Why the President Trump’s plan for Palestine represents a resounding defeat for the Palestinians hardly requires an explanation. If—and a great if it is—the plan is ever implemented, they will not obtain the right to a fully sovereign, contiguous, territorial state. They will not obtain East Jerusalem as part of their territory, let alone as their capital; instead, the idea is to take a miserable township not far away and rename it, Al Quds.
And this is just the beginning of the list. The Palestinians will not gain control over the Holy Places, including, above all, the Temple Mount. They will not be allowed to build armed forces of their own. They will not rid themselves of the dozens of settlements Israel has scattered throughout their territory over the last half century. They will not gain free access to their Arab brethren in the Middle East but will remain dependent on Israel for border control. They will not obtain sovereign rights over the water under their land. They will not obtain sovereignty over the air- and electronic space above their land. They will not be able to exercise the “right of return.” They will not and they will not and they will not. The entire thing looks suspiciously like the Bantustans, meaning semi-autonomous black enclaves, which the late unlamented Apartheid government of South Africa was trying to establish back in the 1970s. No wonder the Palestinians, with Abu Mazen at their head, refuse even to talk about the so-called plan. If I, a Zionist and a patriotic Israeli who has lived in his country from the age of four (I am now almost seventy-four years old) were in their place, I would do exactly the same. As, no doubt, would the vast majority of Israelis.
However, the plan represents a defeat for Israel too. Forget about the details—the impossibly complicated complex of convoluted roads, bridges, tunnels, viaducts, crossing points, what have you, needed to make it work. Forget, too, about a number of other points that will probably meet with more domestic opposition than can be managed, such as handing over some sovereign Israeli territory to the Palestinians. The real reason why it is a defeat is because it puts an end to the dream of setting up single, unified, contiguous, Jewish state with the vast majority of its inhabitants consisting of Jews. In other words, to the Zionist dream.
These are serious problems. Still arguably the greatest defeat of all is neither that of the Palestinians nor that of Israel. It is, rather, that of international law. I am referring to the 1945 UN Chapter which rules that there can lawfully be no territorial gains from war, even by a state acting in self-defense. Since then it has been confirmed several times by several U.N resolutions.
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Like every other kind of law since the world was first created, international law is full of holes. Probably more than every other kind of law since the world was first created, absent a firm suzerain hand to make it work it has often been violated. Nevertheless the principle has worked well on the whole. If not in the sense that invasions and annexations came to an end, at any rate in that obtaining international legal recognition for them has become almost impossible. For example, just two countries—Britain and Pakistan—have ever recognized Jordan’s 1948 annexation of the West Bank. No country has ever recognized Morocco’s annexation of the Spanish Sahara. Out of some 190 U.N members only fourteen have recognized Russia’s annexation of the Crimea. So effective has been the non-annexation regime that most invaders did not even try to obtain international consent for their conquests. For some the solution was to open negotiations aimed at restoring the status quo ante, as happened e.g between India and Pakistan back in 1966 and 1971. Others pretended that their continued presence was a temporary matter to be settled by eventual negotiations; whereas others still set up “independent” republics as the Russians did following their conflicts with Georgia and the Ukraine.
Now this regime, imperfect as it may be, is in danger. Not because some half-assed dictatorship has violated it; but because the most powerful country on earth seems determined to put it aside. Two early signs of this were President Trump’s recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights back in 2017 and 2019. Now he is going further still, announcing his intention to recognize its sovereignty over large parts of the West Bank as well. Whatever this means for Israel and the Palestinians—and I strongly suspect that, “on the ground,” as Israelis say, a long, long time will have to pass ere it comes to mean anything—from the point of view of international law it is a defeat.
A defeat of everything legal. Of everything decent. Of everything good. And also, I am afraid, of much that is Israeli as well.
