How a forgotten treaty could weaponize Israel’s defense against a hostile Washington

With U.S. congressional efforts to sanction Israeli activity in Judea and Samaria gaining traction, a century-old treaty could provide Israel with a powerful weapon to fight back.

By Jonathan Pollard

For a century, Washington has forgotten its own signatures. When the United States signed the 1924 Anglo-American Convention, it legally greenlit the eternal right of Jewish settlement from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea — a historical truth that a modern, hostile Congress is about to run into at full speed.

The shifting political winds in Washington, accelerated by the upcoming midterms, have brought an issue to the forefront that once seemed politically unthinkable: the potential for sweeping congressional sanctions targeting Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria.

Propelled by a notable shift within the Democratic Party, lawmakers are increasingly testing bills — such as the Stop the Settlements Act or measures targeting the strategic E1 project — that seek to ban settlement goods and penalize individuals or entities facilitating Israeli development in these territories.

Should Democrats secure control of both the House and the Senate, what was once a fringe legislative agenda could quickly become official policy, forcing a profound recalibration of both U.S. federal-state dynamics and Israeli counter-strategies.

The Forgotten Treaty at the Center of Israel’s Defense

To stop playing defense against this legislative onslaught, Israel’s most potent weapon may lie in a long-overdue declaration of sovereignty grounded in the 1924 Anglo-American Convention.

By ratifying this treaty, the United States formally consented to the League of Nations Mandate, which explicitly codified the right of “close settlement by Jews on the land” — including modern-day Area C.

Because ratified treaties constitute the Supreme Law of the Land under the U.S. Constitution, a sovereignty declaration based on this century-old pact effectively exposes congressional trade bans as fundamentally illegal under America’s own domestic and international legal obligations.

By utilizing the 1924 framework as a shield, Israel transforms the debate from a political dispute into a treaty-enforcement battle, providing a friendly U.S. President with the perfect constitutional pretext to exercise executive leeway and decline to enforce discriminatory congressional mandates altogether.

Why the 1948 Treaty Termination May Not Matter

Critics will naturally counter this defense by pointing out that the U.S. State Department’s 1939 internal interpretation concluded the treaty did not give Washington the power to prevent Britain from modifying the Mandate’s rules, while official U.S. treaty logs explicitly list the 1924 Convention as “Terminated May 14 to 15, 1948.”

Yet, viewing these historical facts as fatal blows misunderstands how international law treats inherited territorial rights and treaty exit clauses.

Under the globally recognized principle of acquired legal rights — specifically codified in Article 70(1)(b) of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, the formal termination of a treaty does not retroactively erase or affect any right, obligation, or legal situation created through the execution of the treaty prior to its termination.

In international law, territorial regimes and objective legal statuses established by a treaty create a permanent reality on the ground that survives the death of the instrument itself.

The Vienna Convention and Case for Continuing Rights

Furthermore, the State Department’s 1939 memo was an assessment of the executive’s inability to police British policy, not a declaration that the foundational rights of Jewish settlement were invalid.

By activating the 1924 treaty framework today, Israel is not trying to resurrect a dead administrative pact; rather, it is utilizing the Vienna Convention’s framework on treaty continuity to remind Washington that the U.S. formally consented to a permanent territorial blueprint for the Jewish National Home.

Because a friendly or moderate U.S. President possesses vast constitutional leeway over foreign commerce, these deep historical underpinnings offer the executive branch the ultimate political armor.

The President can argue that even if the 1924 treaty is technically archived, the structural rights and geographic statuses it legally sanctified survive — giving the White House a robust, internationally recognized pretext to refuse to enforce aggressive congressional trade bans targeting Judea and Samaria.

America’s Anti-BDS Laws Create Another Battlefield

This legal maneuvering would immediately run into a formidable domestic barrier: state-level anti-BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) legislation.

Over 35 U.S. states have enacted laws that prohibit state agencies from contracting with, or investing public funds in, entities that boycott Israel. Crucially, many of these state statutes explicitly define Israel to include the territories it administers, effectively treating Area C as part of the nation’s economic fabric.

If Congress passes a federal ban on settlement goods, a constitutional showdown would emerge. Under the Supremacy Clause, federal law generally trumps state law regarding foreign commerce.

However, because federal anti-boycott laws historically grant the president significant leeway in enforcement, an administration sympathetic to Israel could exploit these ambiguities to respect state-level economic protections.

Israel’s Options for Responding to U.S. Sanctions

For Jerusalem, responding to a hostile Congress requires a delicate diplomatic balance. If the sitting U.S. President remains generally supportive or seeks to mitigate the impact of congressional overreach, Israel cannot afford direct retaliatory measures against American interests without risking a vital strategic alliance.

Consequently, Israel’s retaliatory options must bypass Washington entirely and focus heavily on altering realities on the ground and shifting the costs onto the Palestinian Authority (PA).

If federal sanctions choke Israeli operations in Area C, Jerusalem could counter by targeting the PA’s financial and diplomatic viability, particularly in light of its ongoing “pay-for-slay” martyr fund policies. Israel could permanently freeze the clearance revenues it collects on behalf of the PA, choking its operating budget.

Furthermore, by severing or severely restricting correspondence between Israeli banks and Palestinian financial institutions, Israel could effectively crash the PA’s banking system.

On the diplomatic front, Israel could revoke the visas and credentials of foreign representatives operating missions in Ramallah, signaling that unilateral diplomatic maneuvers carry severe operational costs.

Changing the Reality on the Ground

Rather than reacting defensively to trade restrictions, Israel must fundamentally rewrite the internal landscape of the territories by completely dismantling the obsolete Ottoman-era land tenure systems that have paralyzed the region’s development for over a century.

For decades, Israeli land administration has been choked by an archaic web of Ottoman categories, specifically miri (unregistered agricultural land) and mewat (“dead” or uncultivated parcels).

Under these antiquated rules, any disruption in cultivation or lack of ancient paperwork creates massive legal vulnerabilities, inviting fraudulent property claims that stall the growth of Jewish communities.

By formally repealing these imperial relics, Israel can replace them with a modernized state-driven registration system. This bureaucratic overhaul would permanently eliminate the historical legal loopholes used to contest land titles, paving the way for streamlined, unimpeded expansion of Jewish settlements across the strategic heart of Area C.

Concurrently, Jerusalem could accelerate the dismantling of unauthorized Arab construction in Area C alongside localized crackdowns on recalcitrant villages deemed centers of regional instability.

Fast-tracking large-scale Jewish housing projects in strategic corridors would solidify Israel’s physical footprint, creating an irreversible reality on the ground regardless of external economic pressure.

The Most Controversial Countermeasure

Finally, a highly controversial yet frequently discussed asymmetric countermeasure involves changing the status of foreign nationals operating within the territories.

Legal analysts and policymakers have floated the immediate expulsion of Palestinian-American dual nationals residing in Judea and Samaria. While this move would severely test relations with Washington, proponents view it as a high-stakes leverage point to demonstrate that punitive economic actions from Capitol Hill will directly impact American citizens living abroad.

Ultimately, a Democrat-controlled Congress attempting to impose trade restrictions will find that economic warfare is a two-way street. Israel cannot afford to wait on the defensive, paralyzed by the threat of American legislative overreach.

By invoking the structural permanence of the 1924 treaty, mobilizing state-level anti-BDS defenses, and executing a ruthless legal and economic dismantling of the Palestinian Authority on the ground, Jerusalem can neutralize foreign coercion before it takes root.

Israel must act decisively. Washington must be shown that any attempt to economically isolate Judea and Samaria will not force a retreat, but will instead trigger the immediate termination of the PA, the permanent eradication of Ottoman-era obstacles, and the irreversible assertion of Israeli sovereignty over Area C.

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