David,

Its been a while but I see not much has changed.

Your constant attempt to eke out support the WB settlements where none exists is really mindboggling. There is not a single sentence in the Bush letter affirming the legality of the settlements. Nothing Hilary Clinton has ever said supports the settlements. You cannot point to any US admin that has ever supported the settlements. Your attempt therefore to discredit Mr Kerry is rich.

Even more perplexing is your belief that Woodrow Wilson's statement on 3 March 1917 "incontrovertibly denies" Kerry's claim [that the settlement are illegitimate].

Wilson, a champion of the right of self determination("National aspirations must be respected; people may now be dominated and governed only by their own consent. Self determination is not a mere phrase; it is an imperative principle of action." 11 February 1918), would have condemned the whole settlement enterprise as inimical to the Palestinian rights to self determination.

The only basis on which Wilson, the 1922 US Congress, and the League of Nations ever supported a Jewish homeland in the area west of Jordan was with local Arabs enjoying equal civil and religious rights to Jews. Israel long repudiated that obligation (and therefore the Mandate) in respect of Palestinians living in the WB who do not share with Israelis that most basic civil right, an equal right to vote.

In relation to your beloved Art 80 point, have you ever pondered the significance of the words "nothing in this Chapter" ? Read Chapter XII carefully and you will see that with those words Art 80 only preserves rights to the extent that these are affected by the the trusteeship system established under Chapter XII. That system ceased to apply to Israel two years after the signing of the Charter.

Art 80 is therefore irrelevant.

#Ben DR

This is what the Bush letter dated 14 April 2004 says:

"As part of a final peace settlement, Israel must have secure and recognized borders, which should emerge from negotiations between the parties in accordance with UNSC Resolutions 242 and 338. In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities."

This still remains the only realistic basis for achieving a second Arab state in Palestine - in addition to Jordan.

Wilson endorsed the foundation of a Jewish Commonwealth in Palestine. No amount of ducking and weaving can deny that immutable fact.

If the civil and religious rights of the non-Jewish communities in Palestine were being violated as you claim - how come no action was taken by the League to revoke the Mandate during its 28 years existence?

This what article 80 (1) states:

"1. Except as may be agreed upon in individual trusteeship agreements, made under Articles 77, 79, and 81, placing each territory under the trusteeship system, and until such agreements have been concluded, nothing in this Chapter shall be construed in or of itself to alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments to which Members of the United Nations may respectively be parties."

There was no trusteeship agreement in relation to Palestine. The rights under the Mandate were preserved encouraging close settlement by Jews on land in the West Bank including state land and waste land not required for public purposes.

Jews had been settling there between 1923-1948.

Their legal right to do so continues in 2013.

So the WMD liar and war criminal Bush claimed it was "impractical" to restore justice to those driven from their homeland in the Nakba. Lucky he wasn't around to declare it "impractical" to return those driven out of their homes in the German aggression in and after 1939.

The wartime generation lost patience with German application of its "laws", the first postwar generation moved inexorably against agreements made between the British, French, Belgian, Portuguese, Dutch colonial overlords and their captive territories, then it was the turn of the Soviet colonial overlords. Colonial overlords have had a dream run, but finally the ebbing of postwar sympathy for the land thieves in the Middle East has led to their angst expressed shrilly by Netanyahu and echoed by Mr Singer. As it sinks in that the people of the rest of the world are threatened with nuclear war to protect agreements enforced by foreign violence the residual will to accept this will drain away until nothing remains but hostility to the racist troublemakers.

#Emperor Julian

Bush was being realistic in stating the principles for a negotiated settlement to occur to end the Jewish-Arab conflict.

So far he has been proved correct almost ten years later.

Trying to equate German laws with international law unanimously determined by the League of Nations is the kind of skewed thinking for which you are famous.

The mandate system approved by the League for Palestine, Lebanon and Syria , and Mesopotamia was internationally agreed and accepted.

Had it been accepted by the Arabs the conflict would have ended decades ago.

Those pursuing the law of the jungle because they do not accept such international law have not got much to show for their intransigence over the last 90 years.

Bush has merely proclaimed that the aggressors should be handed everything they had grabbed since 1949 and be given secure borders behind their subsequent conquests,and that those whom the foreigners had exiled should remain in exile until they die out. Those who are too "special" to accept accommodation as equals in their own actual homelands will be condemned by their racist zealotry to declining world sympathy and increasing hostility. A close reading of the trajectory of the Boer Republic of South Africa will give a picture of what Zionism is wishing on them. Having nukes didn't save the Boer RSA either, as their adversaries were geographically too close. Like racist Israel's adversaries.

Mandates fashioned by European colonial overlords back when colonialism was widely held to be the norm won't help them. If the German occupation "laws" held no water as Mr Singer notes, why should "laws" cobbled together by collusion among other colonial masters whose territory they purported to assign to invaders?