They never could have - if they were to retain any shred of professional credibility.
Sweden's Foreign Minister has some answering to do in explaining why she tried to hide behind the opinions of these three law professors who never said what she claimed.
The three professors indeed argue that those criteria have been replaced by a new controversial and questionable principle they call the "legality principle" to justify the right of Sweden to recognize the State of Palestine under international law.
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The three professors espousal of the applicability of the "legality principle" is not worth the paper it is written on since it fails to consider article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the United Nations Charter.
UN General Assembly Resolutions they mention to support their claim have no legal binding effect and the 2004 decision of the International Court of Justice is similarly an advisory non- binding opinion only.
Justice El-Araby (now ironically Secretary General of the Arab League) warned his fellow judges:
The international legal status of the Palestinian Territory (paras. 70-71 of the Advisory Opinion), in my view, 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 more than one occasion, the rule of law was consistently side-stepped. 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.
The three professors are trying to sweep the 1922 League of Nations Mandate (and the 1920 San Remo Conference and the Treaty of Sevres that led to the Mandate ) under the carpet - as well as the 1937 Peel Commission Report and the 1947 UN Partition proposals.
There is a myriad of international law legally sanctioning the right of the Jewish people to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in what is today called the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza.
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Sweden can do as it likes - as I stated in my article - but perverting international law on the way should be exposed at every opportunity.
Trying to hide behind the veil of "international law" to justify Sweden's decision without fully examining the facts and the applicable law is disgraceful.
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