In his recent address to the U.N. General Assembly, President Barack Obama denounced Islamic radicalism, and, in the same breath, praised Palestinian statehood. In these oddly contradictory remarks, he then added that too many Israelis are ready to abandon peace. “And that’s something,” he warned further, “worthy of reflection within Israel.”
This seeming afterthought was gratuitous, and way off the mark. Most Israelis are substantially more aware than Obama of the evident similarities and connections between the Islamic State group, al-Qaida, Fatah and Hamas. Unlike the American president, they also understand that a future Palestinian state – any Palestinian state – would quickly become just another institutionalized national source of worldwide terror and jihad. Unlike him, these Israelis can easily recognize the absurd irony of opposing a jihadi Islamic State group, while simultaneously endorsing a jihadi “Palestine.”
At some point, perhaps, at least after they are finally able to stop abducting and murdering each other, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas will proceed to advance a joint plan for establishing Palestinian sovereignty in the West Bank (Judea/Samaria), Gaza and East Jerusalem. This announcement, while plainly contrary to certain codified expectations of the Palestinian Authority’s Oslo Agreement obligations to Israel, would nonetheless promptly elicit the enthusiastic support of Obama. Such support, moreover, would severely undermine authoritative international law at several different and important levels. Most obvious, in this jurisprudential regard, would be its consequential indifference to the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, a core document in force since 1934, which remains the governing treaty on statehood under international law, and which stipulates, precisely, certain fixed and indispensable criteria of legal sovereignty.
On Nov. 29, 2012, the General Assembly voted to upgrade the Palestinian Authority to the status of a “nonmember observer state.” This was not, in any fashion, a bestowal of sovereignty or “full legal personality.” Historically, the president ought to be reminded, there has never ever been a state of Palestine, nor was such a state created by the U.N. in 2012 or at any other time.