By Vacy Vlazna
There may be some truth in Israel's squawking that the Palestinian bid for state membership in the UN will delegitimize Israel. A cursory look over the history of Israel's creation reveals legal loopholes in which the legitimate state of the whole of historic Palestine remains intact.
Once the thread of self-determination is pulled, notably article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations which is still binding for all members states of the UN under UN Charter article 80(1), the legitimacy of the State of Israel on 88% of stolen land begins unravelling and the settling for 22% of Palestinian soil becomes ludicrous.
Palestine's right to self-determination and independence has been affirmed repeatedly since the early 1900s.
In 1916, the first commitment to Arab independence, over an area spanning Egypt to Persia, was given by the British government in correspondence between the British High Commissioner Henry McMahon and Grand Sharif Hussein, the guardian of the holy city of Mecca, in exchange for an Arab alliance with the Triple Entente to defeat the Ottoman Empire.
On November 2, 1917, while Palestine was still part of the Ottoman Empire with a slight minority of Jews, a letter, the Balfour Declaration was sent to the British Zionists illegally promising to facilitate a Jewish national homeland in Palestine with the stipulation - "it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine".
"Its promise to use its best endeavours to facilitate the Zionist project could be interpreted as a promise to give to the Zionists what Britain did not have to give, in violation of the established legal maxim nemo dat quod non habet (nobody can give what he does not possess)."[1]
