In law, “… adverse possession … is a principle in the Anglo-American common law under which a person who does not have legal title to a piece of property — usually land (real property) — may acquire legal ownership based on continuous possession or occupation of the property without the permission (licence) of its legal owner.” In the state of Ontario (Canada), adverse possession of a portion of another person’s land can be claimed when the claimant can prove uninterrupted use of that land for a minimum of ten consecutive years prior to that property’s conversion to the Land Titles system.
The law of adverse possession is controversial. But it will not be controversial if a person does not assert his claim to a piece of land for hundreds of years. Any person who abandons his claim to a property for a thousand years will lose that property. But this was the demand of the Zionists (Jews in Europe) in the 1920s and 1930s that ultimately led to the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. That being descendents of Abraham/Isaac/Jacob, Palestine was theirs. Or that their forefathers migrated from Palestine to Europe hundreds of years ago and it was time to return to Palestine to establish a Zionist state (Israel). Note that Jacob, Abraham’s grandson, was known as Israel or ‘the prince of God.’ Hebrews or Jews are referred to as the children of Israel.
Imagine that 2 million African-Americans claim that they are descendents of slaves who left present-day Ghana more than 500 years ago and so they have the right to migrate to Ghana. Then — backed by the USA, UK, Russia — a UN resolution is passed to give these African-Americans the right to migrate to Ghana. Or imagine that Ewes in Ghana claim that their forefathers migrated from Nigeria or Togo more than a thousand years ago and therefore have the right to migrate to Togo and Nigeria. Or black Haitians assert their right to migrate to Benin because their forefathers migrated from Benin hundreds of years ago. That’s not possible! That is not how the world works or should work.
Excerpts from:
(i). The Israel and Palestine land settlement problem: An analytical history, 4000 B.C.E.–1948 C.E, Public Choice, 2006
(ii). The Israel and Palestine land settlement problem, 1948–2005: An analytical history, Public Choice, 2006.
(1) “In 1922, the British government carried out a population census in Palestine, which showed 752,000 persons living in the country. Of this, the total Jewish population numbered 84,000 and the Arab population about 650,000. This census came during the third Aliya, dating from 1919 to 1924. Thereafter, Jewish immigration to Palestine grew so rapidly that the tide was numbered in years and not Aliyas. In 1925, for example, some 34,000 Jews arrived in Palestine. This rapid growth of the Jewish population, coupled with the land-buying activities of the Zionists, triggered Arab hostility both towards the Jews and to the British. In 1920, Jews had owned 100,000 acres of land. By 1929, they had acquired an additional 128,000 acres. As the Zionists had planned, the Jewish community in Palestine began to resemble a state within a state.
Britain wavered in the face of Arab riots, first suspending further Jewish immigration in 1930, and then reversing the decision in 1931. As a consequence of the easing of immigration restrictions and rising anti-Jewish sentiment in Europe, Jewish immigration to Palestine rocketed, with 182,839 new entrants between 1930 and 1936, of which 27 per cent were refugees from Germany. Although the Arab population was also growing rapidly, with fertility rates significantly higher than those for the Jews, the high Jewish immigration rate triggered an Arab Rebellion from 1936 to 1939, involving some 3,000 deaths, many of which were Arab insurgents shot by British troops. By 1939, Zionist immigration had boosted the Jewish population to almost 450,000, despite tightening British restrictions. Meanwhile the Arab population, as a consequence, in part, of unrestricted immigration from Syria and Transjordan, had risen to almost one million. Thereafter, for the duration of World War II, Britain effectively closed the door to Jewish immigration, despite convincing evidence of German atrocities. The scene was set for a major confrontation between the now sizeable, mutually hostile Arab and Jewish populations in Palestine once the carnage in Europe had been brought to an end.”
(2) “In May 1947, following the announced British withdrawal, the General Assembly of the United Nations established an eleven-member investigating body – the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) – to prepare a report by the autumn. On August 31, 1947, UNSCOP completed its report, recommending the end of the British Mandate. The majority report, signed by Canada, Czechoslovakia, Guatamala, the Netherlands, Peru, Sweden and Uruguay, called for the establishment of a Jewish state, an Arab state and an internationalized Jerusalem. The minority report, signed by India, Iran and Yugoslavia, recommended the establishment of a federated Palestine, with Jewish and Arab cantons exercising local autonomy over their respective internal affairs. Australia, the eleventh member of UNSCOP, subscribed to neither plan, but put forward no alternative of its own. The British responded with disdain for the report. Rabbi Silver, speaking for the Zionists, endorsed the majority report, since it called for a separate Jewish state, albeit one that was only one-seventh the geographical size envisioned by the Zionists from their interpretation of the Balfour Declaration. The Arab nations unanimously expressed bitter opposition to the majority report, suggesting that partition lay beyond the scope of the United Nations Charter, and that they would never recognize it. They expressed a preference for the minority plan, since it provided no sovereign Jewish entity ”
(3) “Britain, with the power of possession, and the deepest knowledge of the political situation in Palestine, should have played the most important role in determining the future of that troubled land. From 1939 onwards, successive British governments concluded that the partition of Palestine was untenable as a long-term solution. They favored a federal system, with strictly limited immigration of Jews, allowing the existing Arab and Jew populations to assimilate with each other under an extended period of British rule.”
(4) “The USSR (the Soviet Union) voted in favor of Resolution 181 of the General Assembly of the United Nations (ending the British Mandate and partitioning Palestine between the Jews and the Arabs) in November 1947, and coerced its European satellites, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Byelorussia SSR, and Ukraine SSR, to follow suit. … Once the State of Israel was proclaimed, on May 15, 1948, the Soviet Union was the first great power to offer it de jure recognition. Throughout the formative stages of the new nation, Stalin continued his moral, political and military support for Israel. The Zionists were provided with Soviet arms through Czechoslovakia and manpower through the encouraged migration of large numbers of militarily-experienced Jews from Eastern Europe. Without question, Israel owed almost everything to the USSR for its early survival as a nation.”
(5) “As the day of British withdrawal drew nearer, Truman drafted a plan in favor of abandoning partition and placing Palestine under United Nation’s trusteeship. By early 1948, 450,000 Palestinian Jews had applied for US immigration visas at the United States Embassy in Tel Aviv. None were granted by the Truman administration. The Zionist proclamation of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948 caught the Truman administration by surprise. Truman provided only a conditional de facto, and not an unconditional de jure recognition. He also embargoed all U.S. arms movements to Israel. Only in January 1949, when the United States presidential elections were over was Truman willing to upgrade the quality of US diplomatic recognition to Israel. Almost certainly, if the British withdrawal had been delayed by one year, the Truman administration would have refused to deliver the votes for the United Nations Resolution, and some form of non-partitioned trusteeship would have been imposed on Palestine.”
(6) “On November 29, 1947, the General Assembly of the United Nations, meeting at Lake Success, New York, adopted by a vote of 33 to 13, with 10 abstentions and one absentee, the UNSCOP proposal to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. This was the minimum supra-majority required for passage of the proposal.
The vote was as follows: *Those in favor: Australia, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Byelorussia, Canada, Costa Rica, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, France, Guatemala, Haiti, Iceland, Liberia, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Sweden, Ukraine, South Africa, Uruguay, U.S.S.R., United States, Venezuala. Those against: Afghanistan, Cuba, Egypt, Greece, India, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, Yemen. Those abstaining: Argentina, Chile, China, Colombia, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Honduras, Mexico, United Kingdom, Yugoslavia. Absent: Thailand.
Interestingly, the one absentee delegation, Thailand, had been instructed to vote against partition. It is widely believed that the Thai delegation absented itself from the meeting, at the very last minute, under strong pressure from the Zionist lobby, and the United States delegation. Resolution 181 would not have passed without the coerced votes of the Soviet satellite countries and the purchased and coerced votes of the US satellite countries. The supramajority vote was corrupt and in no sense constituted a calculus of consent (Buchanan & Tullock, 1962). Not a single Muslim country voted in favor of Resolution 181. Inevitably, the resolution to partition Palestine assumed, in the eyes of the dispossessed, the flavor of an anti-Islamic Crusade. The Resolution ran counter to the wishes of a large majority of the population of Palestine (there were 1,237,000 Arabs against 608,000 Jews). The Resolution allocated 55 per cent of the land to Israel and 44 per cent to the Arabs (with one per cent for a neutral Jerusalem), despite the fact that the Jews owned only seven per cent of the land and in complete violation of first possession rights to ownership (Locke, 1690/1960).”
