Unearthing past remains key to resolving Palestinian future

These proposals were unanimously endorsed by all 51 member States of the League of Nations in 1922.

But they proved to be temporary only in relation to Palestine because three months later the provisions of Article 25 of the Mandate for Palestine enabled Great Britain to restrict the reconstitution of the Jewish National Home to within 23% of the tiny area of land originally set aside to achieve that objective at San Remo with the remaining 77% of Mandatory Palestine eventually becoming an independent Palestinian Arab state in 1946 that is today called Jordan.

The period 1920-1947 without doubt covers a host of critically important legal and historical signposts that cannot be forgotten or buried.

Whilst the two-state solution ultimately created between 1946-1948 as a result of the San Remo Conference is ignored, attempts to resolve sovereignty in today's highly volatile West Bank and Gaza are destined to certain failure and renewed conflict.

The two-state solution posited by the Oslo Accords and the Bush Roadmap creating a 22^nd independent sovereign Arab State in the West Bank and Gaza between Jordan and Israel for the first time ever in recorded history has failed to materialize - despite twenty years of intensive political and diplomatic efforts by the international community.

The PLO (founded in 1964) and Hamas (founded in 1987) both seek to unravel the decisions made at San Remo in 1920.

They need to be replaced as Israel's Arab negotiating partners by the two successor States to the Mandate for Palestine - Jordan and Israel, and possibly Egypt – to determine and allocate sovereignty of the West Bank and Gaza between their respective States.

Unearthing the past still remains the key to peacefully resolving the future.