Mick Hartley

Why Israel has sovereign rights to the West Bank. Eugene Kontorovich at Tablet

Israel and Jordan signed an armistice agreement in 1949, ending the fighting without agreeing to permanent borders. Jordan remained in control of the Old City of Jerusalem and the surrounding areas. It proceeded to ethnically cleanse every single Jew from this territory, which it then annexed in 1950 and dubbed “the West Bank.” All but a few nations rejected the legitimacy of this move, as Jordan had no credible sovereign claim on the territory, having taken it in a war of aggression.

Quite clearly, when Israel retook this territory in 1967, it was not occupying territory from Jordan, but rather ending Jordanian occupation of a portion of Mandate Palestine, the territory reserved by the League of Nations for a Jewish homeland under the British Mandate. Indeed, to say that “the West Bank” continues to have some special status 50 years after the end of Jordanian occupation is to retroactively give legal effect to the aggression against Israel in 1948. It is to say that to the extent the Arab states succeeded in occupying parts of Mandatory Palestinian territory and ethnically cleansing every single Jew, those areas must permanently remain Judenrein.

But read it all. Setting the record straight.