September 11, 2025 • 22 mins
Dana El Kurd talks about the recent declarations by France, the UK, Canada, and others to recognize Palestine as a state. She discusses what this means, how these declarations are not tied to Palestinians exercising sovereignty, and what Palestinians actually want.
Sources:
Noura Erekat and Shahd Hammouri in Jadaliyya - https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/46838
Paul Poast in World Politics Review - https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/palestine-state-recognition-france/
NPR report - https://www.npr.org/2025/08/01/nx-s1-5485359/france-uk-palestine-state-explainer
European Society of International Law on occupation - https://esil-sedi.eu/prolonged-occupation-or-illegal-occupant/#:~:text=The%20occupying%20power%2C%20throughout%20the,consistent%20with%20its%20trustee%20responsibilities.
Daniel Kurtzer on the Oslo Accords - https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/11/20/magazine/israel-gaza-oslo-accords.html
Hanan Ashrawi on the Oslo Accords - https://www.972mag.com/hanan-ashrawi-oslo-accords/
Polling of Palestinians May 2025 - https://www.pcpsr.org/sites/default/files/Poll%2095%20press%20release%206May2025%20ENGLISH.pdf
Dana El Kurd and Pablo Abufom for The Guardian - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/08/palestinians-leader-mahmoud-abbas-president
Tanja Aalberts on sovereignty - Constructing Sovereignty between Politics and Law - 1st Edition - Tanj
Jared Kushner “Peace to Prosperity” plan - trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Peace-to-Prosperity-0120.pdf
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Col Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Hello everyone, and welcome to say it could happen here.
My name is Dana al Kerd. I'm a writer, analyst,
and researcher of Palestinian and Arab politics. I'm an associate
professor of political science and a senior non resident fellow
at the Arab Center Washington. What a wild time in
the Middle East? Am I right? I mean not to
be flippant. That's putting him mildly. Today before I recorded,
(00:28):
Israel bombed the capital of Katar, Doha, in an assassination
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
(00:50):
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
(01:11):
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
(01:33):
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
(01:53):
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
(02:14):
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
(02:38):
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
(03:00):
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
(03:23):
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
(03:45):
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
(04:05):
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
(04:29):
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
(04:49):
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
(05:10):
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
(05:32):
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
(05:56):
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
(06:19):
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
(06:44):
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
(07:05):
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
(07:36):
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
(07:56):
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.
(08:18):
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
(08:38):
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
(08:58):
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
(09:21):
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
(09:42):
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
(10:04):
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
(10:26):
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
(10:47):
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
(11:10):
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
(11:32):
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
(11:53):
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,
(12:14):
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
(12:36):
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
(12:57):
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
(13:19):
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
(13:40):
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
(14:02):
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
(14:22):
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.
(14:44):
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
(15:07):
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.
(15:38):
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
(15:59):
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
(16:20):
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
(16:41):
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.
(17:05):
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,
(17:25):
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.
(17:45):
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
(18:07):
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,
(18:29):
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
(18:50):
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
(19:13):
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
(19:35):
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,
(19:59):
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
(20:22):
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,
(20:46):
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
(21:07):
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
(21:30):
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.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
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Col Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Hello everyone, and welcome to say it could happen here.
My name is Dana al Kerd. I'm a writer, analyst,
and researcher of Palestinian and Arab politics. I'm an associate
professor of political science and a senior non resident fellow
at the Arab Center Washington. What a wild time in
the Middle East? Am I right? I mean not to
be flippant. That's putting him mildly. Today before I recorded,
(00:28):
Israel bombed the capital of Katar, Doha, in an assassination
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
(00:50):
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
(01:11):
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
(01:33):
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
(01:53):
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
(02:14):
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
(02:38):
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
(03:00):
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
(03:23):
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
(03:45):
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
(04:05):
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
(04:29):
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
(04:49):
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
(05:10):
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
(05:32):
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
(05:56):
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
(06:19):
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
(06:44):
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
(07:05):
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
(07:36):
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
(07:56):
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.
(08:18):
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
(08:38):
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
(08:58):
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
(09:21):
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
(09:42):
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
(10:04):
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
(10:26):
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
(10:47):
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
(11:10):
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
(11:32):
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
(11:53):
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,
(12:14):
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
(12:36):
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
(12:57):
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
(13:19):
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
(13:40):
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
(14:02):
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
(14:22):
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.
(14:44):
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
(15:07):
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.
(15:38):
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
(15:59):
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
(16:20):
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
(16:41):
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.
(17:05):
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,
(17:25):
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.
(17:45):
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
(18:07):
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,
(18:29):
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
(18:50):
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
(19:13):
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
(19:35):
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,
(19:59):
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
(20:22):
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,
(20:46):
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
(21:07):
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
(21:30):
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.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
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