National Suicide at The Hague |
Nineteen states filed formal declarations before the International Court of Justice asserting that denial of self-determination constitutes a violation of international law. They filed to delegitimize Israel. They produced the opposite result — and in doing so, committed legal suicide against themselves.
Each Article 63 declaration is permanent. Under the ICJ Statute, the construction given to a convention by the court will be equally binding on intervening states. These governments are now bound — in perpetuity, on the record of the world’s principal judicial organ — to the doctrine that self-determination is universal, enforceable, and independent of whether all Montevideo Convention criteria are currently satisfied.
That doctrine is the legal foundation of Israel’s existence. Every state that filed has just confirmed it.
The Documentary Record
The Jewish people’s self-determination claim is the most extensively documented in modern international law.
The San Remo Resolution of 25 April 1920 was adopted by the Supreme Council of the Principal Allied Powers — the United States, United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Japan. It assigned the Mandate for Palestine to Great Britain with explicit instruction to implement the Balfour Declaration: the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine, with recognition of their historical connection to that land.........