France intends to recognise a state of Palestine at the United Nations, which I’m sure will be followed by UK recognition of the same. We can be sure of this because the UK does not have an independent foreign policy when it comes to the Middle East. Inside or outside of the European Union, London’s stance on Israel and the Palestinians has become indistinguishable from the position of the European Commission. The European Commission simps for the Palestinians and Britain simps for the European Commission.
I take the somewhat contentious view that Britain should simp for itself, which is why in my occasional (read: incessant) Coffee House posts recommending, beseeching, UK recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel I have made a case based on the British national interest. Israel’s medical innovations, advanced technology, and unparalleled intelligence on Islamist extremism makes it an invaluable ally for the UK. Israel is a country that acts out of self-interest and respects other countries that do the same. National self-interest is a concept not only alien to Britain’s governing class but something they consider dirty and shameful.
The flaws inherent in France’s decision will apply also to Britain’s eventual announcement. If there is a state of Palestine, where is it? Applying the 1949 armistice lines, Palestine would consist of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), Gaza and eastern Jerusalem, but the Palestinians exercise de facto sovereignty over only parts of these territories. Jerusalem is controlled entirely by Israel, Gaza’s land and sea boundaries by Israel and Egypt, and Judea and Samaria by a combination of the Israeli military and, in a handful of cities, the Palestinian Authority. Palestine is a state without effective authority over its claimed territory and unable to enforce its borders.
If there is a state of Palestine, what kind of state is it? Mahmoud Abbas is in the 20th year of his four-year term as president of the Palestinian Authority, fresh elections having been postponed indefinitely on the quite reasonable grounds that he would have lost. The state of Palestine, if it exists, is not a democracy.
That covers where and what Palestine is, but who exercises sovereignty in this supposedly sovereign state? Under the Oslo Accords, the Palestinian Authority is the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, but the Palestinians’ claimed territory has been effectively split for two decades now. After Hamas won the 2006 legislative elections, breaking Fatah’s long-running stranglehold on Palestinian politics, the two parties proved incapable of cooperating.
A brief civil war the following year saw Gaza severed from Palestinian Authority control and run autonomously by Hamas, which has served as its de facto government ever since. If there is a state of Palestine, which is its legitimate government? Hamas won the last election, but is not to the tastes of western leaders. The Fatah-leaning Palestinian Authority is favoured in European capitals, but has refused to allow elections.
These are not mere theoretical questions. If a state of Palestine exists and includes Gaza, it is a state in which citizens of a neighbouring state are being held against their will. States have an obligation to prevent the taking or holding of foreign hostages on their territory. This convention will be weakened if the international community recognises Palestine without pressing that state to uphold its duties, putting nationals of all countries at greater risk of being taken captive.
Similarly, Gaza has been used by Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups to launch rockets into Israel while Palestinians have regularly travelled from Judea and Samaria, as well as eastern Jerusalem, to carry out terror attacks against Israelis. States have a duty to prevent and suppress terrorism, including that carried out from their territory against another state. Since the last serious challenge to its authority saw the Palestinian Authority lose part of its claimed territory to a terrorist group, it is not at all clear that Palestine could fulfil this obligation.
These are just a few of the many practical problems with recognising a Palestinian state
Recognition of Palestine also raises the question of human rights and discrimination. Under Palestinian law it is a capital crime to sell property to an Israeli. Will Palestine recognisers be pushing for this legislation to be repealed? Then there is the matter of the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism, third holiest in Islam and a significant place for Christians too. The complex is run by the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf and all but one of its functioning gates is for the use of Muslims only, with non-Muslims forced to enter and exit via a single gate for the kafir.
Israel cooperates with this arrangement in order to keep the peace in a territory where the international community says it is not the lawful sovereign anyway. If this part of Jerusalem is now to be considered the sovereign territory of a state, that state will have to decide whether to permit segregation on the basis of faith to continue under its laws. It would be unfortunate if it does, but at least we’d get to savour the spectacle of NGOs, human rights activists and international law professors flushing everything they’ve previously said about ‘apartheid states’ down the memory hole.
What of the fate of the Israelis who live in Judea and Samaria and eastern Jerusalem? Even if we accept that settlements are illegal – which I don’t – their residents are civilians who have lived in these areas for a considerable time. Some were born there to parents who were also born there. There are vanishingly few examples in modern times of civilian settler populations being transferred peacefully. The Palestinian Authority has previously said it would not permit a single Israeli to remain in a Palestinian state. By what means does it intend to achieve this population transfer? How will it enforce the removal of Israeli civilians who attempt to remain in their homes? And, just so we can keep track of these things, would the transfer of 750,000 Jews out of the State of Palestine be the good kind of ethnic cleansing or the bad kind?
These are just a few of the many practical problems with recognising a Palestinian state, although none are as prohibitive as the unhappy truth that every time the Palestinians have been offered a state they have rejected it, more often than not followed by violence. Their representatives have in the past made formal statements recognising Israel, but in practice Palestinian leadership and civic society has dug itself deeper into a trench of anti-Semitism and extremism. Until earlier this year they routinely paid stipends to the families of terrorists killed or imprisoned in the course of attacking and murdering Israelis. There continue to be Palestinian schools and summer camps where children dress up as terrorists and play-act mock attacks on Israel. It remains socially acceptable to give sweets to children to celebrate the slaying of Israelis.
No amount of recognitions or declarations, not by the French or the British or anyone else, can will into existence a Palestinian state or the leadership, civil society, or norms required to build and sustain one. For decades European and at times even American policy has proceeded from the certainty that the absence of a Palestinian state was the result of Israeli opposition to the idea, and so they have concentrated pressure on Jerusalem in the mistaken belief that a Palestinian state is something Israel can give the Palestinians. Israel can give territory, the world can give recognition, but the only people who can give the Palestinians a state are themselves.
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