24 August 2008
Louis René Beres
Professor of International Law
Department of Political Science
Purdue University
West Lafayette IN 47907
USA
TEL 765/494-4189
FAX 765/494-0833
E MAIL lberes@purdue.edu
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With many urgent issues now surfacing in the campaign, few are more important than the next president’s position on “Palestine.” To date, however, neither candidate has been open on this issue. Would one or the other (or both) likely continue the current president’s commitment to a Palestinian state? Significantly, any such continuance would enlarge the terror threat to western democracies in general, and to the United States in particular. The creation of this 23rd Arab state would also heighten the growing prospect of regional war.
Even before George W. Bush, the formal US mantra had called for a “Two-State Solution.” Yet, the official maps of the Palestinian National Authority (an “Authority” with no proper electoral basis and no clearly fixed territory) still include Israel only as a part of Palestine. This explicit inclusion refers to all of Israel proper – not merely to Judea, Samaria (West Bank) and Gaza.
The so-called Road Map to Peace in the Middle East still favored by President Bush offers a devious and ironic cartography. Absolutely everything about this plan is founded upon Israel’s disappearance. Indeed, not even the irreconcilable and bloody division between incessantly warring Palestinian factions has diminished the overriding commitment of all these factions to Israel’s demolition. Less obvious but equally incontestable and ironic is the uniform Palestinian dedication to America’s destabilization.
Why haven’t we learned? Each Palestinian faction remains loyal to an unrevised strategy for “liberation of all Palestinian territory.” This “Phased Plan” was first adopted by the Palestinian National Council in Cairo in June 1974. Any Palestinian state would be hospitable to penetration by and interaction with assorted Jihadist terror groups, including al-Qaeda. In fact, such cooperation is already on full and barely-disguised display in Hamas-controlled Gaza.
A Palestinian state would aim to undermine the essential security interests of the United States, its friends and its allies. Most perilous of all would be the inevitable competition for control of such a fragile and anarchic state by the various Sunni Arab regimes, now being armed by Washington, and by Shiite Iran, now being armed by Russia. Here, candidates McCain and Obama should be made aware of certain plausible (but still unrecognized) linkages between a Palestinian state and nuclear war.
A Palestinian state would have no proper authority under international law. Whatever its mode of self-declaration, any such presumption of Palestinian sovereignty could not satisfy the authoritative expectations of statehood. Candidates McCain and Obama should understand and acknowledge that every state must satisfy four specific requirements of the 1934 Montevideo Treaty: (1) a permanent population; (2) a defined territory; (3) a government; and (4) the capacity to enter into relations with other states. Although the Palestinian Authority could satisfy none of these criteria, it will argue otherwise. Almost certainly, this will involve incorrect legal references to “fundamental rights of self‑determination and national liberation.”
The right of statehood under international law is never contingent upon goodness. For better or for worse, there are no moral or ethical considerations that must ever be taken into account in the granting of sovereignty. This means that the openly-declared and indisputable Palestinian goal of Israel’s forcible destruction and America’s incremental destabilization will have no legal bearing on creating a Palestinian state. Nor will unending and widespread Palestinian acceptance of violence affect their sought-after sovereignty. International law does not insist upon any standard of decency for aspiring states, not even the most rudimentary acceptance of peaceful coexistence. While it is true that such acceptance is required for membership in the United Nations, the logically prior expectations of statehood are less stringent.
In law, all that matters in establishing statehood are certain identifiable demographic, geographic and political facts. It is these particular facts on the ground, defined at Montevideo – not the codified and far-reaching Palestinian indifference to comity and civility – that would now make any Palestinian declaration of statehood illegitimate.
In assessing Palestinian claims and the Montevideo Treaty , McCain and Obama should also note certain special American imperatives. International law is a part of the law of the United States. Article VI of the Constitution, which incorporates treaties into our own law, expresses these core agreements as “the supreme law of the land.”
A Palestinian state remains contrary to America’s strategic interests, and to the binding claims of both national and international law. It should therefore be rejected by both presidential candidates, quickly, credibly and unequivocally.
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