Steven E. Zipperstein ("Steve Zipperstein") is an attorney, and a lecturer in history at University of California, Santa Barbara. He is also a Senior Fellow at the UCLA Center for Middle East Development, and a visiting professor at the Tel Aviv University Law School. He is the author of several books and other publications on the legal status of Palestine and Jerusalem. [1]
He received a B.A. in political science at the University of California at Los Angeles in 1979, and J.D. from the University of California at Davis in 1983. [2]
He was initially a prosecutor in the United States Attorney's office in Los Angeles, and then Chief Legal Officer for Verizon Wireless from 2003 to 2011, and subsequently Chief Legal Officer for Blackberry Ltd. [2]
In 2020 Zipperstein published a newly discovered document in which Mohammed Ali Tewfik, Regent of Egypt during the minority of Farouk of Egypt, responded to the 1929 Palestine riots at Jerusalem's Western Wall by proposing that "instead of fighting or dealing unjustly by one party or the other, it would be infinitely better to come to an understanding. The Mohametans may be willing to accept a sum of money which would help them to do good for the community and as the Jews are rich, if this thing (the Wailing Wall) is so much desired by them, there seems no reason why they should not pay for it. If this could be done, it would avoid coercion and possibly injustice to one or other of the parties... Let them give £100,000 and I feel sure this would settle the difference." [3]
Israel, also known as the Holy Land or Palestine, is the birthplace of the Jewish people, the place where the final form of the Hebrew Bible is thought to have been compiled, and the birthplace of Judaism and Christianity. In the course of history, the region has come under the sway of various empires and, as a result, has historically hosted a wide variety of ethnic groups. Today it contains sites that are sacred to many Abrahamic religions, including Judaism, Samaritanism, Christianity, Islam, Druzism, and the Baháʼí Faith.
Jerusalem is a city in Western Asia. Situated on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea, it is one of the oldest cities in the world and is considered to be a holy city for the three major Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Both Israelis and Palestinians claim Jerusalem as their capital, as Israel maintains its primary governmental institutions there and the State of Palestine ultimately foresees it as its seat of power. Because of this dispute, neither claim is widely recognized internationally.
The 1948Arab–Israeli War was the second and final stage of the 1948 Palestine war. It formally began following the end of the British Mandate for Palestine at midnight on 14 May 1948; the Israeli Declaration of Independence had been issued earlier that day, and a military coalition of Arab states entered the territory of British Palestine in the morning of 15 May.
The Western Wall, known in the West as the Wailing Wall, and in Islam as the Buraq Wall, is an ancient limestone wall in the Old City of Jerusalem. It is a relatively small segment of a far longer ancient retaining wall, known also in its entirety as the "Western Wall". The wall was originally erected as part of the expansion of the Second Jewish Temple begun by Herod the Great, which resulted in the encasement of the natural, steep hill known to Jews and Christians as the Temple Mount, in a huge rectangular structure topped by a flat platform, thus creating more space for the Temple itself, its auxiliary buildings, and crowds of worshipers and visitors.
The United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine was a proposal by the United Nations, which recommended a partition of Mandatory Palestine at the end of the British Mandate. On 29 November 1947, the UN General Assembly adopted the Plan as Resolution 181 (II).
Mohammed Amin al-Husseini was a Palestinian Arab nationalist and Muslim leader in Mandatory Palestine.
Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg, primarily known by his Hebrew name and pen name Ahad Ha'am, was a Hebrew essayist, and one of the foremost pre-state Zionist thinkers. He is known as the founder of cultural Zionism. With his secular vision of a Jewish "spiritual center" in Israel, he confronted Theodor Herzl. Unlike Herzl, the founder of political Zionism, Ha'am strived for "a Jewish state and not merely a state of Jews".
The 1920 Nebi Musa riots or 1920 Jerusalem riots took place in British-controlled part of Occupied Enemy Territory Administration between Sunday, 4 and Wednesday, 7 April 1920 in and around the Old City of Jerusalem. Five Jews and four Arabs were killed, and several hundred were injured. The riots coincided with and are named after the Nebi Musa festival, which took place every year on Easter Sunday, and followed rising tensions in Arab-Jewish relations. The events came shortly after the Battle of Tel Hai and the increasing pressure on Arab nationalists in Syria in the course of the Franco-Syrian War.
The Jordanian annexation of the West Bank formally occurred on 24 April 1950, after the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, during which Transjordan occupied territory that had previously been part of Mandatory Palestine and had been earmarked by the UN General Assembly Resolution 181 of 29 November 1947 for an independent Arab state to be established there alongside a Jewish state mainly to its west. During the war, Jordan's Arab Legion took control of territory on the western side of the Jordan River, including the cities of Jericho, Bethlehem, Hebron, Nablus and eastern Jerusalem, including the Old City. Following the end of hostilities, the area that remained under Jordanian control became known as the West Bank.
The International law bearing on issues of Arab–Israeli conflict, which became a major arena of regional and international tension since the birth of Israel in 1948, resulting in several disputes between a number of Arab countries and Israel.
Aref al-Aref, variously spelled as Arif el Arif, 'Arif el-'Arif, etc., was a Palestinian journalist, historian and politician. He served as mayor of East Jerusalem in the 1950s during the Jordanian annexation of the West Bank.
Norman de Mattos Bentwich was a British barrister and legal academic. He was the British-appointed attorney-general of Mandatory Palestine and a lifelong Zionist.
Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in Western Asia. It is situated on the southeastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea and the northern shore of the Red Sea, and shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the northeast, Jordan to the east, and Egypt to the southwest; it is also bordered by the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to the east and west, respectively. Tel Aviv is the economic and technological center of the country, while its seat of government is in its proclaimed capital of Jerusalem, although Israeli sovereignty over East Jerusalem is unrecognized internationally.
The history of Palestine is the study of the past in the region of Palestine, also known as the Land of Israel and the Holy Land, defined as the territory between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. Strategically situated between three continents, Palestine has a tumultuous history as a crossroads for religion, culture, commerce, and politics. Palestine is the birthplace of Judaism and Christianity, and has been controlled by many kingdoms and powers, including Ancient Egypt, Ancient Israel and Judah, the Persian Empire, Alexander the Great and his successors, the Hasmoneans, the Roman Empire, several Muslim Caliphates, and the Crusaders. In modern times, the area was ruled by the Ottoman Empire, then the United Kingdom and since 1948 it has been divided into Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Events in the year 1929 in the British Mandate of Palestine.
Mandatory Palestine was a geopolitical entity established between 1920 and 1948 in the region of Palestine under the terms of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine.
Tom Segev is an Israeli historian, author and journalist. He is associated with Israel's New Historians, a group challenging many of the country's traditional narratives.
The 1948 Palestine war was fought in the territory of Palestine under the British Mandate. It is known in Israel as the War of Independence and in Arabic as a central component of the Nakba. It is the first war of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the broader Arab–Israeli conflict. During this war, the British Empire withdrew from Mandatory Palestine, which had been part of the Ottoman Empire until 1917. The war culminated in the establishment of the State of Israel by the Jews of the Yishuv, and saw a complete demographic transformation of the territory the Jews occupied, with the displacement of around 700,000 Palestinian Arabs and the destruction of most of their urban areas. Many Palestinian Arabs ended up stateless, displaced either to the Palestinian territories captured by Egypt and Jordan or to the surrounding Arab states; many of them, as well as their descendants, remain stateless and in refugee camps.
Gad Frumkin was an Israeli jurist. He was one of the first trained attorneys in Palestine prior to Israeli independence and one of the few Jews who served as a judge on the Supreme Court of Mandatory Palestine.
The 1929 Palestine riots, Buraq Uprising or the Events of 1929, was a series of demonstrations and riots in late August 1929 in which a longstanding dispute between Muslims and Jews over access to the Western Wall in Jerusalem escalated into violence.
