Dear Sir,

November 29 marks the anniversary of the 1947 United Nations General Assembly’s Vote Resolution 181 — the Partition Plan — recommending partitioning into a Jewish and Arab state the disputed historical territory situated between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

While many based Israel’s right to exist on this vote, which the Arab states rejected and went to war over, it was decisions taken during the 1920 San Remo Peace Conference, and not the Partition Plan, that paved the way under international law for Israel’s lawful rebirth in May 1948.

Hailed as the first anchor of Israel’s legitimacy in international law, the post-First World War Supreme Allied Council convened the 1920 San Remo Peace Conference dismantling territories of the Ottoman Empire, including Palestine (https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-san-remo-conference).

Called “Israel’s Magna Carta” by British foreign secretary Lord Curzon, who championed it during the conference, the San Remo Resolution created legal title to the territory of Palestine that later became the Jewish state. Expectantly in 1922, the League of Nations’ Mandate for Palestine sanctioned Jewish rights to their indigenous homeland “for reconstituting their national home”.

Regrettably, and in 1921, Britain diminished the territory of the British mandate of Palestine to 22 per cent when Sir Winston Churchill unilaterally carved away 78 per cent for creation of the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan. Today, as it was in November 1947, it is this remaining 22 per cent which many seek to further divide for the creation of a Palestinian state.

With resumption of war, cheerleading for Hamas’s October 7 massacre abounds with contrived justifications — eg, “Israeli occupation” of Palestinian lands. But such claims are baseless, given Palestinian refusal to recognise Israel’s right to exist, and rejection of peaceful coexistence (https://besacenter.org/palestinian-rejectionism/).

So, paralleling the past, Israel is marking the 76th anniversary of the vote with a UN exhibit highlighting Palestinian hatred of Jews.

TONY REID

Pembroke