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Why does Trump ‘have a grudge against’ Canada? Neurotic personal reasons? Yes, he evidently has those.But those are not the reasons that weigh heaviest.The grudge is held for the same reasons defining the American conservative movement; that defines the Republican party - and is doing via legislation all that Trump can’t do himself with a few squiggles under the Oval Office letter-head. The grudge is held for the reasons that move that deplorable +/-40% of Americans who think their constitution went astray when it was recognised to, morally and rightly, extend its protections beyond landholding adult white males. That’s the same 40% who keep arsenals and ammo-dumps in the hall closet - to defend against those they fear covet their stuff - meaning, of course, their black neighbours and their brown neighbors too. Trump’s their man; the elephant in the room their spirit animal and political mascot.I speak of a 40% of Americans who see democracy not as a priceless end in itself but merely a means to an end - those who see the constitution’s freedoms as a paved road leading to some ‘manifest destiny promised land’ where they - they fortunate white and especially Christian Americans - are deemed to be naturally and inalienably an elite.Canadians have no truck with such appalling childish nonsense. None at all.Canada - Canadians - have taken legislative measures - writing in hard stone a document entrenching constitutionally the natural equal and same enjoyment of personal sovereignty by each and every individual. We created a Charter of Rights & Freedoms - an unambiguous (damn near a ‘powerpoint presentation’) contract informing and directing all elements of government and all individuals as to their recognised as inalienable natural rights - and responsibilities (mainly recognising that no one’s rights weigh an ounce more than any other’s - nor can they negate the rights of others.Canada’s national credo - our most sacred ‘holy’ writ - states, unambiguously, that we are, each and every one of us, fundamentally ‘sovereign’ - that we are free. That our freedom protects us not only from the tyranny of government - federal, provincial (state), or municipal - but from the tyranny of family - of parasitic parents for instance - and, pivotally, from the tyranny of any god(s).Every time an old ‘traditional’ (born of common law) law comes into conflict with The Charter that old law - no matter how hidebound - is made to change.The result is a nation whose laws have steadfastly evolved into ever-stronger manifestations of legal support and protection for sovereign personal choice.Nearly half of all Americans loathe such actual walk the talk expression of all those words between the flowery 18th century prose they recite as platitudes then repudiate in their political actions and daily behaviour.How much wiser - morally superior - is Canada’s Charter of Rights & Freedoms than America’s attempt?Here are a couple of examples. And these examples also explain America’s grudge against Canada. We are what America isn’t but boasts to be. And that is galling.Pierre Elliot Trudeau, a half century ago, as Justice Minister, declared “The government has no place in the bedrooms of the nation” - and decriminalized homosexuality in Canada. That he, 15 years later, as Prime Minister , managed to create consensus with a conference of provincial premiers - all of whom led political parties at odds with his own - delivering The Charter which entrenches such personal sovereignty as a natural inalienable given is Canadian history.When ‘marriage equality’ became an issue our constitutional court pointed out that ‘same and equal rights’ means ‘same and equal rights’ - for everybody. Obvious and unequivocably.When ‘death with dignity’ became an issue the same constitutional court said ‘individual sovereignty is individual sovereignty’ - and (with safeguards) each individual has the right to medical assistance in ending their own existence if they’re suffering. The law continues to support this now recognised essential decency and to also accommodate medical practitioners who cannot bring them-selves to give such succor - while ensuring the patient is referred to someone whose ideal of ‘do no harm’ recognises that perpetuating suffering for people whose suffering is not going to end or ease is ‘doing them harm’.When ‘each woman’s right to choose’ became the issue the court recognised yet again that personal sovereignty is personal sovereignty. That, for the purposes of citizenship and law individual sovereignty begins at birth. For decades now, even during a decade of far right governance, ‘each woman’s right to choose’ remains unchallenged (with the exception of a backbencher’s effort that was put to a free vote and tossed).Universal nationally mandated/state administered healthcare. That’s the healthcare inanely vilified by the deplorably ignorant. Meaning those who spew nonsense about ‘death panels’; patients dying while waiting for critical procedures (that, supposedly, they’d not have to wait for if they were in America); and unspecified ‘inferior quality’ care. That’s the care that ensures that nobody, Canadian or not, will be bankrupted or impoverished by medical need. That triages procedures based on seriousness rather than the fatness of the patient’s wallet. (Which is the source of the anecdotal whining mined by American opponents of publicly-funded universal healthcare - the whining of some of my own baby-boomers whose value system prioritises the replacement of their hip over corrective surgery for someone’s child. Who see their ability to golf as more important than a child’s ability to walk at all. Ick.)Canadians support banning handguns and assault weapons -which gives the Trump constituency apoplexy.Criminalization of marital rape became a ‘well, duh, of course’ under Canada’s Charter of Rights & Freedoms - as nation-wide federal law - in 1982. America did not manage to motivate all of its states to do likewise until the mid-1990s. And a federal law (not a binding element of the nation’s constitution) slouched into US federal law in 1993.Canada, and the vast majority of Canadians, you see, want their nation to walk a truly liberal secular democratic walk. Not the liberal secular democratic empty pretense that results from America’s attempt to be simultaneously both a liberal, secular, and democratic - AND conservative, sectarian, and theocratic - society.The utter impossibility of doing so (not ‘difficulty’ - impossibility) is, with barely any consideration expended, obvious. A creed can be ‘liberal’ - based on keeping sovereignty by default an inalienable right of each individual - or it can serve the dominant community’s status quo which bottom lines as ‘the individual belongs to some ultimate other authority. A creed can be ‘secular’ - sworn to addressing the ‘here & now’ needs and desires of the nations aggregated individual citizens - or it can serve the mores of some dominant sect. Silly Christian Americans seem painfully short-sightedly blind to the no-brainer reality that has always followed the theocratization of a nation. That no-brainer consequence? That once the sect - the religion as a whole aggregation - is granted power in the here and now there follows a period of conflict during which the faithful - with all their various ideas of ‘The One True Faith’ - vie (usually spiraling into violent conflicts that are unparalleled in depth of blood and gore) to prove they are that ‘One True Faith’. As Americans tear down the wall that has protected them from religious tyranny (moving it to protect themselves - or at least their ‘Protestant’ selves - from Hispanic - aka ‘Catholic’ immigration - because that, truth be told, is the descriptor that white middle-class America most fears about Hispanics - that they are Catholic. America’s corrupting compromise of its constitutionally offered legacy of personal sovereignty; and of laws made to govern the people being a creation of the people for human benefit alone - that compromise has rendered those values vulnerable to betrayal. And betrayed they have been. By those who revile knowledge - and bow to ‘feels’ - to ‘faith’. This erosion (likely to be rendered democratically legally incorrectable with confirmation of Justice Kavanaugh sometime prior to this November’s midterm elections) condemns America to sectarian infighting that should keep its people occupied for quite a few years to come. Beirut/Lebanon on steroids. That alone should be enough to take America effectively out of the game.But even if America manages to somehow resist that historically established devolution? The contamination of the educational process from K-12 and into college and university - the contamination of the scientific essentials of open debate, of skepticism, of iconoclasty, of irreverence, of rigorous analysis and scathing eternal peer-review - that contamination is, in itself, enough to push America backwards into the ranks of the also-ran nations.America’s vulnerability to such perversion of its educational system is clear. When a Texas schoolbook committee effectively determines what is or isn’t in textbooks in virtually every state - and when that committee does to the curriculum such things as teaching that the Levitical Code is the basis of the United States Constitution and American law (when quite the opposite is true) the emerging American (mis)understanding of history and of governance is doomed. So too when any mention of one of the two contestants vying for the Oval Office in America’s recent Presidential election is edited utterly out of those textbooks. It takes a truly screwy take on reality to support the very idea that a mention of American electoral history that excludes that most recent go - and especially one of the contenders is somehow ‘okay’ - and not an obscene insult to the educational process.America’s insistence on subordinating science to superstition condemns the American scientific community to devolution. To regress. To being also-ran.China is poised to leave America eating its dust in terms of economic leadership. America’s military leadership is stalemated vis-a-vis nuclear superpower status - and its conventional military is poorly suited to addressing the type of conflicts that don’t evolve on battlefields. And America’s status as the liberal secular and democratic template - as the role model for peoples pursuing democracy - isn’t in the running when there’s an actual liberal secular democracy walking the talk in the form of Canada.Canada shames America by comparison. And that is something America can’t be ‘cool’ with. America’s egomaniacal mascot-in-chief least of all.

Read this article - start-up registering business in india ?The information on starting or registering a business in india, is not one of those things that are very well available. The government staff who do it, don't want any layman to be informed, because their bread and butter is in the bribe money they get on each and each thing they do to accept your registration to helping you understand what and how to do it.But things are better with egovernance now.. read on. I think the company registration stuff is one of the first things to be a successful egovernanance project for India.About this post:I am setting up this blog post, and will be updating it regularly as I find more information on this and other interesting areas of starting businesses in India.. also I plan to write posts on my experience over years in helping people operate or handle their businesses... in the context of Indian companies only.If you have something to share/add/suggest, you can email me at harish.palaniappan @ Email from Google and I will find time to discuss with you and add your information and experiences in this blog as well.Information On Companies, Acts, and processes in IndiaMay be these links help to kick-off your information collection drive:Starting your own business in IndiaForming a company in IndiaStarting a business - by doingbusiness.orgThe Indian Ministry of company affairs websiteStarting a business in singaporeMCA21 : Online company registrations and other e-form processesThe Indian ministry of company affairs has setup an online governance website since september 2006 (delayed by almost 6 months) with the help of Tata consultancy services.* Note: Before you read further, understand that this post is not updated regularly when the ministry of companies of india's policies or processes change.. so you should look at this as a starter only.. and do find for yourself more information at the Registrar Of Companies offices around India.. or in the mca21 website.Types of companies:In the different types of companies that can be registered (or that can be created in India at all legally), there's no possibility of starting a single person company.. At a minimum, you can only start a private firm with 2 directors.But, the government has been recommended by an expert committee, to add a new class of companies which is proposed as 'One person company' and probably may have OPC Pvt. or OPC Pvt. Ltd. as the ending name of the company.If this recommendation is approved (which probably will be by amendments in the companies Act), then there will be a possibility of registering One Person companies in India. As of now, you atleast make a friendly legal entity as a director apart from yourself, like your mother or wife, or some friend, and register your company as a Private company with minimum 2 directors.Though it is technically bad that India hasn't still recognized 'one person companies', practically it is better to register as a private company since that will avoid further paper work when your 'one person company' grows to have employees which then requires a conversion in your registration or possibly re-registration.-- continuted --If you are a small enterpreneur, as it happens always, and probably into Software solutions, planning to be a product-based company, or services-based company, thinking of selling your software products / services within India or abroad, then registering your company as a Private firm with 2 directors would do. But this would allow you only to do business within the country. For legally allowing yourself to attract foreign currency through sales or service costs, all you need is an Import/Export number/code (costs somewhere less than 2000 rupees i heard...this number you will quote later while filing your filing your returns.. for foreign currency revenues)...but registering as a private company seems to be the first job to do.To register a private company:1. You can do everything onlineDoing the process online means, you download forms, fill them up digitally using adobe acrobat reader software, attach your digital signature and submit it in submission page on Ministry of Corporate Affairs The website says it will give you service request number for every such submission and you can track status of application online with that number. Also, if a form is rejected and if it is put in 'resubmit with proper information' or something like that, then without additional cost you can refill and resubmit under the same request number.1. Get DSC (digital signature):For all this you need a digital signature. Since there is no paper involved you can only sign digitally.. and only legal and secure method is through digital signatures which are given unique to every person who buys one.Note that the digital signature has nothing to do with your manual signature, it is some very very long and undetectable code provided to you as a file through email or in a thumb drive like storage media.And yes, keep the file or DSC media safe once you buy, because anybody can just steal this file and attach your digital signature to all documents that accept digital signatures (which is only company incorporation or name change or efiling forms today.. but later many other processes in life, for example filing company returns, also might start being computerized and accepting digital signatures)You buy DSC from Digital Ceritifying Authorities in India like MTNL (delhi and mumbai), TCS(all over india), and otherslisted here.While visiting the above websites you will see that there are different classes of digital signatures, and might be confused on which one to buy. The one that is minimum required for our discussion is 'Class 2 individual' or higher classes but something that is for an 'individual'. It is worthy to note here that, 'Class 1 certificate for individuals' which is a basic type of dignital certificate, is for 'individuals' but this DSC is not given based on proof of identity or proof of address.. so the government may not accept 'Class 1 certificates'.Recommedation: Buy a 'Class 2 individual' certificate.2. Get DIN (Directory Identification number):This is probably the only low cost process in incorporation. It costs 100 rupees to get yourself registered as a director (or going-to-be-director) of some company within india.Seems like anybody can apply for a DIN, provided you have any of these.. driving license/passport/elector ID, which is a valid proof of identity, and proof of address.The step-by-step process of getting a DIN is given hereRemember to get a DIN for your mom / wife / partner also if you plan to ask them be the second director of your small company.MCA User RegistrationTo submit forms, on the MCA website, you need an identity on the website.For now, since you may not have a DIN and DSC, you can register as an individual, using the 'New user registration' link on Ministry of Corporate Affairs . Then you can login with your password just like in yahoo mail or hotmail.After you get a DIN and DSC, re-register as a Business professional, using the same link.. and then on you will use your DSC to login to the website.3. Form 1A - Company name availability and blocking.This application is for blocking the name of the company you want to register.All forms that we are talking about in this or other steps are available hereBefore you download and fillup form 1A, you should check whether your company name is available through this pageFill up form 1A, with 2 DINs, affix your DSC, if you have to attach any documents scan them and attach them as files in the end of the form as applicable. Then submit the form. Note your request number and track the form until it is approved. We are almost half done.The above 3 items are the main items and all or most processes below can be done simultaneously.4. Role CheckThis is a simple process where a DIN and DSC are matched and verified to be of the same person, and also that this person is a valid signatory of the company.I am not sure, but this process might be neccessary only for efiling of tax or returns.. not for incorporation..Details about this step is here. http://mca.gov.in/MinistryWebsite/dca/rolecheck/rolecheck.html5. Form 1 - Incorporation Application:Download Form 1, fillup, attach digital sign and submit.6. Form 18 - Office address formDownload Form 18, fillup, attach digital sign and submit.7. Form 32 - DIN appointmentDownload Form 32, fillup, attach digital sign and submit.Steps 5, 6, 7 constitute the main parts... and if the Forms 1, 18 and 32 are approved, you will get a CIN or company identification number which you should quote alongwith your Company's PAN number (apply for one, if you don't have), in all future forms like tax forms, name change or address change forms.The overall cost of registering a private company with 2 DIN's through online mode, could cost as less as 2500 Rupees.. but this estimate can increase based on your capital investment which you will mention in Form 1A and others.As mentioned earlier,All forms are available hereAll process applications should take only a few days to be processed.All above processes might not have their old manual form filing methods sooner and everything will become digital because the ministry of company affairs is overwhelmed by its data, and is strongly being computerized. Already tax forms I think, are no more accepted in paper and government has recruited filing officers who help those who are not able to use a computer and do the process digitally.All above processes are part of a system called MCA21 and is managed and authorized for use by the ministry of company affairs and all its registrar of companies (RoC) offices.Initially, me and my friend hired a consultant for doing my friend's company's Registration(/Incorporation).Though this consulting company does it through Ministry of Corporate Affairs website only, they put in their experience of dealing with government processes.But, yes, you don't need to hire a consultant if you have the time to do it online, and if you know people who can attest your proof of identities (a gazetted officer), and if you know some lawyer who has authority to notarize with his signature anything that you produce on a stamp paper.Our consultant, was an authorized 'Company secretary'. It seems Ministry of Company affairs (MCA) has training and certifications for 'company secretary', which people take up and get authorized/certified (by the govt.) to provide these services to people. Company secretaries are obviously people authorized to do more than just incorporation.. like handling disputes between directors of companies, handling buyouts of companies, and many other things like that.. which require people with legal and indian acts and policy knowledge to do it.For us, our consultant would take care of verifying all documents, getting them attested, getting any legal papers notarized, and submit them through Ministry of Corporate AffairsCertain processes are easy.. and you can go to a consultant after these processes and save a few thousands in fee.For example, if you are a techie, and understand browsing and related technologies, then you are actually better than the consultant for getting your digital signature... and this one thing itself could save you more than 500 rupees. because I understand consultants cost 700 - 1500 rupees for filing your DSC application itself.Digital Signature:Just apply for a digital signature as mentioned above.. in TCS or MTNL websites.They will ask you to send some documents to a verification authority.The verification company will just verify your id proof and address proof and send you a digital signature kit with an eToken.An eToken is a protected pen drive/flash drive/usb drive, in which you can't do any data transfer but it will have your digital signature in it and when you insert it into any PC usb key, it installs the signature on the machine...not everything.. just the general part of it. you have to keep the key on the machine until you sign documents and remove it after.This kit and the digital signature costs 1,200 rupees for two years of validity.. (cost from TCS)If you apply from your machine, yourself, you will pay 1200 to the verification authority. nothing else. But if you use a consultant, he will do the online part also for you (assuming you are not the tech friendly person) and charge you twice or even more than the actual cost.Form 1A, and DIN application:These two forms are the initial steps, and probably easy steps for incorporation.Form 1A:Ministry Approval of Form 1A that you submit, means your company name and location is approved and you can start incorporation process. The name is valid only for 6 months and you should incorporate within 6 months.. or you can renew the name for another 6 months. The cost is a flat price of 500 rupees payable on http://Ministry of Corporate Affairs through credit card.If you are starting a software company, Form 1A will have no problems.. since the ministry won't question your address of manufacturing. Other businesses might have problems if the ministry feels your address is a residential area and you business is not proper to be there.. or things like that.In Form 1A, you have to give 6 or 7 company name choices.You type names... likeSample solutions Pvt., Ltd.,Sample software solutions Pvt., Ltd.,Sample Pvt., Ltd.,One of it gets approved.Director Identification Number (DIN):In India, to incorporate a company you need minimum two directors.. (yes, the law is outdated, and only recently government is considering recommedations that single person companies should be allowed to register)If you don't have another director, pull some friend you like.. or easier, get your mother or father as another director. So, atleast two directors should apply for and get a DIN to register the company under them. Later you can always change your directors, company name, address, anything.. just by submitting that form or application alone...and ofcourse paying for that change alone.If you are two or more people who will be directors, and if all of you have a valid passport, no other proof is required for submitting to government anywhere in the full process. A valid passport stands proof for name, address, and father's name most of the time... and the company affairs ministry seems to approve all applications with passport as proof for people, very smoothly.You don't need a consultant for submitting DIN if you follow the instructions clearly on the DIN pages that the ministry has.I think on Digital signature, and DIN .. ministry's website is clear.. and process itself is clear and easy to do by anybody who has used software like browsers, adobe acrobat, etc.,After two DIN's get approved, you can use the DINs and DSC of one director to apply for the actual, main, important form .. FORM 1. .. so this is why the first form we submitted was called FORM 1A (I was wondering why isn't called form 1 if its the first step in incorporation)For Form 1, we need the following.1. Form 1A approval (approving the name of the company)2. DIN numbers of directors (minimum two directors for pvt. ltd. company)3. Articles of Association (a stamped paper agreement signed by directors stating their claims of part ownership of company, has all about holding of shares, how they could be sold, how they could be bought back, blah blah..)4. Memorandum of Association (again a stamped paper document signed by directors stating what all are the objectives of the business, what all they want to sell/buy/resell/import etc., through the operations in the business, what all rights they will exercise in doing the business like renting space/real estate, having employees, etc., blah blah.. important part will be statement of objectives of business.. its like asking for incorporation only to do business on these lines.. if the operations or objectives change, you have to change the memorandum and resubmit for approval until which you can't do the new business)5. Form 18 stating the address of registered office of the company. (a simple form)6. Form 32 stating the DIN numbers of directors of the company. (a simple form)Sample word document templates for 3. and 4. can be downloaded from here (3) and here (4).Before you download, check up whether the ministry website has latest template of these files downloadable there.. as of this writing the ministry website hasn't put a link since this is a legal document and obviously it is a very important step which needs complete understanding by the person before signing it. The links above are provided only for you to have access to samples so you can read in detail before you get into doing it. Also, if you get to read, the 'Memorandum document (4)' read the 'objects' part carefully, because it says what you want to do with your business and you know this better than your consultant.Submitting Form 1 means, submitting all the above.In submitting Form1, you will need a consultant or help with the text from a Chartered Accountant, or company secretaries, or simply referrence documents from friends who have already done this.That's if.. you submit Form 1 digitally scanned and signed with the digital signature of one of the directors, through Ministry of Corporate Affairs... originals also have to be submitted to the registrar of companies.While submitting Form 1, you have to pay a registration fee which is based on a slab for the capital you are mentioning.. minimum capital is 1,00,000 rupees.. I mentioned just that, and the fee was 4,800 rupees for that.. (so that means it takes a minimum of 4800 rupees for registering a private limited company in India, not like I thought earlier that it could be done with around 2500 rupees).Government generally approves Form 1 submission in 1 day after the originals are submitted.Sometimes if the objectives of business stated in the memorandum is not clear / the AOA (3) or MOA (4) documents have mistakes / incomplete, then the registrar office raises a query or asks for deletion of objectionable points, or asks clarifications.. and the form has to be resubmitted if changes are made.. and I believe you don't have to pay again for corrections but I am not sure. For this part, probably being proactive, my consultant took a power of attorney from me and my mom for doing such changes himself, if they are raised, and to resubmit the memorandum himself without signatures from the directors (me or my mom).Once, your Form 1 is approved, within a day or two you will receive an email with a one page pdf certificate of incorporation(unsigned) with a Company Identification Number (CIN).. probably they will send an original signed one later which I am yet to receive.Actually, you should start business transactions, only after you receive this certificate.. though it happens usually that everybody does registration or incorporation a couple of years after starting business.Import / Export Code - IEC:After Registering the company, a software solutions provider, who wants to be able to provide services to foreign clients, or sell products online to people outside India, MUST apply for an Import/Export license.Bank account:For getting IEC, you need to have a current account in a bank under your new registered company's name. The bank will obviously ask your documents of company registration. Other than that, the bank will ask you a 'Board Resolution' from your company, signed by all registered directors of the company, authorizing one or more of the directors of the company to open and operate the account in the company's name. The board resolution is just a letter/statement from the people who represent the company, but some banks like it in a specific format and you can ask the bank to give you the board resolution format if they have. Some banks even have this format downloadable on their websites 'corporate banking' sections.The current account, will also be useful for you to do transactions in your company's name, which is a MUST for accounting your company's cash flows. Also, you will be able to accept payment from your clients in the name of your company through Cheques, direct wire transfer, etc., which clients will like since they will understand that your company is a permanent entity, and you are not somebody who takes money and can go missing.IEC application process is simple:You get an application form from the Zonal director general of Foreign Trade.. or download from their website (like their Tamilnadu/Chennai office website).Major attachments to this process are:1. your company registration form,2. a letter from your bank attesting that a current account is held under your company's name operated by one of the director's of the company, and the bank should attest in the letter the photographs of the directors of the company.The zonal director's office will guide and help you in the application process by rejecting the application with corrections mentioned clearly for you to correct and re-submit, each time you do it.Some consultants take close to 3000 rupees to do the IEC process.. my recommendation Do it yourself if you have not done this before, you will like to know and be clear of what is happening.

If Judea and Samaria were captured back from illegal Jordanian occupation, how and when did Judea and Samaria turn into Palestinian lands?TL;DR: They didn’t. The only legal sovereign over Judea and Samaria, since May 1948, has been and remains Israel.But far too many people, throughout much of the liberal West, think these territories DID, somehow, "turn into Palestinian lands." But that’s a case study in how ideologically biased propaganda with no respect for truth, combined with logical fallacies, can be brutally effective at changing attitudes through emotional appeals. Let's put all that aside, for now, and just trace the thread of legal sovereignty over the territory variously known as Judea and Samaria or the "West Bank" as far back as we need to, to assure us of the legal validity of the answer. The possible candidates for legal sovereignty over that region today, I trust all readers will agree, are limited to Israel, Jordan, or "Palestine." If anyone can even think of a fourth possibility, I'm all ears. If the reader has no need or desire to re-hash the entire chain of title going back to the Kingdom of Judea two thousand years ago, skip ahead a few paragraphs until you get to the Ottoman era.Firstly, “Palestine” originally was just the name of a vaguely defined geographic region — roughly covering most of the Central Levant and the Jordan River valley (both sides). The part that lies west of the river is called Cis-Jordanian Palestine (“cis” meaning “the same” — it’s on the SAME side of the river as Europe, which gave it that name) and the part on the “other” or “far” side of the river is Trans-Jordanian Palestine.The region of Palestine got that name when the Kingdom of Judea, which formerly existed there for hundreds of years, was obliterated by the Romans in the 2nd century C.E. because the Judeans — otherwise known today in English as “Jews,” a direct linguistic reference to their national heritage as Judeans — had rebelled against encroaching Roman rule over their homeland which was, initially, an independent vassal state affiliated with the Roman Empire. In anger at the Judeans/Jews, the Roman emperor Hadrian demanded the very name of “Judea” be blotted out from this newly annexed Roman province, and that it be replaced with the name “Syria Paleastina,” named after the Jews’ ancient and by-then-extinct mortal enemies, the Philistines (who had only ever lived in the far southern part of the Levant coastal plain, from northern Sinai to Gaza and Ashdod and Ashkelon, and who never had any presence in the Judean hills). “Palaestina” was tacked on by the Romans to the existing Roman province of Syria; “Palestine” was, even then, not a separate, bounded territorial jurisdiction. But, since acquisition of territory by aggressive conquest was not considered illegal back then by international law, Rome became the legal sovereign over Judea/Palestine.So, in that sense, Judea has always been “Palestinian” land, at least since Judea got re-named “Palestine” 1800 years ago. But that doesn’t mean anything in terms of who lived there, or what their ethnicity was, or whether some legal entity run by the current, Arab residents of Judea is now the rightful legal sovereign. It's only due to the shifting meaning of the word "Palestine" that this linguistic illusion is created. It makes no more sense than to assert that "the Great Plains" deserve to be a separate nation from the United States.Even after the re-naming of Judea as Palestine 1800 years ago, the residents of this region of “Palestine” were mostly Jews. In waves, after the Roman conquest, many of the Jews left, seeking better lives in the Diaspora (“exile”) since their wealth and privileges in their native land had been taken by the Romans, and they were barred from performing the ritual practices of their culture, the Romans having destroyed the Jewish Temple during an earlier crushing of Jewish revolt, in the year 70 C.E. These exile Jews nevertheless maintained, for nearly two millennia, the memory and written record of their connection to the land of Judea, and incorporated that connection as a vital part of their culture, their rituals, and their daily lives, even in exile.As the Christian religion rose to dominance throughout the Roman world, the population of “Palestine” became mostly Christian, either through conversion or through immigration from other parts of the Empire. Still, many Jews remained Jews, and many of those Jews remained in their ancestral lands. There was ALWAYS a Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria, from the very beginning of Jewish peoplehood as a subset of the people of Canaan, until the Jordanian conquest in 1948.The Christians and Jews (and a few others) of Roman Palestine in the late Byzantine period (the name for the time when the remaining parts of the Roman Empire, after the fall of Rome itself, was ruled from the city of Constantinople by Christian emperors) fell to Muslim invaders from Arabia under the Caliph Omar in the early 7th century C.E. This brought many Muslim Arabians to reside in the region, and (due to Islam’s policy toward non-Muslim peoples in the lands it conquered) many of the local population — Christians and Jews — converted to Islam as well. But some of them didn’t, and Islamic law allowed them to be tolerated, IF the Muslim ruler were graciously inclined to do so, and IF these “people of the Book” would submit to Muslim rule as second-class “*dhimmi*” citizens, pay obeisance and kowtow to any Muslim as his social and political better, and pay a demeaning “head tax,” *Jizya*. Regardless, at this point legal sovereignty over Judea/Palestine shifted from the Roman emperor in Constantinople, to the Muslim caliph, who (over the centuries) resided in various different capitals within the Muslim empire -- Cairo, Baghdad, Grenada, (and after the Ottoman caliph conquered Byzantium) Constantinople, but never, let it be noted, in Jerusalem.I will leave out any extended discussion of the Crusades, which brought Palestine for a short time back under Western European Christian sovereign rule. (The Crusades were basically an attempt to overturn the Muslim conquest of what was in the 7th century a Christian land.) Just as it had back when it was known as Canaan a couple of thousand years before, the land continued to pass back and forth between competing empires, who each claimed it as “their own,” and none of whom gave much heed at all to the additional competing claims of the tiny group of people known as Jews. By the end of the Crusades, sovereignty over Palestine had passed back into Muslim hands for nearly another millennium.(START READING HERE if you chose to skip the previous parts)The Muslim empire of the dynasty of Ottoman Turks, ruling from Constantinople, took possession of “Palestine” in the 16th century C.E. and exercised legal sovereignty over that region, relatively peacefully, for the next 400 years. At that point “Palestine” was not a specific province or territorial unit, but, once again, just the generic name of a geographic region. The people who lived there during the Ottoman period were a widely diverse collection of ethnicities including Muslim Arabs, Christian Arabs, Muslim Turks, Armenian Christians, Assyrian Christians, Circassian Muslims, Albanian Muslims, Bosnian Muslims, Egyptian Muslims, Coptic Christians, Greek Christians, Latin Catholic Christians, Bahai Persians, Arab Druze, indigenous Samaritans (an offshoot of the Jews), and, of course, Jews. By the mid-19th century, the city of Jerusalem had a substantial Jewish majority in its population. Jews were only thinly scattered through smaller towns in the rest of the region of Palestine, however, which was itself only thinly populated, in general — by the mid-19th century barely half a million people lived in the entire region known as Palestine, and much of the land lay fallow, deserted, and “desertified” — degraded ecologically due to poor farming practices and over-exploitation for centuries.More Jews began to return to Palestine in the mid-19th century, as the Ottoman authorities, for the first time in centuries, allowed legal Jewish immigration to Palestine and allowed Jews to buy land there. The Zionist movement arose in the late 19th century, accelerating this immigration trend. Jews at this point were buying land and settling in all parts of the region known as Palestine, on both sides of the Jordan River. Why not? There were no territorial divisions at the time, and all of the region of Palestine was valued by the Jews as being their Biblical homeland. Up to this point, the Ottoman Empire was still the legal sovereign over all of the region; and Jews were simply legal immigrants, buying land and living wherever they chose to live.From 1914–1918, the Ottoman Empire was a combatant in World War One as an ally of Germany and Austria. These “Central Powers” were fighting against the “Allied Powers” of Britain, Czarist Russia, and France, joined late in the war by the United States. The Ottomans LOST that war, which ended in November 1918. In 1917, seeking Jewish help to win the war, the British government issued a “declaration” through their then-Foreign Minister, Lord Balfour, indicating that His Majesty’s Government would look favorably upon, and assist, the Zionist Jews in their efforts to re-establish a National Home for the Jewish people in the region still known as Palestine, so long as “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”Text of the Balfour DeclarationThough that declaration did NOT have the force of international law, it formed the template for a later document that DID have the force of international law: at the peace conferences held for a few years after the conclusion of the Great War, the victorious Allied Powers made a number of efforts to “make the world safe for democracy,” as U.S. President Wilson had put it. Wilson’s idea of a worldwide association of independent nations intended to preserve the peace, eventually took form as the League of Nations, though the U.S. tragically did not join, since the U.S. Senate refused to ratify Wilson’s own signature on the Charter of that League.From the date of the Ottoman defeat until the signing of the Mandate document, Britain was not yet the legal sovereign but was merely a military occupying power over Ottoman land, pending a peace treaty. That military occupation by Britain of the land of a defeated foreign sovereign was, of course, perfectly legal, since the Central Powers had started the war and also lost the war, with the victorious powers holding much of Ottoman territory at the time the war concluded.After the peace treaty was signed with the Ottomans in 1920, the League of Nations became the legal sovereign, in trust, over all the parts of the former Ottoman Empire not left within the control of the new, secular Turkish government; separate Mandates were thereafter created by the League to allow either Britain or France, as trustee, to administer these regions until the locals, as the legal beneficiaries of the trust created by the Mandate documents, were ready for independence. Britain received the Mandate for the region known as Palestine, in 1922. Its whole purpose was to foster "a national home for the Jewish people."The Palestine Mandate - Yale Law Library, The Avalon ProjectHowever, in recognition that there was already a large Arab, non-Jewish population in the Mandate territory, the Mandate document specifically gave Britain permission — IF Britain chose — to break away all of the lands lying EAST of the Jordan River — 77% of the original Palestine Mandate — to form an exclusively Arab state, and to ban all Jewish immigration to that land. Britain did so, in 1923, and appointed the recently-deposed Sharif of Mecca, Abdullah, of the Hashemite clan, as Emir of this new British protectorate, which became known as the Emirate of Transjordan. That territory gained full independence from Britain in 1946, as the Kingdom of Transjordan. NO JEWS whatsoever lived in Transjordan — it had been ethnically cleansed, even before the words “ethnic cleansing” were invented.The remainder of the Mandate territory — all of Cis-Jordanian Palestine — was designated, by the legally binding Mandate document itself, to become the national home of the Jewish people. However, many among the Arabs who lived there were not happy with the idea of an independent sovereign Jewish state ever arising in ANY part of what they considered to be, eternally, sacred Islamic land — once they had taken it from Christendom in the 7th century, they would fight tooth and nail to hold onto it — as they did in fact when they drove out the Western Christian Crusaders nearly a millennium previously. Led by a fanatic Jew-hater, Hajj Amin el-Husseini, a large faction among the Arab population of early 20th century Palestine took active, violent measures to try to drive the Zionist Jews out of Palestine, too — viewing them as foreign invaders, just as they had the Crusaders.Of course, there is a difference between legal immigrants, whom the distant central government has allowed to enter the country to live there, and “invaders.” But this distinction is often lost on xenophobic, bigoted, racist, anti-immigrant locals who resent “uppity” people of a different ethnicity moving into “their” neighborhoods.Arab attacks on innocent Jews continued for decades, though the Jews eventually learned how to defend themselves. Britain found itself unable to control the Arab rioting and anti-Jew violence in Cis-Jordanian Palestine and, hence, chose to capitulate to it, restricting Jewish immigration for much of the 1930s and 1940s, and beginning to propose further “partition” plans to separate the Arabs and the Jews, even though this was in direct violation of the mandatory obligations on Britain as set forth in the Mandate document, especially after Britain had already set aside Eastern Palestine as an Arab state and reserved all of Cis-Jordanian (Western) Palestine to become a Jewish state. The Arabs rejected each of these partition proposals that would further sub-divide Cis-Jordanian Palestine, including those made in 1937, 1941, and 1944, as well as a U.N. peacekeeping proposal for partition of Palestine made in November 1947. The Jewish Yishuv (self-governing Jewish community and government-in-waiting) in Palestine reluctantly accepted each of these proposals — that is, the Jews were willing to give up part of what was rightfully theirs under the Mandate — contingent on Arab agreement, i.e. only if it would bring peace.It would not bring peace.The Arab League, together with the Arab Higher Committee for Palestine (the recognized representative authority of the Palestinian Arabs) rejected the UN proposal, and immediately started an illegal and aggressive guerilla and terrorist war against Jewish civilians in the Mandate territory. This war escalated throughout the next 6 months as Britain did nothing to stop the violence, but, instead, made preparations to withdraw from their Mandate duties and leave the locals (Jews and Arabs) to fight it out among themselves.On May 14, 1948, Britain hauled down its flag for the last time and marched its representatives onto a boat and left. Shortly thereafter, the Yishuv (Jewish shadow government) declared the independent state of Israel in the land Britain had just vacated. The Arabs of Palestine did no such thing, but instead cast their lot with the Arab League’s promise to quickly wipe out the Jews, as the Arab League declared formal war on Israel the next day. The promised extermination of the Jews didn’t happen; the Jews survived. However, when a UN-brokered cease-fire led to a semi-permanent Armistice in late 1949, invading Jordanian armies remained in control of Judea and Samaria — parts of the former Mandate territory that, by law, were part of Israel’s declared independence upon Britain’s withdrawal — as well as some eastern neighborhoods of the city of Jerusalem. (Egypt remained in control of the city of Gaza and a surrounding strip of agricultural land, which had also been part of the former British Mandate and was thus, legally, sovereign Israel territory.)The 1949 Armistice document drew a “Green Line” delineating the positions of the warring armies at the time the guns were silenced, but the Armistice document was adamantly clear (at Arab insistence) that these were NOT permanent international borders, but merely a “don’t cross” cease-fire line (which the Arabs wanted to reserve the right to cross again at any time if they chose to break the cease-fire and resume their attempt to destroy Israel, after licking their wounds and re-arming).https://peacemaker.un.org/sites/peacemaker.un.org/files/IL%20JO_490403_Hashemite%20Jordan%20Kingdom-Israel%20General%20Armistice%20Agreement.pdfAfter the Armistice, Jordan attempted to annex Judea and Samaria and eastern Jerusalem, and went so far as to re-name those territories “the West Bank” in 1950 in an unfortunately successful propaganda attempt to make it sound like they were a legitimate companion part of “the East Bank” of the Jordan River, i.e. the area then known as the Kingdom of Transjordan, and accordingly Transjordan also re-named itself simply “Jordan” at about the same time. This did seem to erase, in the public mind, the fact that Jordan had aggressively invaded and conquered territory that DID NOT BELONG to it, and, other than Israel, did not belong to any other sovereign country either, after Britain’s withdrawal. However, the diplomats of the world saw through the ruse; only two nations, Britain and Pakistan, at first recognized this attempted annexation, but when the UN rejected the legitimacy of that Jordanian attempt, Britain withdrew its approval, too.Let’s focus now only on Judea and Samaria, since Gaza is now once again in Arab hands, Israel having withdrawn completely in 2005. WHO is the proper sovereign in Judea and Samaria, as of the conclusion of the Six-Day War in 1967?WHO are the candidates?Was Jordan the legal sovereign over Judea and Samaria in 1967? Well, no. We already know that Jordan’s legitimate western borders ended at the eastern bank of the Jordan River, that the legitimate part of Jordan (formerly Transjordan) was carved 0ut of eastern Palestine in 1923, and that the majority of Jordan’s population is Palestinian — as is its current Queen, and thus its (young adult) Crown Prince who will become King next in the line of succession. Jordan IS a Palestinian State and will soon have a legitimately Palestinian ruler. Furthermore, Jordan officially renounced all claims to the “West Bank” and eastern Jerusalem in 1988, years before they made peace with Israel in 1994.Were the “Palestinians” the legal sovereign over Judea and Samaria in 1967? No; the problem is twofold. First, the Arabs of Cis-Jordanian Palestine — western Palestine, the part of the original Mandate that was left after Jordan was carved out in 1923, the part that Britain withdrew from in 1948 — did not declare an independent “Palestinian” Arab state when Britain withdrew. IF they had done so, then the boundaries between the Arab State of Palestine and the Jewish State of Palestine (each of which was free to re-name itself, of course) would have been, by agreement, those laid out by the 1947 UN partition proposal. No war would have happened; two states, side-by-side, would have been the result.If there had been NO such UN proposal, and if TWO separate political entities, representing two competing ethnic groups within the same territory, had EACH declared independence upon the British withdrawal, then it would have been up to the competing claimants, either by negotiation or by war followed by a peace treaty, to determine where the permanent boundary lay between them. But that did NOT happen, either — even though that is the erroneous impression many people still have of what the “Green Line” means.But when only ONE local political entity — in this case, the Zionist organization — declares its independence. after withdrawal of a foreign colonial or administrative power (in this case, Britain), the well recognized legal principle of Uti possidetis jurisUti possidetis juris - Wikipediaprovides that the newly formed nation-state legally exercises its sovereignty over the entire territory that had recently been vacated by the former colonial or administrative power. That is to say, ALL of Cis-Jordanian Palestine, the ENTIRE land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, instantly became a legal part of Israel as soon as Israel declared its independence after the British withdrawal in May 1948.This remains true as a matter of LAW, even though, as a matter of FACT, Israeli leaders back then recognized that it would have been too difficult for them to defend and hold onto those parts of their legitimate territory, in the war which they knew the Arab states were planning to launch against Israel the moment it declared independence, and so Israeli leaders concentrated their defense efforts on protecting those areas with the largest concentration of Jewish population, as well as other strategically necessary areas. As they have been each time such a choice arose, Israeli leaders were willing to sacrifice (at least temporarily) their rightful exercise of sovereignty over the majority-Arab regions of Judea and Samaria IF it meant the price of survival as a nation, or if it would bring peace. Likewise, Israel strove mightily to retain all of Jerusalem, in the 1948 war, but was unable to dislodge Jordan from its illegal occupation of the eastern part of that city until 1967, when Israel also re-captured its other territories that were lost to Jordan’s illegal invasion and occupation in the 1948–49 war, i.e. Judea and Samaria.The second reason why “Palestine” cannot be the default legal sovereign over Judea and Samaria is that, so far, “Palestine” as a state doesn’t exist. For decades, “Palestinian” was nothing more than a geographic descriptive term, up until the KGB and the PLO got the bright idea after the 1967 war to market it as a new label for a newly identified “national ethnic group,” a sub-group of Arabs with (they claimed) legitimate national aspirations — despite the already present existence of a much larger nation-state full of Palestinians just the other side of the Jordan River, Jordan. The reason why the “Palestinians” of Judea and Samaria wanted to re-frame their identity was so they could cast themselves as “the little guy” compared to “big, bad” Israel which was “oppressing” them by not letting them conquer Israel and convert all of Israel into an Arab-majority, Islamist state. They wanted to overcome the true perception the world public had, up until the mid-1960s, that Israel was the “little guy” and that the Arab League countries, 22 independent nation-states with well over 10 times the population and well over 100 times the land area of little Israel, were ganging up on Israel and trying to crush it out of existence. The new popular image fostered by the KGB and eagerly grasped by liberal Westerners, showed Israel as the “bully” trying to crush Palestinian national aspirations out of existence. Of course, Israel was doing no such thing; it had ALWAYS been willing to accept a Palestinian state side-by-side IF that would bring peace. Israel was just trying to SURVIVE against Arab aggression.To be a nation-state, though, under settled and widely held principles of international law, an entity must have at least three things: (a) a defined permanent population, (b) a defined permanent territory in which that population resides, (c) a government, i.e. the practical and legal ability to exercise sovereignty over that territory and that population, and (d) the ability to enter into relations with other states.Montevideo Convention - Wikipedia“Palestine” then did not have, and still lacks, any of those required elements to be a recognized nation-state. It claims, as its population, not only the Arabs of the “West Bank” (Judea and Samaria) but those of Gaza (under the separate control of Hamas) and of eastern Jerusalem, as well as all the millions of Palestinian Arabs living abroad, either as citizens of other countries, or in refugee camps. This is not a “permanent population” of the territory in question.“Palestine” also lacks a defined territory. That is, indeed, one of the issues that remains to be negotiated between Israel and the Palestinian people; where to draw the lines.“Palestine” does not even have a single, recognized government capable of negotiating on behalf of ALL the Palestinian people. Yes, it has the duly constituted Palestinian Authority, which exercises actual civil and security control in Area A of Judea and Samaria. But though that government claims authority over ALL Palestinian Arabs, it lacks any ability to represent those in Gaza, who are under the actual control of Hamas, or those who live abroad and have become citizens of the various lands in which they reside.Most nation-states in the world quite properly consist of one main national ethnic group, concentrated in the region which coalesces into a nation. That ethnicity usually has the same name as the country itself. At the same time, various other ethnicities — minority groups (some of whom may well be the predominant, majority ethnic group in some other country) — typically live in such a nation, as well. There is nothing wrong with that, so long as the minority ethnic groups are not oppressed in their daily lives, and are allowed to freely pursue their professions and their educations and to participate in government and the political process within that nation. But it does NOT give those minority ethnic groups the right to demand that the entire country CHANGE its ethos and its value system and its ethnic civilization to match that of the protesting minority. Minorities have a right to practice THEIR OWN lifestyle and culture, wherever they live, but they do NOT have the right to demand that the entire country become “like them.” Of course, that means the majority doesn’t have the right to demand that concession of other ethnic groups, either.Consider, for a moment, some of the other new countries that were created by the very same process that created both Israel and Jordan (as well as Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq) after World War One, when the losing Central Powers empires were broken up, and the formerly oppressed, formerly minority ethnic groups in those empires were given the opportunity for self-determination in a land of their own. Several newly constituted nation-states were also created by the League of Nations from the ruins of the German and Austrian empires. Poland, for example, like Israel, was an ancient nationality but one whose independent national existence had been wiped out for centuries by more powerful neighboring empires (in Poland's case, Russia, Germany, and Austria). Other new lands, like Czechoslovakia, land of the Czechs and the Slovaks, initially covered two separate national ethnic groups; decades later, these groups mutually agreed to split so that now, each has their own state in PART of the former Czechoslovakia.After those nations were created in the post-war flowering of self-determination, many ethnic Germans still lived among the Poles in Poland, and many ethnic Germans still lived among the Czechs in Czechoslovakia, particularly in a heavily-German portion of Czechoslovakia called Sudetenland. Did this give the ethnic Germans living in Poland, or the ethnic Germans living in Sudetenland, the LEGAL right to declare independence and break away from Poland or Czechoslovakia? NO, it did not.Germany, of course, still existed as a country, so the German people still had ethnic self-determination in a land of their own, even if some of their brethren of German ethnic heritage were living as a minority group in other countries whose population was predominantly that of a different ethnic group. The point is, the Arabs of Palestine ALSO already had a country of their own -- eastern Palestine, a/k/a Transjordan, a/k/a Jordan, where they were the majority. (And, if considered to be just part of the unifed “Arab Nation” as in other contexts they often portray themselves, the Arabs were the majority in not one, but 22 vast nation-states.) Now, they also have Gaza, a separate political entity where they are the majority. None of that, though, gives the Arabs of Judea or Samaria the legal right to DEMAND sovereignty over any inch of territory in Cis-Jordanian Palestine, either east or west of the Green Line.Was Israel the legal sovereign over Judea and Samaria in 1967? Since none of the other potential claimants, Jordan or “Palestine,” had a better claim, as a pure matter of law, that is the only conclusion legally possible.This does not, of course, mean that changes cannot occur. Israel is not blind to factual reality on the ground, and has no desire to continue administering large parts of its territory which have, locally, a hostile Arab population. Even though Israel was the LEGAL sovereign over Gaza, it unilaterally and voluntarily withdrew in 2005 and ceded that territory to Arab sovereignty. Previously, Israel and the PLO (which the UN recognized as the sole legitimate negotiating representative of the entire Palestinian Arab people) had signed a treaty (the Oslo Accords) in 1993 that gave the Palestinian Arabs autonomous self-government (but not complete independence) within the territorial limits defined in that Accord as "Area A," where 97% of the Arabs of Judea and Samaria live, as well as giving the PA civil (but not security) control over "Area B," where most of the remaining 3% of Arabs in Judea and Samaria live. In this agreement, signed by Yassir Arafat on behalf of all the Palestinian people, he agreed that Israel RETAINS full civil and military control -- legal sovereignty -- over the remaining parts, "Area C," where, at the time Oslo was signed, hardly anybody except Jews lived, as well as vacant "state land," mostly in the hot, arid Jordan Valley region of Judea and Samaria, and a narrow strip along the “Green Line,” both of which Israel saw as a necessary security buffer zone.Likewise, even though Israel is the LEGAL sovereign over Judea and Samaria, it is willing to negotiate even further land concessions to the newly formed Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria, IF that would bring peace, as part of a final-status negotiation that would also resolve the issues of reparations or resettlement for the various refugees -- Arab AND Jewish -- from the various wars; set final borders; and determine the status of Jerusalem. All of that is potentially on the table to negotiate, with no pre-conditions, as Israel's PM Netanyahu has repeatedly offered. The PA leader, Mahmoud Abbas, however, has never been willing to even begin negotiations without some pre-conditions — concessions he has demanded from Israel, which variously have included a "freeze" on building new LEGAL settlements in Israel-controlled Area C, a release of hundreds of Arab terrorist prisoners held in Israeli jails for murdering Jews, and, most recently, a demand that Israel recognize "the 1967 borders" (of which there is no such thing, just a "Green Line" armistice divider) as the starting point for negotiating, thus pre-judging one of the most important issues remaining to be negotiated.In short, though Israel is willing to work with the Arabs to allow yet another Arab-majority nation-state to come into existence alongside Israel in yet another part of Palestine (after Jordan was already broken off from the original Mandate for that purpose), Israel must stand on its LEGAL right to claim full sovereignty over ALL of Judea and Samaria, with superior title over all other possible claimants as well as the ability and will to defend it, unless and until Israel decides that it is in ISRAEL's best interests to change the status of those territories, as part of a peace negotiation or otherwise, as Israel did IN PART by signing the Oslo Accords in 1993, and also did in part by its unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005.The Arabs have their desires, too, of course, and are entitled to express their WISHES. But they have no legal right to make DEMANDS on Israel that Israel does not decide, for its own good reasons, to accept.Thanks for the A2A.