Well I actually mean that international law should be the point of departure for any discussions with a view to resolving the conflict in a just way. Because if it's not just it has little chance of survival. And I disagree about it not being a moral guide. It's got to be better than might is right , the current situation , which is morally bankrupt imo
Yes a moral guide. The Jews, continually persecuted and exiled, were given rights after the first world war in a territory that was very sparsely populated. The British gave the territory to the League of Nations, who established a mandate for that territory to be a Jewish National Home. They appointed an administrator for that mandate (the British), who were obligated, under the law, to use its administration to facilitate, inter alia, close settlement of the land by the Jews. They were forbidden from severing any part of that mandate and allocating it to any other nation.
They then systematically broke those commitments, ceding territory to Syria in the Golan, creating Transjordan, and systematically working to block Jewish immigration even though massive influxes of Jewish capital were creating labour shortages which turned the mandate into a magnet for migrants from the Arab world.
And even though their breach of the mandate, and the law, trapped millions of Jews in Europe and left them at the mercy of the Nazis.
Following that, of course, the Jews kept working, kept "illegally" immigrating to their national home (the mandate for which was transferred to UN authority, which continued to be administered by the British under the original terms).
The Arabs planned to destroy Israel and kill or expel the Jews but failed. The Arabs signed an armistice agreement which specifically refused to recognize the cease fire lines as borders, given their position that the Jews were not entitled to any territories in the mandate. They illegally occupied Gaza (Egypt) and the WB (Jordan), which up until Jordanian occupation had been knows as Judea and Samaria. But of course those occupations were illegal and the mandate still governed.
So when the Israelis captured those territories following Egypt's planned attacks (Gaza) and Syria and Jordan's attacks, they took control over territory that had been mandated as a Jewish national home. And you may not know this but Israel pleaded with the Jordanians not to attack Israel and would not have occupied the WB were it not for the Jordanians' acts of war.
And of course Israel has offered the Palestinians independence multiple times, always to be rejected, and generally violently, with this vioence, as always, directed against Jewish civilians. Because the Palestinains have no national identity beyond their opposition to Zionism - their opposition to Jews having sovereign control over their own state and their own destiny. That is what motivates their national ethos and that is why continued occupation is required.
But at some point that hopefully will end and the Palestinians will deserve independence. But not on every inch of land they say they want, whether that land is in Haifa or Jaffa (which they want even though it is in Israel proper), or Jerusalem or Maleh Adumim. They don't need those lands to be sovereign, they, as always, just want it because the Jews live and plan to stay there.
