The Case for Palestine: An International Law Perspective [Paperback]

John Quigley's forensic analysis of the history and legal subtleties of the Middle East crisis is a must-read for anyone wanting to understand the Arab-Israel conflict. It is an eloquent rejoinder to Alan Dershowitz's much-derided and academically flawed book "The Case for Israel". This last book has been comprehensively demolished by Norman Finkelstein in his book "Beyond Chutzpah", so rather than knocking copy Quigley just focuses on the facts: the tenuous claim of the Jewish people to ownership of the land, the scandalous way in which Palestinian rights to self-determination were ignored first by the League of Nations and then the UN, and the dubious legal basis for the declaration of the State of Israel in 1948.

The greatest irony is that the Palestinians are being punished for their unilateral declaration of a state in New York. Yet this is exactly what Israel did in 1948, on much shakier legal ground: the 1947 UN General Assembly resolution 181 covering partition, on which it was based, was a recommendation, not legally-binding, and indeed the one body which could have legal force, the UN Security Council, had already abandoned partition and UNGA resolution 181, as it realised it could not in law impose a solution on an unwilling Palestinian people. How many people have this background when challenged by Zionists on Israel's "right to exist"?

A superb book, and surprisingly readable for a legal subject.

This excellent survey is a new edition of John Quigley's 1990 classic, `Palestine and Israel'. The author, who is Professor of Law at Ohio State University, examines the origins of the Zionist-Arab conflict in Palestine, the League of Nations' decision to promote a Jewish homeland in Palestine, the 1948 war and the establishment of Israel, the status of Arabs in Israel, the 1967 war, Israel's illegal occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and the way to resolve the Palestine-Israel conflict.

During and after the 1948 war, Israeli forces drove 780,000 Palestinian Arabs out of the most densely populated areas of Palestine: only 60,000 remained. As the commander of the Palmach, the elite unit of the Israeli army, admitted, "We did everything to encourage them to flee."

From 1950 onwards, when Palestinians attempted to cross into Israel to attend to their land, Israel repeatedly attacked its Arab neighbours. The UN Security Council condemned these attacks saying, "reprisals have proved to be productive of greater violence rather than a deterrent to violence." This remains true right up to today's brutal Israeli assaults on Gaza and Lebanon.

Mordecai Bentov, who was a cabinet minister when Israel attacked the Arab states in 1967, wrote that Israel's `entire story' about `the danger of extermination' was "invented of whole cloth and exaggerated after the fact to justify the annexation of new Arab territories."

Quigley attributes the breakdown of negotiations in 2000 to Israel's refusal to negotiate on the basis of principles of justice and law. He contends that the Palestinians have a stronger legal claim to Jerusalem than do the Israelis; that Palestinian refugees should be repatriated to areas including those within the borders of Israel; and that Israel should withdraw from all the territories it occupied in 1967.

He argues that throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, Israel and its allies have overridden the basic tenets of international law, particularly the right of self-determination, to the detriment of the Palestinians. He concludes that the conflict can only be ended by establishing a viable Palestinian state.

From the outset Quigley expediently ignores each and every historical and political fact that does not suit his obvious pro-Arab agenda. Ignoring the fact that a substantial and continuous Jewish presence has existed in the ancient Jewish homeland for over 3,000 years (with a Jewish majority in Jerusalem), he embarks upon a selective and revisionist address of San Remo, Versailles and the Palestine Mandate itself with a view to denigrating the state of Israel, its inception and continued existence within present borders.

This study is both historically inept and propaganda based, showing itself to be unashamedly supportive of the Islamic/Arab agenda of eradicating the Jewish state in what it sees as land that is 'forever Islamic'. It is lost upon the author that the Arab and Islamic world gave no credence to UN resolutions in 1948 when they rejected peace/partition and instead sought the genocide of the reborn Jewish state.

Citing the allegedly enforced expulsion of Arab refugees in 1948 the writer expediently overlooks that in 1948 there would not have been one single Arab refugee - not even one - had the Arab states not chosen to go to war in defiance of a United Nations resolution with the declared aim of pursuing the genocide the newly reborn State of Israel.

The Arab High Committee in 1948 publicly declaring, just 3 years after the Holocaust;- "The Arabs have taken into their own hands, the FINAL SOLUTION of the Jewish problem. The problem will be solved only in blood and fire. The Jews will be driven out."

The writer instead making a selective reference to isolated left wing individuals of his own leaning, while ignoring the considerable list of Arab leaders - including the Syrian PM of the day Haled al-Azm - who rubbish his remarks, while showing that the Jewish leadership indeed pleaded for the Arabs to stay. This as the Arab leadership encouraged their brethren to flee in order that they would not impede the intended massacre of the Jewish state, while also inciting them to return afterwards to share in the spoils.

The writer is oblivious to the statement of current PLO Chairman Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) on the same refugee issue, who in March 1976 wrote in the official publication of the PLO (FaZastin al-Thawra) that "..The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians. .. . but, instead, they abandoned them, forced them to emigrate and to leave their homeland, imposed upon them a political and ideological blockade and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live in Eastern Europe..."

As to the simultaneous enforced expulsion of nearly one million Jews from Arab lands, the book gives such a wide berth, in much the same way that he ignores statements from Zahir Muhsein, executive committee member of the "Palestinian Liberation Organisation" who stated in the Dutch newspaper Trouw on 31st March 1977;-
"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct 'Palestinian people' to oppose Zionism."

Historically revisionist history and anti-Israeli propaganda, together with revisionism are the order of the day in a book that has an obvious agenda from the outset. Astute observers will be only too aware that for decades the Arab world has sought to eradicate the Jewish state. Having failed militarily the invention of new public relations themes or disinformation are becoming increasingly common. It sadly seems that re-writing history is now becoming more prominent.

Indeed, this study seems oblivious to the fact that it was only well into the 1970s that the Arabs themselves thought up the idea of basing their campaign on "Palestinian rights." Before that, they had a far more candid approach and demanded openly that the Jews be tossed into the sea. References are widely available.... but not in this book.

I would not give this book even one star if the option were available but would respectfully direct readers to the widely available response to John Quigley by Professor Louis Rene Beres and the 25 year study of Professor Howard Grief entitled "The Legal Foundation and Borders of Israel under International Law".

The Legal Foundation and Borders of Israel Under International Law