Is Israel a Legitimate State?
Answering no contradicts the very forces promoting restraint
Some pro-Palestinian writers on Medium—a few who claim to be “scholars of colonialism” even—argue that because Britain had no right to partition Palestine between Jew and Arab the modern state of Israel is not a legitimate nation and never was.
Were it true that Palestine was carved willy nilly by Great Britain they might have a point. But it’s not true. British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin announced on 18 February 1947:
His Majesty’s Government have of themselves no power, under the terms of the Mandate, to award the country either to the Arabs or to the Jews, or even to partition it between them.
He concluded by formally requesting the United Nations tackle the issue. Which it did, with General Assembly Resolution 181 (of which Britain, along with nine other nations, abstained) that partitioned Palestine, granting 55% of the land to the Jews, 43% to the Arabs, leaving a small international corpus separatum in Jerusalem. In spite of the physical and political separation it created, Resolution 181 envisioned an economic union of sorts between the two nations.
