Justin Schwartz wrote:
> Even the PLO and the PA have recognized Israel's right to exist...
Has the Palestinian Authority recognized Israel's right to exist?
My belief is that it--if belief can validly be ascribed to an organization--*believes* that it has not, and--if intentionality can validly be ascribed to an organization--has no intention of doing so. But I also believe that it *might* have, and that all of us need to work to turn the possibility that it has into a certainty that it did so some time ago.
If you surf on over to the website of the PLO Permanent Observer Mission to the United Nations, and look for the text of the Palestine National Charter, you find a text written in 1968. Among other things, it says that:
Article 1: Palestine is the homeland of the Arab
Palestinian people; it is an indivisible part of the Arab
homeland, and the Palestinian people are an integral part
of the Arab nation.
Article 2: Palestine, with the boundaries it had during the
British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit.
Article 3: The Palestinian Arab people possess the legal right
to their homeland and have the right to determine their destiny
after achieving the liberation of their country in accordance with
their wishes and entirely of their own accord and will.
Article 4: The Palestinian identity is a genuine, essential, and inherent
characteristic; it is transmitted from parents to children. The Zionist
occupation and the dispersal of the Palestinian Arab people, through the
disasters which befell them, do not make them lose their Palestinian
identity and their membership in the Palestinian community, nor do
they negate them.
Article 5: The Palestinians are those Arab nationals who, until 1947,
normally resided in Palestine regardless of whether they were
evicted from it or have stayed there. Anyone born, after that date,
of a Palestinian father - whether inside Palestine or outside it - is
also a Palestinian.
Article 6: The Jews who had normally resided in Palestine until the
beginning of the Zionist invasion will be considered Palestinians...
Article 19: The partition of Palestine in 1947, and the establishment
of the state of Israel are entirely illegal, regardless of the passage of
time, because they were contrary to the will of the Palestinian people
and its natural right in their homeland, and were inconsistent with
the principles embodied in the Charter of the United Nations,
particularly the right to self-determination.
Article 20: The Balfour Declaration, the Palestine Mandate, and
everything that has been based on them, are deemed null and void.
Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are
incompatible with the facts of history and the conception of what
constitutes statehood. Judaism, being a religion, is not an
independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation
with an identity of their own; they are citizens of the states to
which they belong.
Article 21: The Arab Palestinian people, expressing themselves
by armed Palestinian revolution, reject all solutions which are
substitutes for the total liberation of Palestine and reject all
proposals aimed at the liquidation of the Palestinian cause, or
at its internationalization....
This does not sound like a recognition of Israel. It sounds like a call for the destruction of Israel and the expulsion of all Jews who cannot trace their ancestry back to the old pre-1850 Yishuv.
Why, then, the belief that the PLO and the PA have recognized Israel's right to exist?
Because of certain letters written by and undertakings made by Yassir Arafat and others, and because of a 1996 meeting at which the Palestine National Council agreed: "A. To abrogate the provisions of the Palestine National Charter that contradict the letters exchanged between Chairman Yasser Arafat and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of September 9 & 10 1993. B. To mandate the legal committee of the PLO to present a new text of the Palestine National Charter."
So the question arises: are the resolutions of the 1996 meeting performative utterances? Do they by virtue of their existence repeal the provisions of the 1968 charter that are not consistent with various letters and undertakings made by Yassir Arafat and others? You can say that they do, and are. And under this interpretation the Palestine National Charter is no longer its 1968 text, but is instead some other, different text that nobody has written down but that is nevertheless very real and that recognizes Israel's right to exist. Under this interpretation, the PLO and the PA have recognized Israel's right to exist.
The alternative position is that the resolutions of the 1996 meeting are *not* performative utterances. Since the 1968 text of the Palestine National Charter contains no provisions for its amendment, it cannot be amended by any meetings, authorities, or councils acting under and deriving their authority by virtue of the Charter, but can only be amended by the equivalent of a constitutional convention. Under this alternative interpretation, the most that can be said is that the 1996 meeting was a call for such a constitutional convention and for a committee to prepare a new text for the convention to ratify. This has not happened. Until it happens, the 1968 text remains the text of the Palestine National Charter. And, by the simplest of legal principles, any letters written or undertakings made by officials or authorities of Palestine that contradict the charter--especially the charter's positions that Palestine is one and indivisible with the boundaries of the British Mandate, that only Jews who can trace their ancestry to the pre-1850 Yishuv are citizens of Palestine, and that the Zionist Entity is an illegal pirate organization--are null and void. Under this interpretation, the PLO and the PA have not recognized Israel's right to exist.
As a liberal constitutionalist, I cannot help but believe that the alternative position is by far the stronger. But whatever Kant may have said, liberal constitutional principles are *not* engraved in the deep fabric of the universe. As Andrew Marvell wrote:
"Though Justice against Fate complain,
And plead the ancient rights in vain:
But those do hold or break
As men are strong or weak."
And I can find no *reason* to be a liberal constitutionalist if it is not useful and convenient to be such. "Fiat justitia, ruat caelum" is a principle that does not appeal to me in the least. Thus, in this context, it is convenient--in the interest of peace, human happiness, prosperity, and not having 3 to 30 million people die horrible deaths in the first twenty-first century war waged using weapons of mass destruction--for us to say that the PLO and PA *have* recognized Israel's right to exist. If enough of us do that, then retrospectively the first interpretation will turn out to be true.
So although I think Justin Schwartz is doing a *good thing* when he states that the PLO and PA have recognized Israel's right to exist, I think he has not told the "truth"--or, rather, that all of us who by our actions will retrospectively decide whether the 1996 meeting's utterances were performative or not will in the end decide whether he has spoken the truth or not.
And I have to point out that there are many, many people who want the 1996 meeting's utterances not to be performative, and who want the PLO and the PA to continue to work for the total destruction of Israel. One such person is Yassir Arafat. Remember what he said in South Africa in 1994:
This agreement--I am not considering it more
than the agreement between our prophet Mohammed
and the Quraysh. And you remember, Caliph Omar
had refused this agreement and considering the
agreement of the very low class. But Mohammed
had accepted it and we, are accepting now this
peace accord.
The truce between Mohammed and the Quraysh arranged in 628 was for ten years. Less than 2 years later, however, when Muslim forces were sufficiently strong, the Quraysh were defeated by the Muslims and Mecca captured.
Brad DeLong, who is not certain whether today is his day to be a Utilitarian, a Post-Modernist, a Sewer Diver for Silver Linings, or a Realist
This is a great contribution, Professor Delong. Analyses of the Palestinian politics are very interesting and useful. Visionary ones (like this one) are in short supply.
Yet, I just wished crisp analyses of the Israeli and Jewish politics were published as often. It would help clear the reasons why no Israeli primer minister has dared to even slow down the pace of settlement in Palestinian territories.
I recall meeting recently on campus with an old friend of my father, Emmanuel Sharon, to whom goes the merit of putting together the shock-therapy that sucessfully stoped the Israelian hyper-inflation. Being able to talk with this veteran economist was no small honor for me. Luck had it that his son was on Sabbatical in Berkeley.
Our last conversation centered on the Arab nostalgy about the Otoman Empire and how any settlement with Israel can never be presented as permanent to Palestinians (even if in practice it can be negotiated almost as such.) A lack of understanding of this subtle nuance is one of the things Emmanuel Sharon thought had prevented peace from making more progress.
I was delighted about learning so much about the dynamics of Arab politics. But in a way, I was left very frustrated. Why did I learn so little from this veteran Israeli economist about Israel and Jewish politics? Is it a tabou or simply agaist Israel's strategical interests to explain and discuss these things?
Oh well, I guess I'll have to ask my Arab Israeli Berkeley alumnus, although I am not sure he will do as good a job as Mr. Sharon could have done. Besides, I guess I just like people to speak for themselves.
Posted by: Jean-Philippe Stijns on July 9, 2002 10:20 AMExcellent. Nevertheless, the problem (Israel's security) are of course Arab minds not declarations.
Posted by: Ted Siman on September 25, 2002 04:05 AM