Israel's "right to exist": does it exist?

Israel's "right to exist": does it exist?
by Scott Burchill
28 July 2006

Prime Minister Howard argues that "until there is an acceptance in the entire Arab world … of Israel's right to exist and an embrace of the two state solution, we're never going to have a lasting peace" in the Middle East. The refusal of Syria, Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas "to accept Israel's right to exist … is still at the core of the whole dispute."

But does such a "right to exist" actually exist, for Israel or any other state? It's an important question which international lawyers are reluctant to answer.

According to some theorists from the "realist" tradition of international relations, states have no "right" to exist because such a right cannot be enforced by a higher authority than the state. There are no guarantees of survival in this world, as Yugoslavia, the USSR and East Germany, to name only three recent political disappearances, discovered. Acknowledging a state's right to exist or insisting on such a pledge from others is therefore a meaningless gesture.

States extend diplomatic recognition to each other for a range of reasons, including the demarcation of boundaries, resource exploitation, and treaty co-operation. Much of international law is based on mutual recognition. However this is merely an acknowledgement of a state's existence not its "right to exist."

There's a difference. There is scant evidence of the phrase "right to exist" before the mid-1970s, when the US and Israel began demanding that the Palestinians recognise Israel's "right to exist" - that is, not only accept a two-state settlement, but recognize the legitimacy of their expulsion, something they will never do just as Mexico doesn't recognise the right of the US to exist on Mexican lands north of the Rio Grande.

It is likely the phrase was invented after several Arab states and the PLO recognised Israel's existence within secure and recognised borders, as in UN Security Council Resolution 242, but with a Palestinian state accorded the same rights. These are probably the only rights recognised in the international system in this case, rather than an abstract "right to exist" for either Israel or Palestine.

By raising the bars impossibly high, the US and Israel evaded the fact that they alone were barring the international consensus on a two-state settlement, which has been true since 1976 (when the US vetoed the first two-state UN Security Council resolution, supported by the Arab states and the PLO), until the present. The one week in Taba in January 2001 is about the only deviation from this line, and Israel called off the negotiations when real progress was being made.

Both Israel and the Palestinians have fed off a national self-determination/sovereignty discourse for decades to make their respective cases. But Israel's insistence that its Palestinian interlocutors acknowledge Israel's "right to exist" as a prerequisite to negotiations on "land for peace," rather than as part of a just and final settlement of the conflict, has always been problematic. Unsurprisingly, the Palestinians have been reluctant to formalise their own dispossession, especially in the face of a Zionist discourse which doesn't mention reciprocal Arab rights or existence.

To summarise again, while states are certainly recognised within the international system, their "right to exist" is not. This is as true of Australia, the US and China as it is of Israel.

As an "unapologetic supporter," Mr Howard selects an historical context which casts Israel in the best possible light by suggesting that if only its enemies acknowledged its legitimacy, and issued formal statements about its "right to exist," peace in the region could be found. The onus is on the Arab world - to effectively surrender their case prior to any negotiated settlement.

He carefully avoids mentioning the illegal and brutal occupation of Arab lands, the US and Israel's long-standing rejection of a two-state solution which they now claim to champion, and the fact that Israel's overwhelming military superiority means it does not face an existential threat - despite the Prime Minister's absurd suggestion that Hezbollah's missiles threaten Israel's very survival.

Echoing White House talking points and siding with one party in a complex historical dispute will only deepen the divisions between the West and the rest. Rather than invoke a novel right of existence for one protagonist, both the Middle East and Australian diplomacy would be better served by a speedy cessation of hostilities negotiated through middle powers uncontaminated by partisanship.

Dr Scott Burchill is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Deakin University and a contributor to Australia and the Middle East: A Front-Line Relationship, to be published by I.B. Tauris in September.