**Would similar standards then apply to other
"created" states in the ME such as Trans-Jordan, Lebanon, etc., and the
yet to
be: "Palestine"??
TC,
/Steve Cameron, NJ
Omar Kusturica wrote:
What does a "right to exist" mean exactly? There
is no
"right to exist" for states under international
law.
The formula has arisen in international diplomacy
uniquely regarding Israel. It does not mean simply
diplomatic recognition, which is the "fact" of
existence. It does not mean recognizing Israel's
"right to self-determination," either, or we would
be
using that famous term.
Let us pretend for a moment that Hamas is being
asked
to recognize Israel in the normal diplomatic
sense. In
this case, however, the EU position is
unsupportable,
because diplomatic recognition of a state
routinely
requires one bit of vital information: "right to
exist" where? Israel's borders are not set. Even
its
plans for those borders are not known; with
impressive
brashness, Mr. Olmert has announced that we will
not
know until 2010.
It is entirely legitimate for Hamas to require
firm
confirmation of Israel's borders before
recognizing
it. It should also be incumbent on the
international
community to confirm where those borders will be
before insisting that Hamas recognize Israel's
"right"
to them. Otherwise, recognizing Israel's "right to
exist" could be construed to mean that Israel has
a
"right to exist" within whatever borders it
chooses in
coming years.
As the Palestinians stand to lose most of what is
left
of their homeland to this fuzziness, Hamas is
refusing
to endorse it. Is this extremist Islamic
intransigence, warranting a funding freeze? Let us
run
a little thought experiment: Would Canadian, or
Norwegian, or English, or French governments be
called
on the international carpet for not recognizing
the
"right to exist" of a neighboring state that is,
with
military force, settling its own ethnically
defined
population within contiguous walled cities and
enclaves in Canadian, Norwegian, English or French
national territories, while promising to carve
those
nations into "cantons?"
Absent clear borders, recognizing Israel's "right
to
exist" must mean something else. And of course it
does. Clearly implicit in the term is Israel's
right
to exist as a Jewish state. In other words, the
"right" Hamas is being required to endorse is that
Israel can legitimately compose itself as a state
in
Palestine that is populated and run primarily by
Jews,
primarily for Jews. Such a state would thus be
authorized by Hamas to sustain whatever laws and
policies necessary to preserving its Jewish
majority,
even rejecting the return of Palestinian refugees
mandated by international law. Or building a
massive
Wall on Palestinian land designed to protect the
Jewish state from the "demographic threat" of mass
non-Jewish citizenship-i.e., the Palestinians.
Israel's would also be legitimized for past
actions on
the same agenda, such as expelling the
Palestinians
from their homes in 1948, and for its future
plans,
such as confining Palestine's indigenous people to
cantons.
http://www.counterpunch.org/tilley05112006.html
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