Palestinian Self-Determination vs Statehood

On July 28^th, Saudi Arabia and France began a conference of world leaders to solicit global recognition for a “State of Palestine.” They hope the sovereign status will justify a follow-up meeting in September, when the attendees may adopt a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Sadly, the diplomatic plan is doomed to fail.

After the 1967 Six-Day War, Palestinians violently asserted a right of self-determination to establish a state of their own. Scholars debate which categories of “people” deserve self-determination and how the distinction may be exercised. Nevertheless, Israel granted the Palestinians interim self-determination under Israeli military administration via the Israeli-Palestinian Oslo Accords of the 1990’s. The concession did nothing to promote peace. Palestinians exploited the opportunity to intensify their terrorism. They killed more Israelis in the ten years after the start of the Accords than in the decade before.

Palestinian self-determination is not a ticket to statehood. It is only a mutually-agreed framework of autonomy. Many societies practice self-determination without legal entitlement to a state. Examples include the Quebecois, the Kurds, the Catalans, the Basques, the Baluchis, and the Scots.

In the Oslo Accords, the Palestinians agreed to pursue any greater political independence through direct negotiation with Israel. Thus, they cannot validly acquire statehood through backchannels such as the Saudi-French recognition scheme.

Regardless of the Accords, sovereign recognition has already failed to engender a Palestinian state. After “Palestine” declared independence in 1988, it received recognition from 147 existing states. But in practice nothing changed. The political goodwill could not create a genuine state as defined by the 1933 Montevideo Convention. To this day, the imagined Palestine cannot demonstrate Montevideo criteria such as a permanent population, a defined territory, or even a unitary government.

A State of Palestine recognized anywhere in Israel proper, Gaza, or Judea and Samaria without Israel’s consent would violate Israel’s sovereign rights to those territories. All three expanses were allocated by the 1920 San Remo Treaty and the 1922 British Mandate for Palestine for the state that became Israel. So far, Israel has refrained from applying its civil law to Gaza or Judea and Samaria. It wearily awaits a Palestinian leader willing to negotiate terms of lasting peace.

Palestinian statehood would additionally undermine the world’s anti-terrorism laws. Those dictates require states to punish belligerent factions such as the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas, not empower them with sovereignty. The PA bankrolls a generous Martyrs Fund, which incentivizes Palestinians to murder Israelis. Hamas’ founding charter more bluntly vows to annihilate the Jews.

If the desired Palestine resembles today’s Palestinian society, it would violate human rights conventions by depriving Jews of basic human rights. Jews are excluded from life in the Palestinian-controlled areas. Jewish travelers who mistakenly wander into those environs may be taken hostage or killed. When Jews pray at Joseph’s Tomb near the Palestinian-held town of Nablus, they need armed guards to protect against Palestinian gunmen and firebombers.

The rise of statehood may also embolden Palestinian leaders to stiffen the oppression of their own people. In Palestinian-controlled areas, there is no right to vote. Political dissent meets with violent retribution. And Christian Arab communities are depopulated, primarily due to Islamist intolerance.

To avoid committing the above offenses, Palestinians could form a state outside Israel’s sovereign domain. Common ancestries bind Palestinians to other Arabs throughout Israel’s neighboring states. Before World War I, the inhabitants of present-day Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Israel proper, Gaza, and Judea and Samaria were subjects of the Ottoman Empire. Gaza’s population meanwhile swelled from centuries of Egyptian immigration. Despite the 1922 Mandate for Palestine, local Arabs identified as southern Syrians. They rejected Palestinian nationalism as a European implantation. From 1950 to 1988, the Arabs of Judea and Samaria were citizens of Jordan. Today, Jordan is majority-Palestinian, while Lebanon and Syria feature large communities of stateless Palestinians.

These Arab countries not only share deep ethno-national roots with Palestinians but own vastly more terrain than Israel to accommodate a Palestinian state. They could appropriate the needed space with no impediments of international law.

If Palestinians want to graduate from self-determination to statehood, they have two legally viable options. They could negotiate with Israel or coordinate with their brethren in the nearby lands.