Why must we recognize the right of Israel to exist?

it's quite the simple question, why must Palestine recognize the right of Israel to exist when no other country has ever had to recognize the RIGHT of any other country to exist?
why must Palestine recognize this of Israel when Israel clearly doesn't recognize the right of Palestine to exist? (hell, Israel doesn't even recognize the state of Palestine and has been undermining any such state)

why must Palestine renounce violence when Israel refuses to?

why must Palestine accept international agreements when Israel refuses to?

honestly, why do the US and Israel expect Palestine to do things that they themselves won't do?

I've wondered that myself...Seems that a lot of the issues that the middle east has with "The west" is that we support Israel. I'm just curious why we're so hard core about Israel, and why wouldn't it be in our best interest to leave Israel on its own. I'm not saying we SHOULD do that, I just don't know why we don't.

Membership in the United Nations implies that a country recognizes the right of fellow UN members to exist.

Israel is a member of the United Nations. In fact, it's a rather special member, because it was created by UN fiat: by, in fact, the famous (or infamous, depending on viewpoint) Resolution 181.

If it ever became a member of the community of nations, Palestine would doubtless apply, as all countries to date have done, to be admitted to the UN. At that point, it would have to recognize Israel's right to existence.

So much for the legal arguments. The simple fact is that, unless there is a major upset in global politics, a Palestinian state would never be allowed to come into being unless it agrees to recognize Israel.

Perhaps in the future a Palestinian state could obtain recognition from a large number of other countries -- including very influential ones -- without actually becoming a member of the UN. But such a day seems very far off -- if indeed it could ever come at all.

Why does Palestine have such a hard time recognizing Israel? What is the whole argument between Israel and Palestine about? Is Palestine even a country? I don't remember ever seeing it on a map...forgive me if these questions seem ignorant, I just never really understood the whole Palestine/Israel deal....

Astyanax makes a far better point than I was about to...But I'll just point out a few things anyway.

why must Palestine renounce violence when Israel refuses to?

An analogy to explain, if you will. You own a house, and all the neighborhood recognizes that you own that house except a homeless guy across the street. He says the house is his. This homeless man did the same thing with two other neighbors you're not on good terms with, and they violently removed the homeless guy from their homes. Now that the homeless guy is after your home, though, those two neighbors are supporting his claim. The guy keeps breaking in. The first time he did, you forcefully ejected him from your house, and the entire neighborhood started to say that you two need to get along, and since the homeless man seemed to have no morals, the responsibility is yours to work it out. Meanwhile, the police are siding with the homeless man, calling you all kinds of names and fining you because you won't let the man have just one room in your house.

Then the homeless man decides to take it to the next level, no longer content to just break into your house, but now he rapes your daughter every chance he gets unless you beat the krump out of him before he gets to her. Now your two neighbors who don't like you start screaming at Neighborhood watch meetings about how cruel you are for beating this homeless man up even before he rapes your daughter! Frustrated and completely fed up, you call ADT to get an alarm system installed. The neighborhood moves and makes it illegal for you to protect your house, and the police tell you they'll watch over it. Meanwhile, the homeless man keeps raping your daughter and breaking in, and now sleeping on your couch, and you keep beating the krump out of him. He starts to get discouraged, but the two neighbors start to console him and take care of his injuries every time.

The neighborhood tells you that if you stop being violent with him, he'll stop raping your daughter. Desperate to protect your daughter, you agree to these terms, and watch as yet again he rapes your daughter. The neighborhood says you have to give him time for it to sink in. Meanwhile, he's taken over your living room and rapes your daughter any time he feels like it, laughing and the half installed alarm system you have and the police that let the homeless man know when you're not home so he can more easily rape your daughter. Eventually you start to just beat the crap out of him any time you see him in your home coming after your daughter again.

And then people start to ask, why should this homeless man stop raping your daughter if you refuse to not beat the crap out of him.

In the long run Israel really does not have the right to exist, and if you really want to get literal about it, no nation does.... (they are after all artificial constructs).... it has to impose its right to exist.... especially considering that it was imposed on already long occupied lands by, after 2,000 years were non-natives.

Doesn't matter really because by the end of the century, Israel per say will have ceased to exist thanks to a rapidly declining Jewish birth rate, a rapidly increasing Arab birth rate... (within Israel itself)... which will lead to what should have been there in the first place; a joint Jewish/Palestinian state.

Originally posted by grover
which will lead to what should have been there in the first place; a joint Jewish/Palestinian state.

Except that Israel as it stands today is not a theocracy and has freedom of religion. The state the Palestinians want, on the other hand, will be an Islamic theocracy akin to, say, Saudi Arabia or Iran. I repeat, there is no Jewish state, though that was the original intention when Israel was first created. It is not the case.

That is not necessiarly true... Hamas perhaps is leaning that way but there is a large Christian contingent in the Palestinian movement.

Given the elections and Hamas' open intentions for the destruction of Israel and the...we'll say "problems" Christian churches in the area are encountering, I'm going to have to say your definition of large and mine differ greatly.

reply to post by junglejake


I just want to say Thank You Junglejake! -- I've never fully understood the Israel/Palestine situation (my brain has a hard time wrapping itself around the politics involved), but your analogy made perfect sense to me, and now I have a better understanding of wtf is happening over there.

So thank you.

Originally posted by grover
If you really want to get literal about it, no nation does... it has to impose its right to exist.

Correct. But there is a well accepted principle in international law known as 'recognizing facts on the ground'. This principle is behind the current unseemly scramble over the floor of the Arctic Ocean, by the way.

...what should have been there in the first place; a joint Jewish/Palestinian state.

I agree one hundred percent; I would merely add the adjective 'secular'.

O for a faithless world!

[edit on 24-8-2007 by Astyanax]

reply to post by Astyanax


As it stands right now Israel is far more of a theocracy in that the power the ultra conservative Rabbis hold far exceeds anything that is happening in the Palestinian authority right now. They, the Israeli Rabbis have even attempted to say who was or was not a Jew world wides based on whether they were conservative or reform Jews, or practicing at all. They tried this in the late 80's early 90's if I recall correctly and caused a huge uproar at the time.

Originally posted by junglejake
An analogy to explain, if you will. You own a house, and all the neighborhood recognizes that you own that house except a homeless guy across the street. He says the house is his. This homeless man did the same thing with two other neighbors you're not on good terms with, and they violently removed the homeless guy from their homes

analogy fails, the palestinians owned the land first...

And then people start to ask, why should this homeless man stop raping your daughter if you refuse to not beat the crap out of him.

your analogy is flawed from the beginning to end...
the difference here is that israel is the one raping the random homeless guy.. that they made homeless by kicking out of his house and killing his family, dog, and goldfish...

your analogy shows your clear bias.
actually, you outright refuse to admit the horrific historical injustices the palestinian people have had to endure AT THE HANDS OF ISRAEL

Originally posted by junglejake
Given the elections and Hamas' open intentions for the destruction of Israel and the...we'll say "problems" Christian churches in the area are encountering, I'm going to have to say your definition of large and mine differ greatly.

does israel not have open intentions to destroy the palestinian state? it's quite obvious, seeing as they never have recognized it as legitimate and to this day place their citizens on their land...

now look at the hypocricy, israel has oepn intentions to also destroy hamas, and they refuse to accept them as a legitimate political party and call them an outright group of terrorists... even though they were elected democratically... isn't that quite the BS?

just wondering, Astyanax... where in the UN charter does it state that nations must recognize each other's RIGHT TO EXIST?

Originally posted by Jaruseleh
Why does Palestine have such a hard time recognizing Israel? What is the whole argument between Israel and Palestine about? Is Palestine even a country? I don't remember ever seeing it on a map...forgive me if these questions seem ignorant, I just never really understood the whole Palestine/Israel deal....

The area that is today Israel and "Palestine" started out as the Palestinian Mandate under British rule, after the partition of the defunct Ottoman Empire at the end of WW1.

Before I go any further, I suppose I should explain "Zionist" in a historical context. The term is not synonymous with "Jewish" in the least. Zionism is a secular nationalist movement, with roots in the lat 19th century along with a mess of other ethnic nationalist movements. The idea is that each race should have their own homeland to rule as they see fit, and in the case of Zionism, that happens to be the Jewish people ruling the stretch of land from the Nile to the Euphrates. There's been a lot of work done in recent years both from inside and outside the Zionist movement to make "Zionist" and "Jewish" one and the same so that a critic of ethnic imperialism and apartheid (Zionism) is seen as a hater of the Jewish people.

Anyway, back to the topic. Great Britain was under pressure from the start to turn the Palestinian mandate into a Jewish Homeland, pressure that included illegal immigration and terrorism in the area, as well as political and financial pressure at home. With the end of WW2, the discovery of the depths of the Holocaust, and the foundation of the UN, Great Britian finally caved to these lobbying pressures and a plan was started to create a Jewish homeland in the Palestinian Mandate.

You can find a map of the 1947 UN partition plan here.

The problem was, the entire plan was heavily skewed in favor of the Jewish side of things. 33% of the Mandate's population would be granted a majority of the land. A large portion of this land would be the Negev desert, which had next to no Jewish settlements, but a large population of Bedouin. While the Arab state would receive the highlands and a third of the coastline, the Jewish state would receive the majority of land suitable for agriculture, two thirds of coastline, and exclusive control of the Sea of Galilee.

To put it bluntly, the Arab natives of the area were going to get severely screwed by the plan despite being the majority of the population. Understandably they were displeased with it. And thus, cue the fighting for sixty goddamned years.

You can get a good idea of the nature of the plan by how the voting went in the UN. Western, imperial powers - America, Russia and it's sattelites, Great Britain and most of its holdings, France, all voted in favor of the plan, while states that actually have to live next to the area all voted against - Greece, Turkey, Egypt, Lebanon, etc.

So why the difficulty of the Palestinians accepting the right of Israel to exist? Well, first off there's a hell of a grudge there - As noted, Israel isn't exactly hopping at the chance to return the favor, either. However there's the far simpler problem - Israel has no constitution, and no set borders. Technically, it is not a true "nation" because it's missing these two very important defining points of statehood. How do you recognize the right of a state to exist, when that state isn't a state by international definition? East Timor and Eritrea needed borders and a constitution before coming to the UN, after all.

(more in following post)

There's also the problem that recognizing Israel as a state would legitimatize its land claims. Israel has moved into land that does not belong to it - Israel claims large portions of the land the UN set aside for the Arab Palestinians in 1947, as well as pieces of Syria (the Golan Heights) and Lebanon (Shebaa Farms). The trick to this is that according to international law, acquiring territory through military conquest is a war crime. Israel is currently protected by its backing by permanent members of the UN security council, as well as its claims that these territories are "buffer zones" between it and its enemies.

If Palestinians were to accept Israel as a state currently, they would be ceding all the occupied land to Israel. In effect screwing themselves out of territory that is legally theirs while at the same time removing all culpability from Israel for its military conquest of these areas.

Thus why no recognition of the Israeli state, until certain demands are met - such as a return to 1967 borders, a proposal which would still screw the Palestinians out of a lot of their UN-granted land, but not so much as an agreement on current territories would. Israel, naturally, refuses such an idea.

As for the US's constant support of Israel... I imagine that's at least partially due to how amazingly hard it is for the US government to go "Well, we messed up." We've already poured billions into Israel - it started as a means to keep them from going to the Russians for cash, and has since evolved to an eschatological tithe in some circles - many Americans honestly believe that Israel simply must be there for Jesus to come back. But mostly it's because the US government can't ever admit that it's wrong about something, especially something that costs so damn much.

As others have pointed out though, the future of Israel as a "Jewish" state is far from guaranteed. The only way to accomplish this is for Israel to set down internationally accepted borders and make a constitution - and this means allowing the existence of a viable Palestinian state by default. More likely this war of attrition will continue until Arabs outnumber Jews in Israeli territories, resulting in a single merged state. At which point the area in question can either become a truly Apartheid regime of a minority elite over a majority second-class, or it can be ruled by mutual concession to create a secular multi-ethnic state.

[edit on 25-8-2007 by The Walking Fox]

Whose house is it, anyway?

Originally posted by madnessinmysoulJust wondering, Astyanax... where in the UN charter does it state that nations must recognize each other's RIGHT TO EXIST?

I don't suppose it says so at all. States' rights to exist are de facto, after all.

The "right to exist" is not a normal term used in international relations... other than in the case of Israel, no other state's existence has been questioned in quite the same way.

That's from a Wikipedia page about just this subject. Not a very balanced or indeed very informative page to be sure, but the statement is probably true.

Your post admirably points out the historical revisionism in junglejake's earlier one. Well done.

If we're going to use history to support our arguments, let us not forget that the Israelis' own Holy Book clearly states that the Palestinians were the original inhabitants of the area, and that the Hebrews invaded the country and took it over from them with much slaughter and plunder. Palestinian resistance lasted for generations afterwards; at times they even managed partial liberations of their country, as is recorded, from the opposite perspective, in the books, of Daniel, Judges, Kings, etc.. The Palestinians were then known to us as the Philistines. That is still their name in Arabic: Filasteen.

The nativity of Palestinians to Palestine is not something Jews can readily contest, since they have always averred that the land of their own origin was 'Ur of the Chaldees', somewhere in Mesopotamia. Palestine was not their native land but the Promised Land. The inconvenience of its having an incumbent population was not easily dealt with, however.

In two excellent posts, Walking Fox explained the muddled, inequitable and unedifying genesis of the modern State of Israel. But when the Fox says that its lack of a Constitution or fully-defined national boundaries disqualifies it from being called a State,
I would say the Fox is wrong, at least in terms of practical politics, because countries are forever disputing one anothers' borders and refusing to recognize UN-defined lines of division (for example, that Vale of Tears, Kashmir). And the United Kingdom has no written Constitution, yet no-one is contesting its right to be called a State.

This is not to contest the overall point of his or her posts.

Let's take it back farther, shall we? As the Fox reminds us, between 1453 and 1947 -- how long is that? -- Palestine was an Ottoman, i.e. at least nominallly Muslim, possession.

Before the Ottomans, the Mamelukes. Muslims again, for what it's worth.

For less than a century, some parts were ruled by Western Europeans: the Crusaders. I don't think the Vatican is currently making any claims on the territory, however.

Before the Crusaders, the Arab Caliphates.

Before the coming of Islam, that bit of the world belonged to the Eastern Roman Empire, the rump of Imperial Rome. And before that to Rome itself. Greek-speaking Christian in the first case, (mostly) Greek-speaking pagan and later Christian in the second. In both cases it was imperial hinterland, an impoverished, dismal area populated by eternally quarreling locals, and where the handful of 'civilized' people -- colonial administrators and military officers, rich merchants, local petty kings like the Herods, and their cronies -- spoke Greek. The area remained culturally Greek before it became Muslim, at least at this level, with plenty of filtration down to the vernacular level; the Arab word for devil, iblis, is a corruption of the Greek diabolos.

And before that? I can't remember all the changes. Alexander the Great and his successors had it for a bit. And before him... well, they're in the Bible. Assyrians, Medes, Persians, Babylonians, Hittites, Egyptians... the list is long.

In between, at times, the Israelites.

At other times, the Palestinians.

Whose land? Both have an equal claim in terms of tenancy rights.

Of course, the most recent uninterrupted tenancy was Palestinian. Since 135AD, when Hadrian turned Judea into Syria Palaestina.

But there has been a country in the world called Israel since 1947AD. It is a reality, and it seems senseless not to recognize it.

[edit on 26-8-2007 by Astyanax]

[edit on 26-8-2007 by Astyanax]

Originally posted by grover
In the long run Israel really does not have the right to exist, and if you really want to get literal about it, no nation does.... (they are after all artificial constructs).... it has to impose its right to exist.... especially considering that it was imposed on already long occupied lands by, after 2,000 years were non-natives.

BINGO! Israel has to impose its existence. The crusaders tried to impose the existence of Outreamer (their name for Palestine) for 200 years and in the long run failed.

Israel will not even have that long of a run.

Originally posted by junglejake
An analogy to explain, if you will. You own a house, and all the neighborhood recognizes that you own that house except a homeless guy across the street. He says the house is his.

Sorry JJ, you got this one wrong, I"m afraid. Israel took land that was already occupied by others and claimed it as their own. It would be more correct to say that the homeless guy owned the house but was kicked out by squatters.

For some reason, alot of people tend to overlook the fact that Israel was created by taking land from others, i.e. the Palestinians. And they weren't reimbursed, either, their homes and land were simply taken, and they received no money for it.
I must say I don't like Israel's sense of entitlement, their hypocrisy and their violence and Nazi-like stance at times.

Astyanax,

Yes, India has border disputes in Punjab and Kashmir, with Pakistan and China respectively. However, all three states in question have defined borders. They just argue over who's got the right map. Israel has no defined border.

Myself, I don't really get the "The Jews were there first" arguments - especially coming as it often does from white people in North America. Furthermore when the sole source of this claim is a book that describes the Israelite tribe's genocidal purge of the people who were already living in Canaan...

Originally posted by The Walking Fox
However, all three states in question have defined borders. They just argue over who's got the right map. Israel has no defined border.

A technicality, I'm afraid.

Myself, I don't really get the "The Jews were there first" arguments... when the sole source of this claim is a book that describes the Israelite tribe's genocidal purge of the people who were already living in Canaan...

As I explained in my post, the Bible clearly states that the Jews werent there first. They came from Mesopotamia into Canaan, where the locals, soon to be known as Philistines, were already in possession. But you're making me repeat myself.