This article considers two arguments raised by the Government of Israel to explain why it does not regard the West Bank as occupied territory and may therefore establish Israeli settlements there. The first is that this territory was not the sovereign territory of another state when occupied by Israel in June 1967; the second is that the trust created by the League of Nations Mandate over Palestine still applies in those parts of Mandatory Palestine that did not become the sovereign territory of another state in 1948. After a short introduction, the article argues that in the modern area, in which peoples have the right to self-determination, the law of belligerent occupation may apply in territory that was not the territory of a state before it was occupied. Relying on a large body of historical research, the article then shows that the mandate system was a compromise between the colonial aspirations of Britain and France and the principle of self-determination propagated by US President Woodrow Wilson. The Mandate did not give rights to Jews or the Jewish people. It merely obligated Britain to facilitate its commitment under the Balfour Declaration to create the conditions that ‘will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home’ in Palestine. This obligation, and its parallel right, ended with the termination of the Mandate and the establishment of the State of Israel, which was the ultimate realisation of a national home for the Jewish people in the land of Israel. Even if one were to accept the argument that the trust established by the Mandate continues to apply in the West Bank, in an era in which colonial ideas have been rejected, the conclusion is not that Jewish citizens of Israel have a right to settle there, but that the right of the Palestinian inhabitants of that area to self-determination should be respected.