Where we’ve been

With regard to the Israeli-Palestinian malaise, Yaakov Katz, editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post, queries: “Where are we going?” (Editor’s Notes, December 9). Perhaps the initial question to be posed is: Where have we been?

Succinctly put, the problem lies in the failure to note the correct facts and the controlling international law now extant.

First, it is absolutely imperative to acknowledge that a “Palestinian people” as such does not exist. The term was a concoction of the grand mufti of Jerusalem in 1920 to challenge the Zionist presence in Israel, and was later propagated by Yasser Arafat and others to challenge Israel’s existence. Period. Even respected Arab writers of the 1960s rejected this terminology.

Second, as clearly and unequivocally demonstrated by the late Howard Grief, a Jerusalem attorney, the United Nations never possessed the authority to partition Palestine in 1947; therefore, Israel is not an occupier of the so-called West Bank, but is the legal sovereign. As such, the so-called Palestinians, more correctly called Arabs, have no legal entitlement to a state carved out of Jewish territory.

The answer to where we have been requires a journey back in time to examine international law that is still as effective and controlling today as it was when written in the 1920s, notwithstanding the UN’s malicious attempt to evade it. ARTHUR S. SAFIR Warminster, Pennsylvania

The writer is a former deputy attorney-general of the State of New Jersey.