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Property is viewed as necessary to ensure survival and further a particular lifestyle, and a community's association with a particular territory is but an extension of this concern. The very passion with which it presses its claims suggests that difficult normative issues lurk nearby. It is one thing to ask who owns a particular parcel of land, another to inquire who has the right to reside within its boundaries, and yet another to determine who has political rights of sovereignty and self-determination in it.

The latter may take the form of nonconfrontational concealment, open advocacy of an autonomous cultural group within majority culture, emigration to more favorable locales and, finally, formation of a politically separate national unit through secession or relocation. The history of the Jews in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe illustrates the problem. Enlightenment and economic development had brought about a gradual emancipation of Jewish populations from previous ghettoization. But liberation was concurrent with rising nationalism in countries that had com- Page 4 monly excluded Jewish participation in the political arena.

Preparations for a Jewish state could now Page 17 proceed under British protection until such a time as a decisive Jewish majority was established. Through all this, the Palestinian Arabs had no hand in a decision that was to have a monumental impact on their future; they were not consulted, no plebiscite was ever held, and no approval from Palestinian representatives was ever secured. 15 Remarkably, the Mandate seemed at odds with Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, which dealt with newly liberated territories.