Office for Israeli Constitutional Law: Resources

The Balfour Declaration, Nov. 2, 1917 is often called the Magna Carta of the Jewish National Home. It must be made clear, that though the Balfour Declaration listed rights that the British Government recognized in Palestine for Jews and non-Jewish residents, the declaration, in itself, is not a legally binding document. However, the Balfour Declaration was adopted into the Mandate for Palestine. At that point, the declaration was transformed from a policy of the British using "their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement...the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people" to becoming a legal obligation.

The San Remo Resolution (April 25, 1920) and the Mandate for Palestine (July 24, 1922), transformed the Balfour Declaration into Law.

On December 3, 1924, the United States and Great Britain signed a treaty that incorporated the text of the Mandate for Palestine. The 1924 Anglo-American Treaty not only protected the rights of Americans living in Palestine under the Mandate, but it also made the rights and provisions part of United States treaty law. Furthermore, those rights are protected under constitutional law, as the Constitution calls a treaty the "Supreme Law of the Land." The treaty also obligated the British to consult with the United States before making any policy changes to the Mandate. It should be noted that the Mandate was authorized by the Supreme Council of the Principal Allied Powers and neither the British nor the Americans had any legal right to make any changes that alter the rights granted through the Mandate.

The U.S. Senate advised ratification of the treaty on February 20, 1925. It was then ratified by President Calvin Coolidge on March 2, 1925 and ratified by Great Britain on March 18, 1925. Ratifications were exchanged in London on December 3, 1925.

The treaty is also known as the Anglo-American convention, the American-British Palestine Mandate Convention, the Convention Between the United Kingdom and the United States of America Respecting the Rights of the Governments of the Two Countries and their Respective Nationals, and the Palestine Convention. [Howard Grief, The Legal Foundation and Borders of Israel under International Law (Jerusalem, Israel: Mazo Publishers, 2008), 195-199.]

From: Jewish Legal Rights and Title to the Land of Israel and Palestine

-Howard Grief-

The legal title of the Jewish People to the mandated territory of Palestine in all its historical parts and dimensions was first recognized under international law on April 24-25, 1920 by a decision taken at the San Remo Peace Conference by the Supreme Council of the Principal Allied Powers to entrust Palestine to Great Britain under the Mandates System for the purpose of establishing a national home for the exclusive benefit of the Jewish People, in accordance with the terms of the Balfour Declaration November 2, 1917.

The Supreme Council of the Allies was made up of the top political leaders and officials of Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan, and it was they, in their meeting in the Italian resort city, who decided the future fate of all the Asiatic territories which, as a consequence of World War I, had ceased to be under the sovereignty of the Ottoman Turkish Empire which formerly governed them.

These territories included the entire area then called the Fertile Crescent, which originally comprised Palestine, Syria, and Mesopotamia (whose name later became Iraq) as separate countries, before any substantive changes were made to their boundaries. At the San Remo Peace Conference, it was decided that all three countries, whose exact borders had not yet been delineated, would be administered by Mandatories under the newly-created Mandates System, established by the Treaty of Versailles of June 28, 1919. The Mandates System did not come into being until the ratification of this treaty on January 10, 1920. It was established simultaneously with the League of Nations, whose duty it was to supervise the observance of individual mandates through a body called the Permanent Mandates Commission, which reported to the Council of the League of Nations for that purpose. The actual terms of those mandates and the powers exercised by the Mandatory were to be in each case explicitly defined and confirmed by the Council of the League of Nations unless previously agreed upon by the Members of the League, in accordance with Article 22 (8) of the Covenant of the League of Nations.

...The Arabs received the lion's share of the territories that formerly belonged to Turkey. As a result of this munificence, they hold today lands that equal twice the area of the USA...

...When the settlement and division of land was devised at the San Remo Peace Conference, it was clear to all concerned parties, Arab and Jew alike and to all European, American, and Japanese statesmen, that Palestine, within its historical frontiers according to the biblical formula, from Dan to Beersheba, but which still needed to be marked out in a separate agreement, was exclusively reserved for the benefit of the Jewish People all over the world, of which only a fraction then actually lived in the ancient Jewish country. What this obviously meant to one and all was an eventual independent Jewish State in all of the historical territory of Palestine.1.

1.Howard Grief, The Legal Foundation and Borders of Israel under International Law (Jerusalem, Israel: Mazo Publishers, 2008), 702.