The San Remo Agreement Remains Law to This Day

“The High Contracting Parties agree to entrust… in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people…”

With these words, whose 100th anniversary passed mere weeks ago on April 25 with little fanfare on the international stage – and with the subsequent formation of the Emirate of Transjordan just 50 weeks later, on April 11, 1921 – the borders of the Jewish homeland were, in effect, defined.

The San Remo Conference, enshrined by the world powers of the time, defined the legal borders of the Jewish nation in international law – that is, Israel, and what is now called the “West Bank.” Nothing since then has annulled this agreement.

The imperative question of sovereignty over the land from the Lebanon Mountains in the north to the Red Sea in the south, from the Mediterranean Sea in the west to the Jordan River in the east, was always clearly “when?”  Not “if”, and not “where?”

So, why, one may ask, are we now revisiting the question of sovereignty, now re-examining our rights to apply our jurisdictional authority over lands where international law would clearly back our prerogative?

The idea of continuing with a mistake because it is easier left unrectified is folly; the time for applying sovereignty over Judea and Samaria – at least over the Jewish-settled regions which do not involve bringing a large swath of Palestinian Arabs under the responsibility of the Israeli government – is past due.