After exploring the implications of Article 15 to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, MEI Senior Research Fellow Victor Kattan is now countering Steven Kay and Joshua Kern’s response to the topic. 

in this intriguing followup, Victor states that title to the territories occupied in June 1967 remain vested in the Palestinian people. The 1947 UN Partition Resolution, when read in conjunction with Article 22, paragraph 4 of the Covenant of the League of Nations had constitutive effect, as recognized by leading Israeli jurists at the time. Following the conclusion of the 1949 armistice agreements, sovereignty over the territory of the remnants of the Arab State in the UN Partition Plan remained vested in the Palestinian people in Gaza and was shared between Jordan and the Palestinian people in the West Bank between 1948 and 1988. In 1988, title was vested exclusively in the Palestinian people over the territories that Israel had occupied since June 1967.

The resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 29 November 2012 conferred observer statehood on Palestine and amounted to an act of collective recognition by those states that voted in favour of that resolution. The recognition of Palestine by over two-thirds of UN members, its membership of international organizations and courts, and its accession to major multilateral treaties demonstrates that its statehood enjoys quasi-unanimous support. And we must remember that the recognition of Palestine in 2012 was not of a new state, but of a state that already existed, as Palestine had applied for membership in the UN in September 2011.

For the full response – click here.

For the original oped – click here