You want some legal opinions on Article 80 then here they are:
1. The International Court of Justice in an advisory opinion on the effect of article 80 in the Namibia case on 21 June 1971:
“When the League of Nations was dissolved, the raison d’etre and original object of these obligations remained. Since their fulfillment did not depend on the existence of the League, they could not be brought to an end merely because the supervisory organ had ceased to exist. … The International Court of Justice has consistently recognized that the Mandate survived the demise of the League [of Nations.”
Strange that the International Court never took the time to look at this decision in 2004 until you understand the UN never raised the Mandate or article 80 of its own Charter when seeking the Court’s advisory opinion on Israel’s security barrier. Cover up or ignorance? Either way it stinks.
2. Professor Paul Riebenfeld:
"The League of Nations was officially liquidated in April 1946 and with it the Mandate system. The continued validity,however, of rights derived from a Mandate after the expiry of the League and the Mandate system, was spelled out in the Charter of the United Nations in its Article 80, which in the literature is often referred to as “the Palestine clause”. The reason is that this provision which is part of Chapter XII, dealing with International Trusteeship, was drafted as a result of Zionist representations at the San Francisco Conference in order to protect, in addition to the existing rights of any states, also those of “any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments to which members of the United Nations may respectively be parties.” It mentions “peoples”. The rights referred to were in particular those of the Jewish people as the beneficiary of the Palestine Mandate, in an international system based on the membership of States”
3. Judge El Araby of the International Court of Justice in regard to the legal status of the West Bank in the Israeli security barrier advisory opinion:
“,,, the international legal status of the Palestinian Territory merits more comprehensive treatment”…
“A historical survey is relevant to the question posed by the General Assembly, for it serves as the background to understanding the legal status of the Palestinian Territory on the one hand and underlines the special and continuing responsibility of the General Assembly on the other. This may appear as academic, without relevance to the present events. The present is however determined by the accumulation of past events and no reasonable and fair concern for the future can possibly disregard a firm grasp of past events. In particular, when on one or more than one occasion, the rule of law was consistently sidestepped….”
“The point of departure, or one can say in legal jargon, the critical date, is the League of Nations Mandate which was entrusted to Great Britain”
John
Now I have given you some sources dealing with the Mandate and article 80 – you need to give me your sources refuting the relevance of those two pieces of international law.
The article in the Independent that you cited [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/the-big-question-what-are-israeli-settlements-and-why-are-they-coming-under-pressure-1692515.html] does not deal with the Mandate and article 80. I will bet the reporter never heard of either. I doubt if the Israeli lawyer quoted had ever heard of or been aware of the Mandate and article 80.
When you can pinpoint some legal authority who has considered the Mandate and article 80 and come to a contrary view to the legal authorities I have cited above, then maybe there can be a further dialogue between us.
But until you do, please be open minded enough to at least acknowledge that there is an argument in international law that those Jewish settlements in the West Bank may be indeed legal.
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