- Israeli authorities typically have advanced two excuses
for the devastation being wrought on the Palestinians in Gaza: First,
say the Israelis, Palestinian rockets into the areas of Sderot and Ashkelon
are acts of war and must be stopped. Second, Hamas leadership in Gaza
does not recognize Israel's "right to exist". The Palestinians
are frustrated because they have been pushed out of their homeland for
more than sixty years, they have been imprisoned in Gaza for nearly two
years; they have been confined, selectively assassinated and starved by
the Israeli blockade around them; they have been denied any meaningful
negotiation with the Israelis, and they are now being killed by the hundreds
and wounded by the thousands. Those abuses of an occupying power well
account for the continued launch of rockets into Israeli spaces. But
what is the significance of the Israeli insistence that the Palestinians
"recognize the existence of Israel"?
-
- First of all, the Israelis do not seek recognition in
the usual diplomatic sense. Diplomatic recognition is a well-established
process of individual states accepting a state into the family of nations.
It is usually done through a credentialing process between states. It
means the government of the entity seeking recognition is accepted as
representing an internationally accepted legal entity called a state.
That state, in turn, has fixed or established boundaries, a population
that accepts the territory and leadership as their own, and a government
that accepts and adheres to the rules of the international community.
-
- There are three common forms of recognition. One form
is "de facto", meaning the existence of the new state is factually
acknowledged by one or more existing member state. The US recognized
Israel in this manner in 1948. The second form is "de Jure",
meaning the new state is recognized in law or in principle by other individual
states. While Israel's existence was not yet even a matter of record,
Russia jumped the gun and recognized Israel de jure shortly after the
US recognition. The third form is simply recognition by the international
community of the existence of the entity as a state. Israel has experienced
some of each, but the issue on the table is what Palestine must do.
-
- Recognition concerns itself in part with the integrity
of the entity being recognized. This brings up matters such as defined
borders and lands as well as mutuality of relations between the parties.
In that respect the Israeli boundary issue has been a confused mess, perhaps
deliberately. For starters, Lord Balfour made no mention of boundaries
in his famous October 1917 letter to the Zionist Federation. He said simply:
the British government "view with favour the establishment in Palestine
of a national home for the Jewish people" with the understanding
that "nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious
rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights
and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country." Note
Lord Balfour's letter committed the British government to the actions
of the private Zionist Federation toward establishing a new state. Note
also that he assumed that the Jewish arrivals would move in among the
existing residents of Palestine. There is no record that any of the Arab
communities were informed of or consulted about this letter before it
was issued. Israel's right to exist hangs from this thread
-
- The next chapter concerning recognition followed creation
of the United Nations organization at the end of World War II. Already
into the early stages of Jewish colonization, friction was increasing
between Palestine residents and newly-arrived Jewish immigrants, and the
UN General Assembly voted in 1947 to partition Palestine into two separate
parts, one for the incoming Jews, the other for existing residents. The
partition model was more an extant demographic chart than a map of the
territory (see below), and in any case the Partition decision assumed
that already resident populations would continue to live wherever they
were.
- Jerusalem was to be under UN management. . Note the
neat touch, however, of giving each about equal stretches of the Mediterranean
coastline and of the Egyptian border.
-
-
-
-
- (As provided in Wikipedia)
-
-
- In an Economist article titled "The Hundred Years'
War" (January 10 issue), the Arabs are blamed for the failure of
the partition scheme. However, it is not clear that the Palestinians
were even consulted before the UN partition plan was announced.
-
- Jewish leadership wanted no part of this, and David Ben
Gurion, Israel's first Prime Minister, rejected the concept out of hand.
-
- His basic position was that all of Palestine (boundaries
still not defined) belonged by historic right to the Jewish people. Shortly
after the partition decision he began to organize the terrorist groups
and build the military capabilities that in 1947-49 would commence the
ethnic cleansing of Palestine. This assault on the Palestinians, referred
to by them as the Nakba (day of the catastrophe), resulted in the expulsion
of 800,000 Palestinians from their homes, farms and villages into the
West Bank, Gaza and the outside world. It led to the takeover of the evacuated
territory by Jews, and virtual erasure of the Palestinian homes, villages
and farms.
-
- The central premise of "Israel's right to exist"
is the Ben Gurion conception of Israel. He took the position, generally
held by Zionists, that Palestine as a whole was the Jewish national home.
The concept does not allow for any boundaries short of all of Palestine.
His personal conception, as reported by people who knew him, encompassed
parts of Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, and it specifically included the southern
reaches of the Litani River in Lebanon and the lower Yarmuk River in Jordan.
The conquest of the West Bank territory in the 1967 war was, as seen
by the Israelis, a retrieval of lands that were considered part of historic
Palestine, therefore, part of Israel.
-
- The critical judgment to take on board here is that recognition
of Israel's right to exist is acceptance of several virtually indivisible
ideas at once. First is territorial, encompassing the whole of Palestine.
Second is acceptance of the Zionist tenet that all of Palestine belongs
by historic right to Israel. Third is acceptance that any diminution of
that conception will be totally at the will of the Jewish people, and
fourth is that Israel must be recognized as a Jewish state. Finally the
principle underlying all Israeli approaches to peace negotiations is that
they do not have to concede anything for these concessions. Recognition
of Israel's right to exist, with all that implies, is a pre-condition
to any serious discussion. It is non-negotiable.
-
- The next significant development on this issue occurred
during Oslo peace talks. That record of Israeli and Palestinian positions
on the recognition issue has been clear for at least 15 years. In September
1993, in the context of Oslo peace talks, the two sides exchanged letters
as follows:
-
- September 9, 1993
- Yitzhak Rabin
- Prime Minister of Israel
-
- Mr. Prime Minister,
- The signing of the Declaration of Principles marks a
new era...I would like to confirm the following PLO commitments: The PLO
recognizes the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security.
The PLO accepts United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338.
The PLO commits itself...to a peaceful resolution of the conflict between
the two sides and declares that all outstanding issues relating to permanent
status will be resolved through negotiations...the PLO renounces the use
of terrorism and other acts of violence and will assume responsibility
over all PLO elements and personnel in order to assure their compliance,
prevent violations and discipline violators...the PLO affirms that those
articles of the Palestinian Covenant which deny Israel's right to exist,
and the provisions of the Covenant which are inconsistent with the commitments
of this letter are now inoperative and no longer valid. Consequently,
the PLO undertakes to submit to the Palestinian National Council for formal
approval the necessary changes in regard to the Palestinian Covenant.
-
- Sincerely,
- Yasser Arafat.
-
- Yitzhak Rabin replied immediately in very careful language:
-
- September 9, 1993
- Yasser Arafat
- Chairman: The Palestine Liberation Organization.
-
- Mr. Chairman,
- In response to your letter of September 9, 1993, I wish
to confirm to you that, in light of the PLO commitments included in your
letter, the Government of Israel has decided to recognize the PLO as
the representative of the Palestinian people and commence negotiations
with the PLO within the Middle East peace process.
-
- Yitzhak Rabin.
- Prime Minister of Israel
-
- Yasser Arafat, as noted in the above letter to Rabin,
recognized Israel's right to exist, but narrowly "in peace and security".
His recognition did not involve the elaborate underpinnings described
above, and in citing UN resolutions 242 and 338, he certainly did not
contemplate Ben Gurion's expansive Israel boundaries. However, his recognition
of Israel was extended as a real concession in the heat of a negotiative
process that ultimately went nowhere.
-
- Undeterred by decades of failure, President Clinton tried
again in 2000. He closeted himself, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak
and Yasser Arafat in a session billed as Camp David II. Recognition per
se was not raised in these talks, but in the outcome it was clear that
the model of Israel as defined in the UN's 1947 boundaries of Palestine
was still being used by Barak to define Israel's outer limits.
-
- Barak made a proposal to Arafat that he had to know in
advance was unacceptable. In addition to refusing to meet Palestinian
requirements on such matters as the right of return, Jerusalem or the
Temple Mount, Barak proposed a future regime in which Palestine would
be surrounded and completely controlled (air, land and sea) by Israel.
Critics gave Arafat credit for this failure, but Barak, no doubt deliberately,
had made an offer so bizarre that he and Israeli leadership had to know
Arafat had no choice but to refuse.
-
- The Israelis have tried to hang on to Arafat's Oslo act
of recognition without making any concessions, and they have insisted
on it as a precondition to any negotiation with subsequent Palestinian
leaders. Hamas clearly takes the view that recognition is a concession
of value in negotiation and has so far refused to extend it.
-
- In reality, Israel's insistence on recognition of its
right to exist is a political ploy. Its purpose is to convince the rest
of the world that the Palestinians are not approaching the negotiation
process in good faith. For the Israelis, lack of recognition is a self-serving
bottleneck. It puts down the Palestinians as being uncooperative, paints
the Israelis as an injured party, and underscores the often recited Israeli
complaint that they have no one to negotiate with.
-
- Recognition is in effect a stall, because two parties
of equal stature and freedom could reach agreement quite easily. Israel
avoids that situation by refusing to recognize the people or the rights
of the Palestinians. As of now, Israel has stolen most of historic Palestine
from its people who were a mixture of Muslims, Christians, and Jews.
Ultimately, the recognition gambit, in the one-sided way the Zionists
pursue it, is Israel's sharpest tool for avoiding any serious negotiation
with the Palestinians or any facing up to the enormous debt Israelis owe
the Palestinians, past and present, for the lands on which they are building
the Jewish national home.
-
- Raising any Palestinian-friendly outcome from the ashes
of Gaza appears an unlikely prospect. Israel already has started squeezing
the territorial boundaries of Gaza, it says for security reasons. While
Hamas and the Arab states had pretty well settled on a possible two-state
solution based on Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 Green Line, no near term
deal appears feasible. Rather, the inevitable choices for the people in
the shrinking remnants of Palestine may be a future in Israeli-controlled
slave enclaves or a one state solution. Neither the International community
nor the Palestinians should or are likely to accept the slave enclaves.
- Thus, Ben Gurion could have his way, but in the form
of an un- partitioned historic Palestine that accommodates all of its people.
-
- ***********
-
- The writer is the author of the recently published work,
A World Less Safe, now available on Amazon, and he is a regular columnist
on rense.com. He is a retired Senior Foreign Service Officer of the US
Department of State whose overseas service included tours in Egypt, India,
Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and Brazil. His immediate pre-retirement positions
were as Chairman of the Department of International Studies of the National
War College and as Deputy Director of the State Office of Counter Terrorism
and Emergency Planning. He will welcome comment at
-
- wecanstopit@charter.net
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