US President Donald Trump’s innate inability to empathise with others and lack of intelligence to foresee consequences are likely to hand Iran a long-term financial advantage and incidentally, but more importantly, threaten the treaty that has been the most productive of peace and prosperity in recent history – the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
The tit-for-tat breaches of the US-Iran 60-day ceasefire in the past few days certainly point that way. Let me explain.
Of 193 members of the UN, 44 are landlocked. The other 149 have coastlines linking each of their coastlines to the other 148 countries’ coastlines such that they can as a practical matter drive to those other nations by boat or ship with no natural barrier or no requirement to use easily blocked roads or railways.
The UN convention took eight years to negotiate in the 1970s. It was a triumph of diplomacy and law over the assertion of power and force. It resulted in one of the greatest trade-offs in history between powerful nations, on one hand, and less powerful nations, on the other.
In short, before the convention, powerful trading nations saw their economic interests in both the unfettered exploitation of the resources of the oceans and in having freedom of navigation across the oceans to help free trade, but ultimately they were willing to forgo the former in order to secure the latter.
The trade-off was enormous. Rich, powerful nations thought that freedom of navigation across the world’s oceans was so important for trade and hence prosperity that they were willing to grant poor and less powerful nations significant exclusive rights to their adjacent oceans in return for that freedom.
The question posed by the negotiators was how to achieve peace and greater prosperity. The answer was negotiation and compromise.
Each nation, even the militarily and economically weak, got the exclusive rights to all the ocean’s resources, particularly fishing and mining, up to 200 nautical miles from their shore and the total sovereign rights of territorial waters up to 12 nautical miles from their shore.
In return vessels from any nation, especially militarily strong and rich trading nations could sail anywhere on the oceans, but if they came within 12 nautical miles of another nation’s shores they had to inform that nation of their passage, and make their passage expeditious – no more lingering with menace close to other nations’ shores (gunboat diplomacy).
The arrangement facilitated trade and made the passage of warships less threatening. Good all round.
Before that, the three-nautical-mile limit was the general unwritten rule. Within that limit, nation states could do whatever they liked with their ocean and beyond that foreign vessels could do whatever they liked – from fishing to playing wargames.
Three nautical miles was of practical importance. In the nineteenth century that was the limit of a cannon shot. It meant that a ship outside that limit could not hit land and that land-based artillery could not hit a ship.
But It also meant that the nations either side of major choke points in world navigational routes – especially Gibraltar, Malacca and Hormuz – which did not have at least a little strip of international waters in the middle had to permit free passage of all vessels.
The latest US-Iran talks and spats over Hormuz, now puts this arrangement in jeopardy. At its narrowest Hormuz is less that 24 nautical miles wide. It means that the territorial waters of Iran to the north and Oman to the south overlap in the middle. It means any ship travelling through has to identify itself to either Iran or Oman and travel expeditiously, or it could be prevented from passage.
Under the ceasefire agreement Iran agreed to allow free passage, but the agreement was vaguely worded. Vessels seeking passage opted to travel as close to the Omani side as possible. Iran read that as a breach of the ceasefire and fired on those vessels. The US retaliated by hitting Iranian targets on the coastline.
It is clear that Iran wants to come to some arrangement with Oman to charge vessels fees in the future in return for passage rather than allowing Oman to let its side of the Strait be used for free safe passage. Whether those fees are characterised as fees for services or a toll, they will still be contrary to the convention. And once one nation starts, others will surely follow.
With drones and rockets we now have the reverse of the 19th century position. Instead of a nation worrying about ship-based weapons firing on its land, ships now have to worry about land-based weapons firing upon ships.
It puts Iran in the box seat. With that threat in place Iran can insist on payment of a fee before guaranteeing safe passage. Iran can just use the insurance system to enforce payment. Without insurance no ship-owner will transit, and without guarantee of safe passage no insurer will grant insurance to a vessel.
All very foreseeable. But it would require thinking in a way that strategists usually think – asking the question: what would I do if I were in the enemy’s position? How would I react if I were the enemy? But Trump is incapable of viewing anything from any perspective but his own.
Arguably, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea has done more in the past 40 years to prevent hostilities and to create the certainty for shipping that generates trade and prosperity than all the force and threat of force that any single nation can muster.
But Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have always preferred force to negotiation.
From the start, they asked the wrong question and got the wrong answer. Netanyahu, facing an election this October, asked how could he stay in power after the Hamas-inspired attack on Israel in October 2023 so he does not have to face questions about how he allowed such a lapse of security? Trump asked, having torn up the well-negotiated Obama deal with Iran to prevent its acquisition of nuclear weapons, how can he ensure Iran does not get those weapons.
The wrong answer they got was: war. In Netanyahu’s case it was genocidal war. If only they chose negotiation and the rule of law rather than force, the world would not be facing an even stronger Iran and an indefinite economic threat to the world that its stranglehold over Hormuz now gives it.
If the world had insisted that Israel follow the 1947 UN resolution that called for the termination of the British Mandate and the partition of historic Palestine into independent, democratic Arab and Jewish states with guaranteed rights for all citizens, there would now be peace in the Middle East.
Trump has always preferred force and the threat of force over the rule of law – domestically and internationally. What he does at home is for the Americans to worry about. After all, they voted him into office. But there is little or no redress for those affected by what he does in the world – usually foolishly and impetuously.
That is why Australia should use whatever tools it has to steer international affairs towards the rule of law and negotiation and away from the use of force.
Crispin Hull
This article first appeared in The Canberra Times and other Australian media on 30 June 2026.
Reply to Jack Frisch
Thank you for sharing such a candid and deeply felt perspective. It is entirely understandable to feel appalled by modern political strategies while simultaneously recognizing the profound historical trauma of the 1930s and 40s.
When European doors were closed and the Holocaust was unfolding, the desperation for a safe haven was an absolute existential necessity for the Jewish people. From that viewpoint, the UN Partition Plan was a vital lifeline, making its official acceptance by Jewish leadership a logical step toward survival.
At the same time, looking at history through a wider lens—such as the documentation in Al Nakba—helps explain why the Arab population felt fundamentally wronged. To them, a distant international body was dividing a land where they formed the two-thirds majority, granting 55% of it to a newly arrived population.
This grievance went back decades; the legal framework of the 1920s was far from a level playing field. When we look at the “rules” of that era, they were established under the British Mandate’s first High Commissioner, Sir Herbert Samuel, who was himself a dedicated Zionist. The legal structures of the 1920s were explicitly designed to facilitate Jewish immigration, while Palestinian attempts to democratically oppose these changes were systematically and often violently suppressed by the British military. It is understandable why the Jewish leadership accepted “the rules” of the 1920s, as those rules were actively supporting their aspirations—but for the Arab majority, those same rules represented a total denial of their self-determination.
Furthermore, looking at groups from that era like Avraham Stern’s Lehi reminds us that there were radical factions on both sides who opposed compromise entirely. Ultimately, it seems the tragedy of 1947 was a clash of two competing, deeply felt rights: one side fighting for existential survival after centuries of persecution, and the other fighting for democratic self-determination on their native soil. Acknowledging both traumas might be the only way forward.
Crispin. I hope you correct. I am a Jew appalled at Netanyahu’s behaviour and strategic decisions for many years. But I am also appalled at the Arab rejection of Jewish migration, both before and particularly after World War II.
The account I gave reflects the broad consensus among historians and is supported by both primary documents and major scholarly works. Here are some of the principal sources.
Primary sources
* United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine (29 November 1947). This is the original UN resolution recommending partition into Jewish and Arab states with an international regime for Jerusalem.
* The official records of the United Nations General Assembly debates and vote on Resolution 181.
* Statements issued in 1947 by the Jewish Agency accepting the plan as the basis for a Jewish state.
* Statements by the Arab Higher Committee and the Arab League rejecting the plan.
Leading historical works
These are regarded as authoritative across the field, even though the authors sometimes disagree on interpretation.
* 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War by Benny Morris (2008). Morris concludes that the Jewish leadership accepted partition while the Arab leadership rejected it, while explaining the reasons for both decisions.
* The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited by Benny Morris (2004).
* Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881–2001 by Benny Morris.
* A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict by Mark Tessler. This is widely used as a university textbook and presents both Israeli and Palestinian perspectives.
* The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood by Rashid Khalidi. Khalidi, writing from a Palestinian perspective, also states that the Palestinian Arab leadership rejected the UN partition proposal, while arguing that they had understandable reasons for doing so.
* The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948 edited by Eugene Rogan and Avi Shlaim. Contributors disagree on many issues but not on the basic fact that the Jewish Agency accepted and the Arab leadership rejected Resolution 181.
Academic consensus
There is very little disagreement among professional historians about the basic chronology:
* The UN recommended partition in Resolution 181.
* The Jewish Agency formally accepted it as the basis for statehood.
* The Arab Higher Committee rejected it.
* The Arab League governments rejected it and opposed implementation.
Where historians differ is why each side acted as it did, whether partition was fair, whether it could realistically have succeeded, and how responsibility for the subsequent war should be apportioned.
If you’re interested in a balanced treatment that presents both Israeli and Palestinian interpretations, I would particularly recommend Mark Tessler’s A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. It is one of the most even-handed scholarly surveys available.
My qustion to Chat GPT: Was it Israel or the Arab states that did not accept the UN resolution calling for the partition of historical Palestine into independent Arab and Jewish states?
The short answer is: the Jewish leadership accepted the UN partition plan (with reservations), while the Arab leadership rejected it.
Specifically:
* On 29 November 1947, the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine recommended that the territory of the British Mandate for Palestine be divided into:
* an independent Jewish state,
* an independent Arab state, and
* an internationally administered Jerusalem.
* The Jewish Agency, representing most of the Jewish community (the Yishuv) in Palestine, accepted the plan as the basis for creating a Jewish state, despite dissatisfaction with some aspects of the proposed borders and the exclusion of Jerusalem.
* The Arab Higher Committee, representing Palestinian Arabs, rejected the plan.
* The governments of the Arab League member states—including Egypt, Transjordan (later Jordan), Syria, Lebanon and Iraq—also rejected the partition plan.
Why did the Arab side reject it?
The main reasons included:
* Arabs constituted roughly two-thirds of Palestine’s population at the time and argued that partition violated the principle of majority rule.
* The proposed Jewish state would receive about 55% of the land, although Jews comprised about one-third of the population and owned a much smaller proportion of the land privately.
* Many Arab leaders regarded the plan as unfair because it granted sovereignty to a recently established immigrant community over territory they considered overwhelmingly Arab.
Why did the Jewish side accept it?
Jewish leaders viewed the proposal as:
* international recognition of Jewish statehood,
* a practical compromise after decades of conflict,
* a basis for future development, even though many believed the borders were difficult to defend and regretted the loss of Jerusalem.
What happened next?
After the UN vote:
* Fighting between Jewish and Arab communities in Palestine began almost immediately, marking the civil war phase of the conflict.
* When the End of the British Mandate for Palestine occurred and Israel declared independence on 14 May 1948, armies from several neighboring Arab states entered Palestine, leading to the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.
Historical nuance
While it is accurate to say that the Arab side rejected Resolution 181 and the Jewish side accepted it, historians also note that:
* acceptance by the Jewish leadership did not mean they were satisfied with every aspect of the plan;
* rejection by the Arab leadership stemmed from a belief that the UN lacked the legitimacy to partition the country against the wishes of its Arab majority.
Thus, the statement that “Israel accepted the UN partition plan while the Arab states and Palestinian Arab leadership rejected it” is historically correct, provided one also acknowledges the reasons each side gave for its position.