Now Is the Time for Obama to Recognize Palestine
Published on
Tuesday, December 27, 2016
by
Informed Comment
Now Is the Time for Obama to Recognize Palestine
by
Juan Cole
"President Obama should recognize Palestine before he goes out of office,"
argues Juan Cole. (Photo: gnuckx/flickr/cc)
I'd like to return today to an argument I made two years ago in The Nation,
which is that President Obama should recognize Palestine before he goes out
of office. For different but related reasons, Jimmy Carter made a similar
plea last month.
One of the arguments often heard is that Israel cannot survive as a Jewish
state if it annexes all of the West Bank, since it will ultimately acquire 4
million Palestinians (West Bank & Gaza residents) as citizens in that case.
I don't really care whether Israel has a Jewish majority, just as I don't
care if Egypt has a Sunni Muslim one or if Germany has a German one. In the
tradition of the French revolution, I think states should be civil states,
for the people of the Republic, whoever they may be. The United States in
1789 was mostly British and had a population of 4 million. Now it is 8 times
as big, and has large Italian, Latino, German and Irish populations, not to
mention over three million Muslims. So what? All those groups have brought
gifts to enrich the nation. In an age of globalization, trying artificially
to maintain one ethnic group as a majority is probably a fool's errand,
anyway. (Not to mention that "ethnic groups" are fluid and change definition
over time). Israel is importing Thai agricultural workers and initially was
welcoming African refugees.
So what is called a "one-state" solution would be fine with me, as long as
all the citizens of that one state had equal rights and it was a genuine
democracy.
It just would be very difficult to get to that outcome, whereas it would be
fairly easy to set up two states, since the basic framework of the two
states already exists.
Moreover, it is entirely possible that the Israeli squatters on Palestinian
land in the West Bank will at some point engineer a civil war, and try to
expel the Palestinians, making them stateless refugees all over again.
What is wrong with the present arrangement is that the Palestinians do not
have citizenship in a real state. A state controls the water, air and land
of a territory. The Palestine Authority controls none of those things. A
state has a judicial system that can protect the basic property and human
rights of a citizen. Palestine has none of those things. Important cases are
kicked to the Israeli judiciary, which with a few exceptions tends to rule
in favor of Israelis. And, a lot of decisions are made for Palestinians by
the Israeli army or by colonial administrators.
People who are stateless, in the phrase of Supreme Court Justice Earl
Warren, do not have the right to have rights. It is unacceptable that
millions of Palestinians should be kept stateless at the insistence of
Israel. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has even vowed that he will not
allow a Palestinian state as long as he is in power (a violation of the Oslo
Peace Accords).
The reason that all these decades of negotiations have proved fruitless is
that the Palestinians, as stateless, don't really have standing to
negotiate. You can renege on agreements with stateless people at will, as
Netanyahu has repeatedly done, without fearing any consequences and without
the stateless having recourse. So you can't start with negotiations. You
have to start by addressing Palestinians' lack of citizenship.
It should be noted that the National Socialists in Germany stripped German
Jews of their citizenship, in preparation for committing a Holocaust against
them or driving them out of their homes as refugees. (Let's see, sniffed
Goebbels, if any of their liberal champions will want them then.) The Nazis
understood very well that you can do with Stateless people what you will,
and that no one will effectively so much as object. For the Zionist right
wing, Israel comes as a solution to the problem that Jews are always in
danger of losing their citizenship rights when they are citizens of other
states. (This was a problem of the 1930s; it is not clear that it is
perennial or universal- contrast with the US). Moreover, in a nuclear-armed
world, the idea that a state can protect you from another holocaust is a
false messiah; ask the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In any case,
solving the artificially created problem of Jewish statelessness cannot come
at the price of creating Palestinian statelessness.
One way or another, I insist on the problem of Palestinian statelessness
being solved. I don't care how it is solved. They can become Israeli
citizens, or Palestinian citizens. But they have to be citizens of
something. Otherwise, we will continue to see serial disasters befalling
them, and the injustice being perpetrated on them will continue to generate
security risks to the US.
The chair of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation
Organization, Saeb Erekat, said Monday that the Palestinian leadership was
invigorated by the UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli
colonization of the Palestinian West Bank. As a result, it would redouble
its efforts to achieve full membership in the United Nations for the State
of Palestine.
Likewise, he said, the Palestinians would take their case to the
International Criminal Court at the Hague, charging Israeli officials with
various crimes against the international law of occupation, chief among them
flooding their own citizens as colonizers into the Occupied Territory.
Erekat recognizes that the Palestinian cause will go nowhere until Palestine
has some of the perquisites of a state, such as UN membership and ability to
take cases to the International Criminal Court.
So here we come to President Obama. Just as he established diplomatic
relations with Cuba, so he could do the same with regard to Palestine. It
would be one step toward resolving the decades-old problem of Palestinian
statelessness.
C 2016 Juan Cole
Juan Cole
Juan Cole teaches Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University
of Michigan.
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Now Is the Time for Obama to Recognize Palestine
Published on
Tuesday, December 27, 2016
by
Informed Comment
Now Is the Time for Obama to Recognize Palestine
by
Juan Cole
. 3 Comments
.
. "President Obama should recognize Palestine before he goes out of
office," argues Juan Cole. (Photo: gnuckx/flickr/cc)
. I'd like to return today to an argument I made two years ago in The
Nation, which is that President Obama should recognize Palestine before he
goes out of office. For different but related reasons, Jimmy Carter made a
similar plea last month.
. One of the arguments often heard is that Israel cannot survive as a
Jewish state if it annexes all of the West Bank, since it will ultimately
acquire 4 million Palestinians (West Bank & Gaza residents) as citizens in
that case.
. I don't really care whether Israel has a Jewish majority, just as I
don't care if Egypt has a Sunni Muslim one or if Germany has a German one.
In the tradition of the French revolution, I think states should be civil
states, for the people of the Republic, whoever they may be. The United
States in 1789 was mostly British and had a population of 4 million. Now it
is 8 times as big, and has large Italian, Latino, German and Irish
populations, not to mention over three million Muslims. So what? All those
groups have brought gifts to enrich the nation. In an age of globalization,
trying artificially to maintain one ethnic group as a majority is probably a
fool's errand, anyway. (Not to mention that "ethnic groups" are fluid and
change definition over time). Israel is importing Thai agricultural workers
and initially was welcoming African refugees.
. So what is called a "one-state" solution would be fine with me, as
long as all the citizens of that one state had equal rights and it was a
genuine democracy.
It just would be very difficult to get to that outcome, whereas it would be
fairly easy to set up two states, since the basic framework of the two
states already exists.
Moreover, it is entirely possible that the Israeli squatters on Palestinian
land in the West Bank will at some point engineer a civil war, and try to
expel the Palestinians, making them stateless refugees all over again.
https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/resist-in-2017https://secure.actb
lue.com/contribute/page/resist-in-2017
What is wrong with the present arrangement is that the Palestinians do not
have citizenship in a real state. A state controls the water, air and land
of a territory. The Palestine Authority controls none of those things. A
state has a judicial system that can protect the basic property and human
rights of a citizen. Palestine has none of those things. Important cases are
kicked to the Israeli judiciary, which with a few exceptions tends to rule
in favor of Israelis. And, a lot of decisions are made for Palestinians by
the Israeli army or by colonial administrators.
People who are stateless, in the phrase of Supreme Court Justice Earl
Warren, do not have the right to have rights. It is unacceptable that
millions of Palestinians should be kept stateless at the insistence of
Israel. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has even vowed that he will not
allow a Palestinian state as long as he is in power (a violation of the Oslo
Peace Accords).
The reason that all these decades of negotiations have proved fruitless is
that the Palestinians, as stateless, don't really have standing to
negotiate. You can renege on agreements with stateless people at will, as
Netanyahu has repeatedly done, without fearing any consequences and without
the stateless having recourse. So you can't start with negotiations. You
have to start by addressing Palestinians' lack of citizenship.
It should be noted that the National Socialists in Germany stripped German
Jews of their citizenship, in preparation for committing a Holocaust against
them or driving them out of their homes as refugees. (Let's see, sniffed
Goebbels, if any of their liberal champions will want them then.) The Nazis
understood very well that you can do with Stateless people what you will,
and that no one will effectively so much as object. For the Zionist right
wing, Israel comes as a solution to the problem that Jews are always in
danger of losing their citizenship rights when they are citizens of other
states. (This was a problem of the 1930s; it is not clear that it is
perennial or universal- contrast with the US). Moreover, in a nuclear-armed
world, the idea that a state can protect you from another holocaust is a
false messiah; ask the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In any case,
solving the artificially created problem of Jewish statelessness cannot come
at the price of creating Palestinian statelessness.
One way or another, I insist on the problem of Palestinian statelessness
being solved. I don't care how it is solved. They can become Israeli
citizens, or Palestinian citizens. But they have to be citizens of
something. Otherwise, we will continue to see serial disasters befalling
them, and the injustice being perpetrated on them will continue to generate
security risks to the US.
The chair of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation
Organization, Saeb Erekat, said Monday that the Palestinian leadership was
invigorated by the UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli
colonization of the Palestinian West Bank. As a result, it would redouble
its efforts to achieve full membership in the United Nations for the State
of Palestine.
Likewise, he said, the Palestinians would take their case to the
International Criminal Court at the Hague, charging Israeli officials with
various crimes against the international law of occupation, chief among them
flooding their own citizens as colonizers into the Occupied Territory.
Erekat recognizes that the Palestinian cause will go nowhere until Palestine
has some of the perquisites of a state, such as UN membership and ability to
take cases to the International Criminal Court.
So here we come to President Obama. Just as he established diplomatic
relations with Cuba, so he could do the same with regard to Palestine. It
would be one step toward resolving the decades-old problem of Palestinian
statelessness.
C 2016 Juan Cole
/author/juan-cole
/author/juan-cole/author/juan-cole
Juan Cole teaches Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University
of Michigan.
