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by Peter A. Belmont / 2011-02-20
© 2011 Peter Belmont
Is Israel-Palestine one state already? Does Israel “occupy” itself when it “occupies” Gaza and the West Bank?
The war of 1945-50 began when Israel unilaterally used terrorism to eject the British from their supervisory role in Mandatory Palestine. Upon Britain’s decision to withdraw and enactment of the UNGA-181 (partition), the Palestinian Jews began a full scale war against the Palestinian Arabs. They had determined that they would use terrorism and then war as tools to acquire a Jewish State from the unwilling Palestinian Arabs, and the war, when it began, was essentially a war of expulsion.
To the extent that this war (before the Arab states entered) was between different factions among the inhabitants of Palestine, it was a civil war. It was a war for control of the land and control (or expulsion) of the Arab people.
What is the significance of the fact that it was a “civil war”?
Legally, a civil war that does not seek to partition a land is merely a war to effect a change of governance. In the American civil war, for example, the failure of the Southern states to prevail allowed the United States to continue as a single and pre-existing country. The Palestinian Jews never declared a purpose to secede from Palestine (and nor did the Palestinian Arabs). One state it was under the Mandate and one state it remained after being renamed “Israel”.
When Jordan and Egypt captured and controlled the West Bank and Gaza, respectively, they were “belligerent occupiers” inside Palestine. The land-area of Palestine was unchanged although the de facto governance was changed. The Jewish capture of the rest of Palestine constituted a change of governance, the British government and army having left and having been replaced with a Jewish government and army. At no point had the Palestinian Arabs ever established governance by their own government or army.
Today, as since 1967, the land-area of Mandatory Palestine is once again under the governance and army of a single country, Israel. Israel has re-captured the lands, Gaza and West Bank, which had from 1948-1967, been separated (in terms of effective de facto governance) from Palestine (renamed as Israel).
I assume that when one country recaptures from belligerent occupiers territory that was part of its proper territory and has also executed peace treaties with the former occupiers—as Israel did with Egypt and Jordan—then, in such a case, the land reverts to its proper owners (here the Palestinian people—Jewish and Arab).
If this is so, then we now see a single country, Israel-Palestine, ruled by the government and army of Israel. Not yet democratic.
It is in a strange state regarding expulsion. To the extent that expulsion is a project of the Jewish Palestinians, it is clear that the expulsion of Arab Palestinians from the land of Palestine (called Israel) is incomplete. If and to the extent that expulsion is a project of the Palestinian Arabs, it is clear that the expulsion of the Jewish Palestinians from Palestine has not even started.
If the project of expulsion begun by the Palestinian Jews is illegal at international law (as suggested by UNGA-194, paragraph 11)—or becomes illegal—then the Palestinian Arab refugees from 1948, with their descendants, should be allowed to return to Palestine (now called Israel), their homeland, their only homeland.
Israel cheerfully calls itself a democracy, and yet a large part of its present inhabitants are not invited to become voting citizens (the Arabs living in the occupied territories) and a large number of Palestinian Arab refugees (from 1948, from 1967) are not even permitted (or invited) to become residents much less to become voting citizens of Palestine (called Israel). A strange democracy, indeed!
I have been describing an argument for the proposition that there has never been more than one state of Palestine (or Israel; and these are the same), and what has changed has merely been the identity of the government and the name of the country, but not the identity of the land.
I have not heard it said that the country of Palestine, which existed with its own passports and money and postage stamps under the Mandate, ever ceased to exist. When the government of Israel presented itself to the UN for membership, it did so without declaring its boundaries, presumably because its boundaries were then unclear—due to ceasefires which fell short of being peace treaties. The most natural understanding is that the government, calling itself the government of Israel, was the right and proper government—by right of conquest in a civil war—of Palestine.
Apparently contrary to the view that Israel-Palestine is already a single state, there is the political/juridical fact that the International Court of Justice and UNSC have both referred to a military occupation.
It has been clear that Israel is the “occupier”. It is less clear what plays the role of an independent “occupyee”. Is it Egypt that is “occupied” in Gaza, and Jordan which is “occupied” in the West Bank? Well, as I understand it, the Israeli/Jordanian peace treaty firmly establishes that Jordan makes no claim to proprietorship over the West Bank, so that if anything is “occupied” there, it is either a separate and inchoate Palestine or else Israel-Palestine, occupying itself. I am confident that the same holds true of the Israeli/Egyptian peace treaty.
Does international law make room for a nation to “occupy” parts of its own territory and, thereby, to be (theoretically) subject to the international law of belligerent occupation (especially the Fourth Geneva Convention)?
And does it matter?
Palestinians might worry about Gaza and West Bank losing their status as “occupied territory” for fear of losing the human rights protections embodied in the international law and purporting to be protected thereby, but, what with the 43-year refusal of the international community to take any steps whatever to enforce that law, it does not seem to have been any advantage to Palestinians living under Israeli military supervision. It should be recalled that Israel maintained a military supervision of the Palestinian Arab population of pre-1967 Israel—replete with military governors, military law, etc., from 1948 to 1966 (see: Palestinian Education In Israel: The Legacy of the Military Government), so that the purely mental change from Gaza and West Bank as “occupied” parts of something not part of Israel (e.g., parts of an inchoate but separate Palestine) to “occupied” parts of Israel itself (or, a bit worse, to non-occupied parts of a single Israel-Palestine itself) may not be any sort of change whatsoever in the reality of the lives of the Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank.
If Gaza and the West Bank were, somehow, to be juridically recognized as parts of a single Israel-Palestine, the residents would naturally ask to become voting citizens, and the government would—to start with—refuse this. A question arises, whether Israel’s quixotic need to describe itself as a democracy would evaporate upon the need to become a majority-non-Jewish democratic state.
One also wonders whether the violent depredations of the most extreme Israeli settlers against Palestinian Arabs living in the West Bank would increase once the entire area were juridically recognized as being part of Israel. And would the mistreatment of Gaza by Israel change upon juridical recognition that Gaza is part of Israel-Palestine and not part of something else (i.e., the inchoate Palestine).
Friends of the “One State Solution” might wish to discuss this idea.
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