Recognizing Palestine as a State: Meaningful Farce feat. Dana El Kurd

attempt against Tamas leadership. They bombed in a residential area in the middle of the city, surrounded by nursries, schools, businesses and you know people. I have a lot to say about Arab Israeli relations historically and what's happening on that front today and the sometimes shared interests of Arab regimes with the Israeli state. So stay tuned for a deep dive episode on that topic soon. Today I want to talk about the issue of Palestinian statehood. It's been

in the news quite a bit these days. A number of different countries have expressed a willingness to recognize Palestine as a state. In July, for example, France announced it would recognize Palestinian statehood, and it was soon joined by a number of other countries, Canada, Malta, Belgium, the UK. Kir Starmer, the Prime Minister of the UK, actually made it into an explicit threat. Basically, we will recognize the state of Palestine if the Israelis don't agree to a ceasefire.

I'd like to underscore the absurdity of that comment for a second, but we'll get back to that one. For all these countries, they say that they are recognizing Palestine as a state because they desire a two state solution. Their condition for recognizing Palestine as a state also includes Hamas being completely out of the picture quote demilitarized in

the language of French President Macron. As NPR reported back in August first, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Karney also said that the Palestinian authority needs to hold elections in this scenario, but one that excludes Hamas. So all of these recent announcements are coalescing around the same conditions. I guess the big deal here is that these are major powers, France and the UK, who have veto power in the UN

Security Council. For example. So the plan to recognize Palestinian statehood has gotten a lot of press and attention, But the thing is, one hundred and forty five countries already recognize Palestine as a state. Palestine was given observer status at the UN in twenty twelve, and the Palestinian authority has been working for quite some time to get more recognition internationally and to be able to use the international

legal system to advocate for themselves. So what does this recognition actually mean a state that is occupied entirely by another and is currently undergoing ethnic cleansing at different levels of severity in all parts of its territories. What state is actually being recognized here? What does statehood mean in the context of occupation ethnic cleansing. It might help to go back to the Osclocords that were as signed by the Palistine Liberation Organization the PLO, and the State of Israel.

This was the first time that Israel and the Palestinians agreed to something directly. A stipulation of the OSCLO Accords was mutual recognition, meaning Israel would recognize that the PLO was the representative of the Palestinian people, and the PLO would recognize Israel's right to exist. This was later criticized as uneven by Palstdian negotiators such as Hannan Ashtroi, because the PLO was already internationally recognized as the representative of

the Palestinian people. So her argument more recently has been they accepted Israel's control for getting recognition in return. The US ambassador to Israel at the time, Daniel Kurtzer, concurred with that assessment, saying to The New York Times that the OSCLO agreement was full of holes. The mutual recognition was asymmetrical, and that was to hurt the Palestinian negotiating

position for years to come. End quote. Nevertheless, the OSCLO Accords of nineteen ninety three are widely understood to be the attempt to bring about a two state solution of some kind, and it's been the framework that many international powers have paid lip service to ever since. By the way, September twenty twenty three marked the thirty year anniversary of the accords, we all know what happened October seventh, just a few days later. The thing is, the also framework

didn't say two states. The ASCO Accords just said that they would continue negotiations on some eventual final framework. Now Palestinians wanted a state, of course, and Israelis were committing to negotiations. So the Palestinians were told to start building up a sort of state, a quasi state, in parts of the occupied territories, to start governing themselves in particular ways,

and this was called the Palestinian National Authority. I talked about this at more length than the episode for it could happen here titled Palestine's Stolen Future, so if you're interested, you can listen to that one. The Alco Accords split the occupied territories into three parts A, B, and C, all of which remained under the Israeli occupation's control, but

still there were some differences between them. In Area A, which is less than twenty percent of the land, that's where a lot of the urban centers are, the palisten And Authority was allowed to function, build and run institutions of governance. So if you go to Romalo, for example, you'll see big buildings with palstin And Authority insignia. An Area B, the palsten And Authority had partial access, and an Area C, which is the majority of the territories.

The Palsten Authority was and continues to not be allowed to function, But the PA did use this as an opportunity to create the basis of a state, creating ministries, beginning of parliament, writing laws, and importantly creating security forces. Throughout all this, Israel maintained military control over the entire territory,

and Israeli settlements continued to expand. So what the Israeli has got out of the Also Accords was they got out of providing certain services and they let Palestinians do that for themselves, but they didn't actually seed meaningful control over any part of the territory. Now it's important to

pause here. An occupying force is obligated under international law to provide services to the population it occupies and to return the land to the sovereign the occupied people as soon as possible as The European Society of International Law notes quote the nineteen oh seven Hague Regulations, the nineteen forty nine Fourth Geneva Convention, and modern Body of international Human rights instruments contain a number of provisions which protect

the lives, property, natural resources, institutions, civil life, fundamental human rights and latent sovereignty of the people under occupation, while curbing the security powers of the occupying power to those genuinely required to safely administer the occupation end quote. And if the occupier occupies indefinitely, then it's not really an

occupation anymore, is it Again? As the European Society of International Law notes, the concept of prolonged occupation may well become illegal guise that masks a de facto colonial exercise and defeats the transient and exceptional nature which occupations are intended to be. End quote. But that is exactly what has continued before and after the ascol Cords. The ASCO Accords never ended, the occupation never gave back land to Palestinians.

Alla did is stripped the occupier of its responsibility under the guise of working towards a two state solution. And really, anybody who has looked at what has transpired honestly would say that there has always been a mismatch between what the Israelis wanted and we're willing to give and what the Palestinians wanted, even to the degree of what both sides meant when they said state has always been mismatched. So I'll explain what I mean. Palestinians have always wanted

a legitimate state. What does that mean. Well, a state has sovereignty, It has control over its own territory, it has the monopoly on the use of violence within its boundaries. That's the most basic definition of state sovereignty. Israel never intended for any of that. Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin, who signed the Oscil Accords, in his final address to the Kanesset before he was assassinated by a right wing Israeli clearly stated that what was on offer for the Palestinians

was something quote less than a state. Yitzak Rabin was in the Labor Party. But again, if people are being honest, this is a bipartisan position Israel. Israeli political leaders have at best offered something less than a state, and at worst offered surrender or annihilation. I'm not being hyperbolic here. Besides, Motrich of the Religious Zionist Party, who is now the Finance Minister, has for years actively promoted his quote decisive Plan,

which has become the policy of the state today. The plan proposes that one any Palestinian who is willing and able to relinquish the fulfillment of his national aspirations would be able to stay and live as an individual in the Jewish State, not as a citizen. And two, any Palestinian who is unwilling or unable to relinquish his national aspirations will receive assistance from them to immigrate to one

of the Arab countries. So essentially, what he's saying is Palestinians have to either give up and be a subject or leave, surrender, or transfer. The US as a supposed mediator and third party has not really straight from that. Sovereignty has always been approximated with self governance from the

United States perspective. Jared Kushner, for example, in his Peace to Prosperity plan, which was the lynchpin of Donald Trump's Israel Palestine proposer back in the first Trump administration, invokes the idea of sovereignty, only to insist that it should

no longer be the crux of negotiations. According to the Trump administration quote, the notion that sovereignty is a static and consistently defined term has been an unnecessary stumbling block in past negotiations, and this amorphous concept is best put aside to focus on pragmatic and operational concerns. Ironically, the liberal version of a two state solution espoused by every democratic administration essentially envisions the same endpoint, a Palestinian entity

demilitarized and subordinate to Israel's economic and security concerns. But Palestinians want a state. They want a state in the full meaning of the term, and that state has to be legitimate, not only internationally, but in the eyes of the Palestinian people. Political scientist Tanya Alberts argues that sovereignty is an identity of states. It's constituted by the norms of international society. States are recognized as sovereign if they

achieve self determination for a group of people. The fact that, on rare occasions, the international system has refused to recognize certain political entities as states, specifically because they had violated the right of self determination, highlights how we now think

of political authority. So, for example, the international community did not recognize Rhodesia as a state because it violated the self determination of the black majority in that country, even though white people in Rhodesia did exercise material control over that country. In other words, the state's right to sovereignty must flow from some sort of legitimacy. A state rules

because society approves. This doesn't mean that every sovereign state is democratic, but simply that states derive their status from the citizens buy in, and because the state claims to represent the will of maybe a certain ethnic or civic identity, it's understood as an executor of the law in act acted by the people who are sovereign. So sovereignty, then should also be understood as the ability of people who consider themselves of that place to exercise control over a

territory and have a say in its future. Populist movements, secessionist movements, and other movements that challenge a certain state sometimes claim popular sovereignty, legitimizing their assertions with reference to their historical legacy or continuity or indigenity, even in the absence of a representative state, and Palestinians are one such group. They've struggled not merely for the right to exist, but also for political control in state institutions that represent and

uphold their national identity. And the legitimacy of their sovereignty claim stems not only from their long ties to the territory, but also from the fact that they have long conceived themselves as a nation, a nation that has never ceded its demand for a sovereign state with the promise of subjugation, subsistence or integration into another state. So, to make this very clear, Palestinians want the state that is sovereign. They

certainly don't mean self governance. And Palestinians, after thirty years of OSLO that has only left them worse off, certainly don't want to go back to trying the same process again. So when these countries recognize Palestine as a state as a way of pretending to pressure for the two state solution, they're not saying anything about what happens to the territories that are currently being wiped out, like literally all of

Gaza and even parts of the West Bank. They're not saying anything about Israeli settlements, They're not saying anything about reparations. And because of that, some Palestinians have argued that these statehood recognition things are a cynical ploy to distract from the inaction of these countries on addressing the genocide in Gaza, basically pretending to act without actually doing any. Palestinian analyst Mahin Robani said this to NPR recently. Quote In the end,

simply recognizing Palestinian statehood is a low cost option. It may placate a domestic audience demanding action, while doing very little to actually change the situation on the ground end quote. Others have argued even further that not only are these declarations of recognition a cynical ploy to distract, but they may even be a sort of trap. Legal expert and professor nuraa At and international lawyer and professor Shadhamuri wrote for Jidelia on this, which I'll link in the show notes.

They argue effectively that the best thing to come out of this is a challenge maybe to the US. Quote. The greatest promise of this renewed statehood bid, the most recent push being in twenty eleven twenty twelve, is a united front to challenge US and transigent support for Israel end quote. However, they also point out that quote states do not need to recognize Palestine to end the occupation,

to end the genocide and advance Palestinian self determination. They argue that states quote need decisive will to impose arms and energy embargoes and trade with and investment in Israel unseated from the un hold Israeli war criminals and complicit corporations accountable in their national courts, and arrest Prime Minister Benjamin Nataniehu in compliance with the ICC's arrest warrant end quote.

So the bit for statehood doesn't solve problems. It only gives states the fig leaf to actually delay solving problems. On top of that, it risks empowering illegitimate and corrupt

Palestinian leadership in any future negotiations. I'm talking a leadership that includes Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas, who eighty percent of Palestinian's poll said they want him to resign, and an institution like the Palestinian Authority that only fifteen percent of Palestinians are satisfied with according to the latest polling as

at that hamurin note quote. The terms of the High Level International Conference for the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine, convened in New York, led by France and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia confirm these risks. The Palestinian Authority is glorified in at least seven clauses entrusted with governing the state, effectively paving the way for a police

state alongside a settler colonial entity end quote. None of the talk of recognizing Palestine amid all of these conditions and stipulations ever say anything about the power imbalance between the two parties or address the root causes of conflict. Now. On the other hand, political scientist Paul Post, writing for a World Politics Review, says, quote, recognition isn't just theater.

Recognition is a long standing legal institution that has the important function of identifying major actors in the international system. And for policymakers, recognition is the looseness in the rules that allows them to use recognition not only to identify actors, but also to express opinions about them or to secure concessions from them. So, from his perspective, these declarations of recognition are meaningful in some shape or form. Here's my take,

statehood recognition is not meaningless. In fact, it's probably dangerous in this current moment, because what it's trying to do is to cement the conflict in its place. These countries recognizing Palestine want to hurry the current Palestinian leadership into accepting a state and name only that is not sovereign. They want to force the Israelis to the table to do that, and they want these conditions to become the precedent for future negotiations. And we see signs of this

in other ways. For example, the international community and regional powers pressured Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbass into changing the rules of the PLO's internal governance in order to appoint a successor because they were afraid he was going to keel over, and he appointed a very unpopular figure named senranchech As, I wrote for The Guardian alongside palestiniancially an activist Pablo

of Abbufom in May of this year. Abbas also expanded the Central Council of the PLO and appointed friendly people to it. All of this shows that the international community, in pressuring the Pasteinian leadership in these directions, has no interest in democratic buy in, in actually getting the buy in of the Palestinian people, really thinking that a legitimate

negotiation would ever be sustainable under these circumstances. This state of affairs, these schemes where international powers try to ignore what the Palestinian people want yet again, is the reason Palestinians don't really have any hope in any solution. In

polling on Onesday Tuesday, et cetera. Forty seven percent prefer the two state solution based on the nineteen sixty seven borders, fifteen percent prefer confederation between the two states, and fourteen percent of Palestinians prefer the establishment of a single state with equality between the two sides. Twenty four percent of Palestinians polled said that they did not know or did

not want to answer. Also, when asked about the public's support or opposition to specific political measures to break the current political deadlock, sixty eight percent of Palestinians supported joining more international organizations, but still fifty percent supported resorting to unarmed popular resistance. Forty six percent supported a return to armed Intafaldo, and forty two percent supported the dissolution of

the Palestinian authority. Twenty six percent supported abandoning the two state solution and demanding one state for Palstinians and Israelis. What this sort of polling shows is that Palestinians now understand very clearly that the international system is screwing them over, international law hasn't been able to help them, and that the solutions for a two state solution being proposed with all of these conditions won't ever actually get to two

states and won't give them real sovereignty. The mass protests and actions that took place in twenty twenty one Palestinian activists called this the Unity Uprising or Intafalda, showed that this has always been about sovereignty. In the Unity Intafalda of twenty twenty one, Palstinian activists spoke of a shared struggle against Israel's continued erasure of Palestinians. Palestinians living under Israeli rule across the country, whether they had citizenship or

they didn't, rejected the old style of politics. They rejected what they saw as artificial fragmentation and they insisted instead on their national identity and shared struggle. As a result, at that time we witnessed an extraordinary amount of organizing across the Green line, so in the territories and in Israel, with Palestinian citizens of Israel, and it was a way

of reclaiming Palestinian sovereignty. The same activists in groups involved in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Shechharrah linked up with those organizing in Heifa and Uml Fahm. They built on these connections to launch campaigns over and over in Masafietta, the Knockub and much more. Sovereignty has always been an animating demand for Palestinians since before October seventh, and that's surely on everyone's minds now that the war on Gaza has

extended this long. So the takeaway here is recognition isn't the solution. Statehood may not even be the solution, at least not in the terms they're offering. Sovereignty has always been what the demand is, and these pushes for recognition miss that point yet again. That's it for me. Thank you for listening to another Palestine episode, and I'll be back with more soon. Take care.