Abstract
The claim that states have a “right to exist” has found currency in contemporary discussions of international politics, specifically in relation to the Israel-Palestine conflict. However, no such legal or moral right actually exists today or has ever existed for states. Furthermore, the claim of such a right by Israeli negotiators was first invoked as a negotiating strategy in the 1980s as a way of blocking a resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict by erecting an insurmountable barrier for their counterparts, thus portraying the Palestinian leadership as obstacles to a peace settlement. States have no “right to exist.”
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Notes
- 1.
John V. Whitbeck, ‘What “Israel’s right to exist” means to Palestinians’, The Christian Science Monitor, 2 February 2007.
- 2.
Ernest Renan, ‘What is a Nation?”, lecture delivered at the Sorbonne, 11 March 1882—English translation http://www.cooper.edu/humanities/core/hss3/e_renan.html
- 3.
L. Oppenheim, International Law: A Treatise, Volume 1, (2nd ed, Longmans, London 1912), Chapter II, paragraph 112.
- 4.
James Crawford, The Creation of States in International Law (2nd ed, Oxford University Press, New York 2006).
- 5.
Joseph Massad, ‘The rights of Israel’, Aljazeera (online), 6 May 2001—https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/05/20115684218533873.html
- 6.
Ilan Pappé, The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1947–1951 (I.B. Tauris, London 2001), pp. 144 & 149. See also Gardner Thompson, Legacy Of Empire: Britain, Zionism And The Creation Of Israel (Al Saqi, London 2019).
- 7.
‘Arafat Says P.L.O. Accepted Israel’, New York Times, 8 December 1988; ‘PLO Accepts Israel’s Right To Exist, Opposes Terrorism, Arafat Says, Los Angeles Times, 7 December 1988; Arthur Max, ‘Arafat Endorses Statement Recognising Israel’s Right To Exist’, AP, 8 December 1988.
- 8.
https://mfa.gov.il/mfa/foreignpolicy/peace/guide/pages/israel-plo%20recognition%20-%20exchange%20of%20letters%20betwe.aspx and James Crawford, The Creation of States in International Law (2nd ed, Oxford University Press, New York 2006), p. 443.
- 9.
John V. Whitbeck, ‘What “Israel’s right to exist” means to Palestinians’, The Christian Science Monitor, 2 February 2007. See also https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2019/03/15/why-israel-has-no-right-to-exist/ and http://www.thecornelleview.org/joseph-massad-at-cornell-israel-has-no-right-to-be-jewish-state/ and https://mondoweiss.net/2019/12/how-to-answer-the-question-do-you-recognize-israels-right-to-exist/
- 10.
Paul Scham & Osama Abu-Irshaid, ‘Hamas: Ideological Rigidity and Political Flexibility’, United States Institute of Peace, 1 June 2009—https://www.usip.org/publications/2009/06/hamas-ideological-rigidity-and-political-flexibility
- 11.
James Crawford, The Creation of States in International Law (2nd ed, Oxford University Press, New York 2006), p. 435 and Crawford quoted in Norman G. Finkelstein, Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom (University of California Press, Oakland 2018), p. 372.
- 12.
Noam Chomsky & Ilan Pappé, On Palestine (Haymarket Books, Chicago 2015), pp. 52–3.
- 13.
Wolfe quoted in Saree Makdisi, ‘Elimination as a Structure: Tracing and Racing Zionism with Patrick Wolfe’, American Quarterly, Volume 69, Number 2, June 2017, pp. 282–3.
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Burchill, S. (2020). Israel-Palestine: Part One—Do States Have a “Right to Exist”?. In: Misunderstanding International Relations. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1936-9_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1936-9_4
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