Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Even the tiniest detail is litigated in newspaper headlines when it comes to the Israeli government. Many news outlets reported that “some” or “dozens” of delegates walked out of the UN hall where the General Assembly had gathered as Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu prepared to address them.
The truth is, almost everyone left, so that Netanyahu addressed mostly empty chairs. I don’t know why the editors who write these silly headlines think they can pull the wool over peoples’ eyes. We have video:
UN delegates walk out of Benjamin Netanyahu’s United Nations general assembly speech
Dozens of delegates walk out of Benjamin Netanyahu's United Nations speech
He was heckled in the chamber, and then heckled by New Yorkers outside. If Zohran Mamdani wins the mayoral contest in New York, Netanyahu won’t be able to come to the UN because he will be arrested as a war criminal by NYPD.
Moreover, although the press reports what Netanyahu says, no one on the diplomatic circuit seems to take it seriously. He full-throatedly rejected any attempt at a two-state solution, saying that establishing a Palestinian state would be “suicide” for Israel.
The implication for Netanyahu, whose family is from Poland, is that a recognized Palestinian state would somehow destroy Israel.
But how? Not by military action, surely. The Israelis have made short work of their military rivals in the region. With extensive American help they forced countries much larger than themselves, such as Egypt, to conclude a peace treaty. They are constantly bombing Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and have hit Iraq and Iran and Qatar in the past year. They bomb whomever they wish whenever they wish. Why would a Palestinian state be more formidable than Egypt or Iran?
I cannot know for sure, but I think what Netanyahu means by the phrase is that a recognized Palestinian state would rob Israel of its legitimacy.
Again, I can’t see how that would work. International legitimacy is bestowed by the United Nations and the great powers. The establishment of a Palestinian state would not cause Israel to be kicked out of the UN. Actually, what might cause such an expulsion to happen is Netanyahu’s course of genocide against the Palestinians. Legitimacy is at least somewhat a matter of public opinion, and the vast walk-out of delegates at the UN General Assembly demonstrates that it is Netanyahu’s atrocities, not a Palestinian state, that has robbed Israel of legitimacy in the eyes of many.
But if we granted Netanyahu’s premise, then what? It implies that 14 million Palestinians must remain stateless. US Supreme Court justice Earl Warren defined citizenship as the “right to have rights.” Without citizenship in a state, people have no real human rights, as we easily can see in Gaza for the past two years, and in the West Bank if we look. If you’re stateless, you don’t really own your house. Other people can kick you out of it and move in. Or it can be arbitrarily bombed.
The Israeli Right might say that someone else should give the Palestinians citizenship. But who? Lebanon will not, since most Palestinians are Sunni Arabs while 10 percent or so are Christians, and giving them Lebanese citizenship would throw the demographic balance of religious denominations in the country — Sunni, Shiite, Maronite Christian, Eastern Orthodox, Druze & etc. — out of kilter. Since voting, marriage, burial and various sorts of rights are apportioned by religious denomination, such a new and dramatic imbalance would destabilize the country.
The same principle applies to Jordan. Syria never gave the Palestinians citizenship and won’t now. Egypt? Surely you jest. There is an Israeli meme that they are all just “Arabs” and Palestinians should melt away into their neighbors. But Palestinians have come to have a national identity, as have the others, and they aren’t just “Arabs.” Only 50% of Egyptians in polling even consider themselves “Arabs.” Ironically, Israeli propaganda parrots the pan-Arabism of Gamal Abdel Nasser in the 1950s, which is now passé and never showed an ability to roll back national identities. Abdel Nasser’s attempt to establish a union of Egypt and Syria crashed and burned in only 3 years. Arabic is a language, not a nation, and many different nations and ethnicities speak it. Just because the British and Americans both speak English does not mean that the British would be happy about a hypothetical influx of millions of American refugees.
File photo of Benjamin Netanyahu from 2015. Public domain. Via Picryl.
So Netanyahu’s point of view is impractical, and his stance implies permanent statelessness for Palestinians.
After tens of millions of people were made stateless in the interwar period of the twentieth century, the United Nations has worked to ensure that no one should be without citizenship in a state. I believe the UN estimates the number of stateless at 12 million worldwide, and that Palestinians make up the largest single group.
The number of Palestinian children between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean equals the number of Israeli Jewish children. So why should the latter grow up to have the right to have rights but the former should not?
If the only way Israel can exist is to make the Palestinians stateless forever, to wipe out a people, then it raises questions about whether Israel in this form, as a militant Jewish ethno-state, is worth it. Is Netanyahu saying the quiet part out loud and admitting that Israel’s existence requires a genocide of the Palestinians?
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