a financial dispute between the UK Government and a Greek/Ottoman citizen overrules three official statements, all of them made by authorized bodies according to the international law, and made in different times and in different circumstances. Sorry, I don't buy this.
4. Signing international treaties is NOT a criterion for statehood. This is your interpretation of Quigley's words. Quigley's interpretation itself is contested, and you take it even further. It is not enough to show that an entity signed a treaty as a state to call it a state. You should also look at the conditions and circumstances under which the alleged state entered the treaty. Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao are three entities not recognized as states and yet they are parties in many treaties reserved for states. Each time diplomats find another workaround to let these entities enter the treaty without recognizing them as states. In any event, Quigley's interpretation is no better than Silverburg, and we cannot treat the former as "facts" and the later as an "essay", especially as they appear in the same book.
5. The fact that "State in statu nascindi" is not defined in the intl. law has little relevance if any to this article. This is not an article about law but about history. Similarly, your saying that "No judge would sit still" is irrelevant. A judge may not sit still, but a good historian will indeed sit still and say that we have all kind of sources, and we are not here to introduce new rules and concepts. The term "state" is regularly used in a certain manner, namely to indicate a sovereign independent state. We have plenty of sources saying that British Mandate Palestine was neither independent nor sovereign, and in addition, these sources even say it was not a real "mandate A". We don't need more than that to decide that the term "state" is inappropriate for an article about the history of the Middle East. If you want to write an review about international law - that's another story.
6. You failed to provide any specific source saying that the goal of the mandate was to lead the local population into independence. Contrary to this claim we have many sources asserting that the British Mandate's goal was to facilitate Jewish immigration to Palestine and establish a Jewish national home there. These are the facts, you are not in a position to decide that these facts are null and void. Kalamiyat (talk) 08:59, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

BTW, Mr. Wilkerson, on another issue which is somewhat related. On other talk pages you said that the 1988 declaration of Palestinian independence in Algeria was an irrevocable measure that makes the State of Palestine a fact (I'm not quoting your exact words, but this was the spirit of your arguments). The declaration of the establishment of the All-Palestine Government said: "It is decided to declare Palestine as a whole, in its borders as known before the end of the British Mandate, an independent state, and to establish a government in it, to be known as the Government of All Palestine" (my translation from the letter in Arabic sent to the Arab countries' leaders on 23 September 1948 by Ahmad Hilmi Abdulbaqi). Now, according to your logic, the 1988 declaration was redundant because the State of Palestine was already declared in September 1948, and such declarations are irrevocable. Or maybe your theory is wrong? Kalamiyat (talk) 09:57, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

I believe you need to reread what I said and comment on the appropriate talk page. harlan (talk) 18:55, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

More sources

Here are some more sources for Mr. Wilkerson. The following citations are taken from the UNSCOP report of 1947:

• The Arab Case

1. "The Arab case as here set forth is based mainly on the contentions made by the representatives of the Arab Higher Committee before the first special session of the General Assembly and by the representatives of the Arab States at that session, at Beirut and Geneva" (§156)
2. "The Arabs have persistently adhered to the position that the Mandate for Palestine, which incorporated the Balfdur Declaration, is illegal. The Arab States have refused to recognize it as having any validity" (§160)

• Appraisal of the Arab case

1. "The Arabs of Palestine consider themselves as having a 'natural' right to that country, although they have not been in possession of it as a sovereign nation" (§163)
2. "With regard to the principle of self-determination, although international recognition was extended to this principle at the end of the First World War and it was adhered to with regard to the other Arab territories, at the time of the creation of the "A" Mandates, it was not applied to Palestine, obviously because of the intention to make possible the creation of the Jewish National Home

there. Actually, it may well be said that the Jewish National Home and the sui generis Mandate for Palestine run counter to that principle." (§176)

1. "As to the claim that the Palestine Mandate violates Article 22 of the Covenant because the community of Palestine has not been recognized as an independent nation and because the mandatory was given full powers of legislation and administration, it has been rightly pointed out by the Peel Commission: '(a) That the provisional recognition of certain communities formerly belonging to the Turkish Empire as independent nations is permissible; the words are can be provisionally recognized, not 'will' or 'shall'; (b) That the enultimate paragraph of Article 22 prescribes that the degree of authority to be exercised by the mandatory shall be defined, at need, by the Council of the League; (c) That the acceptance by the Allied Powers and the United States of the policy of the Balfour Declaration made it clear from the beginning that Palestine would have been treated differently from Syria and Iraq, and that this difference of treatment was confirmed by the Supreme Council in the Treaty of Sevres and by the Council of the League in sanctioning the Mandate." (§177)

The text is plain and simple. It was written in 1947 by an official UN committee and was endorsed by the UN GA. I expect Mr. Wilkerson to write a long message here explaining why Quigley thinks this text should be interpreted in a certain manner, but as I said, treating Quigley as a prophet who can read texts and understand them better than any other human being, is not in line with WP's policy. Kalamiyat (talk) 06:48, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

You seem to be unaware of the fact that the UNSCOP Commission was one of the first subsidiary political organs of the UN. It was simply putting a polite spin on the situation. Those same arguments were subsequently rejected by the UN Ad Hoc Committee of the whole General Assembly (just as they had been rejected by the LoN Mandates Commission). They were not in line with Great Britains' treaty obligations under CHAPTER XI of the UN Charter.[30] The Assembly had drawn attention to the fact that those obligations had been accepted by all members and were in no way contingent on the conclusion of trusteeship agreements, and that they were already in full force. See GA Resolution 9(1),"NON SELF-GOVERNING PEOPLE" [31]

The Yalta Conference mentioned that mandates should be placed under United Nations trusteeship. The Jewish Agency knew the United Nations Charter would say something on those subjects. The Agency wrote a memo to the San Francisco Conference requesting a safeguarding clause that said no trusteeship agreement could alter the Jewish right to nationhood secured by the Balfour Declaration and the Palestine Mandate. The conference implicitly rejected that suggestion by stipulating in article 80 of the Charter that a trusteeship agreement could in fact alter a mandate. See Jacob Robinson, Palestine and the United Nations: Prelude to a Solution, Greenwood Press, 1971 Reprint (1947), page 2-3. The scope of Article 80 was deliberately limited to CHAPTER XII, while the new obligations respecting non-self governing people were put in CHAPTER XI.

In any event, Article 25 of the Mandate and the provisions regarding the Jewish national home did not alter the requirement to "secure the development of self-governing institutions" in Palestine, like the institutions that were established in Transjordan. On 7 February 1947, the British government admitted to the US Government that they had failed to live-up to their legal obligation to establish self-government in Palestine:

"The document begins by reciting our obligations under the Mandate, and points out that during the last twenty-five years we have done, our best to further the legitimate aspirations of the Jews without prejudicing the interests of the Arabs. We have not however been able to "secure the development of self-governing institutions" in accordance with the Mandate." See United States Department of State / Foreign relations of the United States, 1947. The Near East and Africa Volume V (1947), page 1033[32]

On that same day, 7 February of 1947, the British Cabinet was discussing the ways and means of securing its own military bases in Palestine for another 10 years. It was suggested that they employ a UN trusteeship with an option to consider renewal in five years or to simply demand an initial trusteeship lasting ten years. CABINET IS (47)

There is no mention of statehood in the UNSCOP report, just a discussion about sovereignty and independence. No need to invoke Quigley on that score. Prof. Akweenda said "Most writers on the mandate system have avoided the problem of sovereignty. Some are ambiguous and not particularly illuminating. In the opinion of Justice Evatt of the High Court of Australia (Chairman of the UN Ad Hoc Committee on Palestine) 'sovereignty is neither a question of fact, nor a question of law but a question that does not arise at all. See Sovereignty in cases of Mandated Territories, in "International law and the protection of Namibia's territorial integrity", By S. Akweenda, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1997, ISBN: 9041104127, page 40 harlan (talk) 10:33, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Mr. Wilkerson: "There is no mention of statehood in the UNSCOP report, just a discussion about sovereignty and independence."

I'm sorry, but I have to put these words of yours in a big emphasis. A state is not about sovereignty and independence? Do I hear you correctly? What is it about then?

Forgive me for being a bit rude, but are you sending me to read articles about Namibia and Australia? Don't you think you go a little too far here? What's next? An article about the government system of the aboriginals in Papua New Guinea as an evidence that Palestine is a state?

Prof. Akweenda?? Who's next? Dr. Strangelove? Mr. Wilkerson, this is WP not a playground. Are you going to get serious or are you here just to make reverts? Kalamiyat (talk) 11:37, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Now as for your claims about UNSCOP - once again you bring documents of general nature to refute specific references to the Mandate of Palestine. This is not how people of good education work. If you want to prove that the British Mandate was a state, please provide a source saying "Palestine is a state". So far, all sources say otherwise. Secondly, UNSCOP report said nothing about the UN charter. It talked about the status of the League of Nation's mandate, and said explicitly that the mandate over Palestine was exceptional. They based this opinion upon explicit words of the mandate charter and the Peel Committee. UNSCOP did not refer or tried to refer to the changes in the status of mandates. They didn't even say they were happy with the situation of the mandate. They suggested to change it radically by establishing two independent states. However, if you talk about the Mandate of Palestine, you don't about what SHOULD have been but about what it WAS in practice. The text you cited says explicitly that the objective of the mandate was to promote the Jewish aspiration of independence. Once again you take one sentence from a long document and put it out of context. There is nothing in you citation to refute the previous statements that Palestine was not a regular mandate. And again, with all due respect to the cases of Namibia and Australia, you may not take a general statement about countries with different culture and circumstances and decide upon them that explicit statements about the Mandate of Palestine are incorrect. There are students who might read this discussion. You are giving them a real bad example on how to use sources and how to learn history. Kalamiyat (talk) 11:51, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

I've already given you several sources which say "Palestine is a State", Gil-Har does that. He says "Palestine and Transjordan emerged as modern states; This was in consequence of British War commitments to its allies during the First World War." Click on the link and stop acting like an illiterate ankle biter already [33]

The Treaty of Lausanne made the new states that acquired the territories detached from the Ottoman Empire responsible for paying off the the foreign bondholders. The treaty required that an arbital court be established to resolve any disputes and stipulated that its decisions would be final. A dispute erupted over the assessment of shares among the mandates, because they contained more than one "state". The Court said:

"The difficulty arises here how one is to regard the Asiatic countries under the British and French mandates. Iraq is a Kingdom in regard to which Great Britain has undertaken responsibilities equivalent to those of a Mandatory Power. Under the British mandate, Palestine and Transjordan have each an entirely separate organisation. We are, therefore, in the presence of three States sufficiently separate to be considered as distinct Parties. France has received a single mandate from the Council of the League of Nations, but in the countries subject to that mandate, one can distinguish two distinct States: Syria and the Lebanon, each State possessing its own constitution and a nationality clearly different from the other." -- Marjorie M. Whiteman, Digest of International Law, vol. 1 (Washington, DC: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1963) 651

I consider this discussion closed. I've already cited Evatt who was the Chairman of the UN Ad Hoc Committee on Palestine that adopted the 1947 partition plan, and the US State Department Digest which explain that sovereignty and independence are not applicable to mandates; are not essential; are not matters of fact; or matters of law; and that they are really not questions that arise at all. Your argument is WP:Synth anyway, since the UNSCOP sources you are citing don't say that the Mandate was not a state. The sources that I've cited do say that it was a state. It is really just that simple. harlan (talk) 14:23, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

The discussion is indeed closed, and you should let go of this article and stop your inappropriate conduct here. You proved nothing. Sorry, but you twisted sources, took them out of context, and gave a very bad example on how to write an article. I have nothing against you personally, but you obviously not very good at writing articles in history, or educational material at all. This is not a shame, most people need training in order to learn how to use sources correctly. I just deplore the fact that you are not willing to acknowledge your errors, and the fact that you need more training in academic work. Kalamiyat (talk) 15:20, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Last remark just to point out to you exactly where you went wrong: Evatt and the US State Department digest are irrelevant here, because they talk about mandates in general, while we have plenty of statements saying that the Mandate of Palestine was NOT a regular mandate. Specific reference to a subject are always more valuable than general references. If I'm saying: all crows are black, but mine is white, and then someone else says: crows are definitely black, you should still consider my crow to be white, unless someone testifies that it is of another color or not a crow at all. This is simple logic, nothing to write home about, but you fail even here. As for Marjorie M. Whiteman - this is not an official opinion, and it was written in retrospective. We have valuable sources from the time of the events saying that the Mandate of Palestine was not a state (sovereign or non-sovereign). Taking an analysis from 1963 and decide it overrides reliable sources from the time of the events is not something you normally do. You need a very good reason to adopt such an anachronism, and so far you didn't provide it. Kalamiyat (talk) 15:33, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

The State Department Digest is an official publication, and it most certainly does discuss the Palestine Mandate. Take your off-topic rants somewhere else. harlan (talk) 18:47, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Some More sources

Prof. Quigley's ideas, which Mr. Wilkerson cite with enthusiasm, are highly unorthodox and controversial. Here is a link to a dialog between Quigley and Arthur Hertzberg, an equally distinguished scholar. Here's what Hertzberg has to say about Quigley: "Mr. Quigley’s letter often misquotes facts or uses them out of context." [34] Then he refutes Quigley's claims one by one, and prove his poor use of sources. It takes some courage to treat claims of a distinguished fellow-scholar like this, but apparently Quigley's claims were poor enough and his insistence on them inappropriate enough. I remind you again that Mr. Wilkerson wants to make Quigley's claims the basis of this article. Kalamiyat (talk) 12:28, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I finally understand where Mr. Wilkerson takes his arguments from. He is a student of Prof. Quigley. His arguments are almost identical to Quigley's. Quigley's arguments in the case of Palestine were refuted one by one not only by Arthur Hertzberg, but also by Professor Robert Weston Ash [35]. Prof. Quigley published a response to this criticism [36], but interestingly enough, despite general expression of disagreement, he confirms Prof. Ash's counter-claims. First of all, Quigley admits that Palestine is not an independent state and never was. He says: "Palestine lacks independence but does not lack statehood.", i.e. Palestine is a strange creation which is a state but not independent state. This is the claim we hear over and over again from Mr. Wilkerson. There is only one problem though, there are very few people apart from Prof. Quigley and Mr. Wilkerson that adhere to this concept. Quigley himself refer to this idea as "my thesis that Palestine is a state". A thesis, not a fact. We could decide that WP adopts Prof. Quigley's terminology from now on, but this is a huge matter, and I doubt if there is a consensus over it. Quigley, by the way, admits his thesis is unorthodox. He says: "The fundamental error made by Professor Ash is one that is made by other scholars, and by courts, namely, that they regard statehood as present only if the state enjoys independence". So basically Quigley says that his thesis is not widely accepted, but he believes it is true and others are wrong. Fair enough, but this is WP, not Quigley's journal. You can read the articles yourself, no need for me to cite too much, but all along Quigley's admits that his critic are right, but claims that nonetheless his thesis is still valid. For example he admits that Palestine is not regarded by the UN as a state, however he says that the UN occasionally treat Palestine as a state (strange claim... Did Palestine ever votes in the GA?), so it should be regarded as one. On the other hand, Quigley says that the State of Palestine was created in 1988, and ignores the fact that this declaration had no effect on the ground. In short, when it is convenient Quigley says: "no need for formalities, show me what you can actually do", when it is not he says: "stick to formalities, I don't care what you can actually do". I'm not here to judge Prof. Quigley, that's not my job nor WP's. I am concerned, though, that feeble claim, so easily refuted by other scholars and so highly unorthodox, become the basis of a WP article about such a sensitive subject. Kalamiyat (talk) 13:11, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

I've never cited Quigley in this article. I'm citing a Chapter of the US State Department's Digest of International Law on the legal status of the Mandates. You are citing papers on modern day Palestine. Professor Alain Pellet, of the University of Paris-Nanterre, and former president of the International Law Commission recently said that it is not absurd to consider modern day Palestine a state in the normal sense of the term and James Crawford, Whewell Professor of International Law at the University of Cambridge and Special Rappotuer of the International Law Commission, shares Quigley's view that Israel was established by force without the consent of any previous sovereign and without complying with any valid act of disposition. Take your off-topic discussion somewhere else. harlan (talk) 14:39, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

1. You cited Quigley as a major source on this talk page.
2. Your arguments are identical to those of Quigley.
3. Quigley's arguments have been refuted, or, if you're not totally convinced, they are highly controversial and unorthodox.
4. Quigley himself says his arguments (identical to yours) are thesis, not facts. Naturally, he thinks his thesis is good, but that's beside the point.
5. There are plenty of sources that contradict Quigley, and your Quigley-like arguments.
6. The source from the US Administration you cited does not mention Palestine, hence it is irrelevant here.
7. The debate about Palestinian statehood is amid sensitive development, and there are plenty of politically involved academics, particularly in the UK, who'd write anything for or against the Palestinians. My uncle has a perfect theory that contradicts yours, but I don't think his name is relevant here, so I do ask you to stick to the point and stop the name dropping.
8. There are plenty of people in WP that disagree with you and they provided good sources.

To sum it up - you MAY NOT introduce innovative controversial ideas into a WP article and present them as facts, let alone in articles about sensitive political subjects. If you insist, you may write one or two lines about Quigley's opinion, and mention the criticism he encountered, but that's about it. I think this debate is over. Kalamiyat (talk) 15:04, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Since you mentioned Allain Pellet, I went to check, and again I found out you twisted his words and took them out of their contexts. Pellet never said the British Mandate of Palestine was a state. He never said there was a Palestinian state of any kind. All he said was that the Palestinian Authority's appeal to the ICC should not be turn down on the claim that Palestine is not a state, because for this specific issue, one can regard the Palestinian Authority as if it were a state. There is a huge gap between a "state" and a "state for this specific purpose". And again, Pellet did not mention any historical political entities, only existing ones. Unfortunately I found only a link to a summary of his view, but it is a useful summary [37]. As for James Crawford, I didn't find any statement of his claiming that Palestine is a state. Once again, you throw names hoping people here would be so impressed that they won't bother to check what they actually said. Kalamiyat (talk) 15:15, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

You went to check again? Hi Drork![38] Just like last time, you will find that paragraph 5 of Prof. Pellets paper says "It is not absurd to think that Palestine is a State within the general and usual meaning of the term." You can find Crawford's statement in the updated versions of his classic "The Creation of States in International Law" for example it is found on page 432 of the Oxford University Press, USA; 2 edition (May 17, 2007), ISBN-10: 0199228426. harlan (talk) 16:27, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Mr. Wilson! Restrain yourself and stop playing games. I don't who's this DrorK you're talking about. If you have serious answers, please provide them, otherwise leave me and this article alone. I was quite amazed how one person who pretends to be a scholar manage to manipulate information like that. WP is an important source. It should be accurate. WP invites people of good education to contribute to it. I never thought it was a place for frustrated students, who wish to make experiments in people's patience. Kalamiyat (talk) 18:18, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

It certainly isn't the place for long off-topic rants and personal attacks. harlan (talk) 18:39, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

States?

Someone suggested here that that pre-1948 Palestine and Transjordan were states. I hope other Wikipedia articles don't include such nonsense. I read the sources. The person who brought them doesn't really know how to read an academic text. None of them uses the term "state" in the way we use it normally. This is okay in a given context but not in an encyclopedic article. Lustright (talk) 06:01, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

flag

What was the flag of the all-Palestine government? I'm pretty sure it was not the "Fatach" flag (used since 1964), but was it the Arab Revolt flag, which is presented here? Greyshark09 (talk) 20:24, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it was the flag of the revolt (see here for a detailed overview of the history of the Palestinian flag and how this one was chosen by the All-Palestine Government). nableezy - 20:51, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Nableezy, by the way did you notice the article says All-Palestine Government was established in March 1948? It is contrary to the page lead section here, i think it needs review and fixing. It is important to describe the accurate way of things.Greyshark09 (talk) 16:37, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Nableezy -- That's a very interesting article; thanks for posting the link... AnonMoos (talk) 11:46, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

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Duplicate Article?

It seems that the article for the "All-Palestine Protectorate" and the "All-Palestine Government" are actually one and the same thing?

If true, how can this be remedied?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-Palestine_Protectorate

-- Geekeasy (talk) 08:00, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 10 December 2018

change 'isreali invasion" to a more presice and acccurate equivlent 185.24.206.252 (talk) 18:31, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

Israel did invade Gaza in December 48, Im not sure what you think is inaccurate about that. See for example here or here. nableezy - 18:37, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

Proposed merge with All-Palestine Protectorate

Duplicate article, covers the same topic and is dealt with in the All-Palestine Government page already nableezy - 18:38, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

• Merge. There was never a state of any kind, protectorate or not, that claimed the Gaza Strip as its territory. Nor one that performed the usual functions of a state in the Gaza Strip. There was only a short-lived government-in-exile that claimed all of Palestine as its territory, which is what All-Palestine Government is about. Zero^talk 23:39, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose - the government was one thing the protectorate territory was the other. There was also a military wing, a Palestinian Council (which only functioned in 1948), population, etc. We cannot describe the whole issue with just the government.GreyShark (dibra) 16:30, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

To the best of my knowledge the "All-Palestine Protectorate" is not recognised as ever existing by anybody except Greyshark and (possibly) Daniel Pipes. It is not enough. Zero^talk 04:58, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Decleration of independcne, delegation to the UN and more

There's more to this short-lived government than a simple announcment. Avi Shlaim is basing his reporting (in "The Rise and Fall of the All-Palestine Government in Gaza") on Arif el-Arif and others. If, as one of the commentators in this talk has suggested, Shlaim is "biased", what about all the pro-zionist and establishment/court historians telling the Zionist official narrative - from Gelber to you-name-it? Shlaim is not only a more prominent historian than any of them, he's detached from the Israeli academia and military establishments, thus less biased, I would propose.

In any case, in this article, he proposes a much more nuanced (and very-well sourced) narrative. One of the most important aspects testifying for intent and the precedence of this event, is related to the proposed delegation to the UN. A "protectorate" would not attempt to declare itself independent.

p. 42

The sporadic displays of popular support did not blind the Mufti and his colleagues to the need to endow the new government with real legitimacy and

substance. During the first week of its life in Gaza, the All-Palestine Government revived the Holy War Army (Jaish al-Jihad al- Mugaddas), the Mufti’s irregular forces which had played a major part during the unofficial phase of the Palestine war, and began to mobilize with the declared aim of liberating Palestine. On the diplomatic front, the new government sought international recognition, and even designated a delegation to represent it at the United Nations even though the world body had not acknowledged it. Finally, any member of the Palestinian people was declared eligible for a Palestinian passport, and

within a short period some 14,000 of these documents were issued, mostly to notables and businessmen from the Gaza Strip.

For people reading Arabic, see , (Arif el-Arif, Al Nakbah, 1956–1961, vol 3, pp. 703-704

Ommnia (talk) 07:10, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Dab header

To editor Smartypants2006: You misunderstand the purpose of the disambiguation headers. They are not article content. The purpose of the headers is to guess what articles someone might have been searching for when they arrived by mistake at this one, then to give them a link to the right place. It is just giving some help to readers who are lost. Think about someone who is looking for One-state solution but used search terms what brought them here instead. What search terms were they using to get here? "Palestine" was obviously one of them. Zero^talk 02:24, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

I understand what a disambiguation header is. I just think that it’s improper for Wikipedia to refer to Israel and Palestine combined as Palestine. Smartypants2006 (talk) 16:32, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

That could be a reason to reword the link, which I now did. It wasn't a valid reason to delete it altogether. Zero^talk 06:35, 21 April 2024 (UTC)