JERUSALEM, Israel – European and Israeli leaders gathered in San Remo, Italy over the weekend to commemorate the San Remo Conference, which paved the way for the birth of the modern State of Israel.
The San Remo Conference, held on April 25, 1920, was an international meeting held by the Allied powers who triumphed in World War I to divide the Middle Eastern lands they conquered. In San Remo – England, France, Italy, and Japan along with the United States as an observer – agreed on a resolution to divide the defeated Ottoman Empire into three mandates: Iraq, Syria, and Palestine.
France would oversee Syria while Iraq and Palestine fell under Great Britain. The resolution also included the Balfour Declaration written by England’s Lord Arthur Balfour in 1917, which called for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”
The resolution was adopted by the League of Nations and signed by 51 countries, cementing it in international law.
One English diplomat – Lord Geoge Curzon – called it Israel’s “Magna Carta” and Jewish communities around the world celebrated it as an important milestone that set the stage for the creation of the modern State of Israel in 1948.
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Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann, who attended the conference and later became Israel’s first president, called San Remo “the most momentous political event in the history of our Zionist movement and, it is perhaps no exaggeration to say, the whole history of our people since the Exile.”
The European Coalition for Israel, a pro-Israel NGO, held a three-day festival over the weekend in San Remo to honor the resolution.
There, Israeli and European leaders applauded the historic resolution and discussed ways to educate the world about its significance. Participants included Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Israel’s ambassador to Italy, Vice-President of the European Commission Margaritis Schinas and others.
Attendees visited the historic Villa Devachan where the San Remo Resolution was signed. The mayor of San Remo, Alberto Biancheri, discussed a proposal to transform the villa into an educational center to study the historic conference.
Organizers also presented a commemorative plaque to the 5th Earl of Balfour whose great-great uncle was the chief architect of the historical document which called for the creation of a Jewish homeland in the British mandate for Palestine.
The festival coincided with Passover, a holiday where Jews retell the biblical story of how God brought them out of Egypt. Organizers of the festival in San Remo said the story of the San Remo resolution must also be retold “time and time again.”
“What happened in San Remo in 1920 can be compared to what happened on Mount Horeb, where the Jewish people received the Torah and were born as a people group before they entered the promised land. In a similar way, San Remo was a Mount Horeb experience where the Jewish people were given a national home in Palestine although for most Jews this citizenship was virtual until the modern State of Israel became a reality in 1948,” said host Gregory Lafitte.
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