#Loudmouth

Your one state solution will not be accepted by Israel. The provision of a Jewish National Home has been indelibly imprinted on international law and cannot be reversed.

Solomon's idea to cut Palestine into two in fact happened and succeeded - with Jordan getting 77% of Palestine in 1946 and Israel 17% of Palestine in 1948.

What happens with the remaining 6% - the West Bank and Gaza - is the current problem. Dividing it between Jordan and Israel is the only feasible solution.

There are certainly more pressing world issues that need resolving. Pandering to continuing Arab intransigence is a complete waste of time and the diplomatic time and effort could be better directed to Iran,North Korea Sudan,Afghanistan,Iraq, Thailand and Kyrgyztan.

#stevenlmeyer

Sorry but the Mandate is alive and healthy by virtue of article 80 of the UN Charter.

There are those like you who seek to bury it but in the land famous for the resurrection this tactic will not work.

If you are arguing for the abandonment of international law then you are encouraging anarchy in international relations. This is happening before our very eyes in relation to the ignoring of the international law regarding Palestine and the sacred trust created by the League of Nations and the United Nations to legally endorse the right of the Jewish people to reconstitute their national home in Palestine.

Study the mandate and article 80 and perhaps you might conclude that you need to get real and stop being hoodwinked by Arab propaganda that seeks to bury the Mandate and the provisions of the UN Charter.

#ocm

Pointless blather. The "Palestinian race" is growing at the rate of knots.

# Michael T

Funny that you should characterize my statement of international law as "one eyed partisan nonsense".

Challenge my legal conclusions with something a little more compelling than that argument.

The Secretary General is not doing his job if he seeks to negate the very Charter which it is his responsibility to uphold.

He has become a captive of those who appointed him. A pity when you consider what might be achieved if he stopped parroting the tired old shibboleths of the member states and told them what the Charter required them to uphold.

Israel is constantly being pressured to do things it does not want to do. So why should Jordan not be similarly pressured? If it were the political situation in the West Bank and East Jerusalem could change overnight and a settlement could be achieved based on the history,geography demography and applicable international law.

It has taken 17 years so far to bring about the creation of a new Arab state between Israel and Jordan. It has been and continues to be a solution that remains unfulfilled in even the slightest of detail and has proved incapable of achieving despite the most intensive diplomatic efforts to bring to fruition.

I estimate the boundaries between Israel and Jordan could be redrawn in six weeks of negotiations and within the framework of their existing peace treaty.

This is the only way of freeing Arabs in the West Bank from Israeli control to Arab control without ongoing conflict or any one having to leave their existing homes.

If you can come up with a better or fairer alternative then let us in on the secret

David Singer wrote:

"If you are arguing for the abandonment of international law then you are encouraging anarchy in international relations."

I am not arguing for the "abandonment of international law." I think international law would be a great idea.

My argument is simply that international law does not exist. It is a fiction.

If there were truly such a thing as "international law" Indonesia would be sanctioned for the occupation of West Papua, a land grab that makes anything alleged in Israel-Palestine look like a domestic dispute over the placement of a fence.

If there were truly such a thing as international law Kim Jong Il would be among the most wanted for starving hundreds of thousands of North Koreans to death.

See:

http://www.atimes.com/koreas/CE23Dg02.html

If there were truly such a thing as international law would former South African President Thabo Mbeki still be a free man. His refusal to allow the distribution of anti-retroviral drugs to HIV sufferers in South Africa took 15 – 20 years off life expectancy in South Africa.

If there truly were such a thing as international law wouldn't we be much more concerned about serial killer Omar al-Bashir, Sudan's current president, than about Nethanyahu. In some years the Al-Bashir regime has been responsible for more deaths than have died on BOTH SIDES in all the Arab-Israeli conflicts combined. I know that theoretically the ICC is seeking to arrest him. However he still seems welcome in most world capitals.

If there really were such a thing as international law wouldn't the world had been calling for the toppling of Afghanistan's Taleban regime for crimes against women long before 9 / 11?

Get real Singer. International law does not exist. It is something that is invoked when somebody finds it convenient to do so.

#stevenlmeyer

You state:

"Get real Singer. International law does not exist. It is something that is invoked when somebody finds it convenient to do so."

You contradict yourself.

International law does in fact exist but in many cases it is ignored or not enforced. This only emphasizes the bias and double standards for which the United Nations is famous when it comes to Israel.

More seriously however the claims made by people such as Ban-Ki Moon and President Obama as to the legality of Jewish settlement in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are total nonsense since the law relied on by them (The Geneva Convention) fails to take into consideration the provisions of the Mandate and article 80 of the United Nations Charter which predate the Geneva Convention and which remain alive and kicking in 2010.

Any legal opinion that fails to consider these two crucial pieces of international law is simply not worth the paper it is written on.

How people of such influence as the Secretary General of the UN and President Obama can rely on a half baked opinion of the international law applicable to the West Bank and East Jerusalem is a scandal of massive proportions.

Whoever is giving them such advice needs to be also exposed and publicly ridiculed as legally incompetent.

Let these so called "experts" consider the Mandate and Article 80 and whatever other law they consider applicable and then issue their legal opinion after doing so.

To my knowledge no one who has considered the Mandate and Article 80 has concluded that the settlements are illegal - quite the contrary.

That is my challenge to those who assert Jewish settlement in the West Bank and East Jerusalem is illegal - Obama and Ban Ki Moon included.

David Singer, only hope Obama keeps a wary eye on Israel's real intentions in the Middle East.

What with Israel being given a free passage by America to have become the only militarily atomic power in the Middle East brings fears that Israel will eventually attack Iran, former Persia, the only true historical nation with established power left in the Middle East.

Most of the rest are economic makeshifts like Saudi Arabia, which with both economic and Western military aid does tell the real story about Middle East Western colonialism.

Though one has not a great deal of time for Iran, one does believe as a middle road historian that letting Israel handle too much war-talk with Iran will get Western democracy nowhere