Reply #38: You Seem To Be Laboring Under Some Mis-Apprehensions, Sir

[The Magistrate]

The Partition did not direct an end to the Mandate; it was the policy set for the Mandatory Territory when England relenquished the Mandate, whcih had annoumced its intention to do earlier. The Partition was the means the United Nations decided on to carry out the directives of the Mandate, to establish in the Mandatory Territory a 'Jewish national home' while respecting the rights and desires of the other inhabitants of the place, once the power administering the Mandate ceased to do so.

The question of 'binding" you attempt to raise does not apply, because the Partition does not direct any state to anything; it is the direction of the United Nations for a territory that was its property, in essence. Sovereignty in the Mandatory Territories inhered to the League of Nations, not to the powers that received grants of authority to administer them from the League, and that soverign interest was transfered to the United Nations when it was erected on the collapsed remnants of the old League. Once the Palestine Mandate was relenquished by England, it ceased to exist in any form but the United Nations direction to Partition.

The 'intent' of the Geneva restrictions on an occupying power settling its citizens on territory it occupies is immaterial; the letter is clear enough, and would operate against all the items you cite, hypothetical or otherwise. From certain angles it may seem absurd, from others most unfair, but the application of law often is. The fact remains that the settlement program is illegal under international law, and is exactly the sort of thing the original enactment was aimed against, namely the colonization and annexation of occupied territory.