Recognition, Sovereignty, and the Double Standard
Alan Dershowitz’s recent opinion in The Jerusalem Post argues that recognizing Palestinian statehood would reward terrorism and legitimize the October 7 massacre. He claims Palestinians have repeatedly refused offers of independence, making recognition both morally hazardous and strategically counterproductive.
These arguments rest on two flawed premises. First, Palestinians have never been offered genuine sovereignty. From the 1947 UN Partition Plan to the most recent proposals, every so-called “offer” left decisive powers—borders, airspace, security, and often Jerusalem—under Israeli control. By the standards of the Montevideo Convention, these were protectorates, not sovereign states. Second, the terrorism standard is selectively applied. When Israel declared independence in May 1948, the United States and the Soviet Union extended recognition within hours—despite active terrorism by Zionist paramilitaries: Haganah, Irgun, and Lehi. The Deir Yassin massacre had shocked global opinion just one month earlier. Four months after that recognition, Lehi assassinated UN Special Envoy Count Folke Bernadotte and French UN observer Colonel André Serot in Jerusalem. Throughout the Mandate period, Irgun and Lehi had bombed, assassinated, and kidnapped British officials, Arab civilians, fellow Jews, and UN personnel. In 1944, Lehi assassinated British Minister Lord Moyne and his driver in Cairo. The assassins were executed, but in 1975 their remains were repatriated to Israel and buried with state honors at Mount Herzl, the national cemetery. The man who organized the murder—Yitzhak Shamir—later became Prime Minister of Israel. Imagine the reaction if a Palestinian leader who had organized political assassinations became head of state today.
Recognition proceeded because strategic interests outweighed moral concerns about the terror groups that would be integrated into Israel’s new state structures. Today, recognition of Palestinian statehood is withheld because Hamas—which controls Gaza—has committed recent atrocities. By this logic, Hamas in Gaza apparently disqualifies the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank from sovereignty. This standard was never applied to Israel in 1948.
Recognition is a political act based on strategic interests, not moral purity. The refusal to recognize Palestinian statehood in the West Bank under PA control, while having recognized Israel despite its terrorist record in 1948, reflects political will, not legal principle. If recognition could proceed in 1948 despite the King David Hotel bombing, Deir Yassin, and the Bernadotte-Serot assassinations, it is inconsistent to argue in 2025 that the PA cannot be recognized because of Hamas’s crimes in Gaza. The real issue is not Palestinian refusal of past offers, but the absence of political will to grant what they have never actually been offered: genuine sovereignty.
