Since Netanyahu, whose own slick administration disingenuously strengthened the hand of Palestinian terrorists, most Israelis have insistently kept up a hollow refrain for Palestinian "autonomy." But the Palestinians do know the difference between autonomy and sovereignty, and they will have nothing of the former. For Netanyahu and his American public relations team, autonomy became a unilateral and uninspired mantra, a vain and pitiable incantation heard by no one outside of Tel-Aviv or Hollywood.
Over time, of course, Palestine will energetically enlarge to include what remains of "Occupied Palestine." No one really ought to be at all surprised. Let us be fair. The Palestinian Authority has always been completely honest about its annihilatory intentions. Even today, even after "disengagement," its maps of "Palestine" still include all of Israel. Israel`s violent disappearance has always been the utterly undisguised PLO/PA/Hamas objective. Should this happen, it will be the direct result of legal brilliance on the part of the Arabs and legal indifference and/or incompetence on the part of the Israelis. The number of capable international lawyers and law professors employed by the State of Israel to defend the state jurisprudentially is small.
Nonetheless, over the years, a number of cases in United States federal courts have authoritatively rejected the idea that the PLO is in any way the core of an independent state. Israeli lawyers and policymakers might at one time have been able to refer to such cases in support of an argument denying Palestinian statehood. But not now. Today, after Oslo, after the "Road Map," after "disengagement," after persistent Israeli capitulations under multiple pretenses of negotiation, Israel will simply have to accept Palestinian legal arguments. The civilized world will allow nothing else. Moreover, history will record such acceptance as just one more expression of Israel`s largely self-inflicted mutilation and disappearance.
Truly, one must admire the Palestinians for the dexterity with which they have successfully undermined the Israelis. For years they have listened and learned and watched and persevered and murdered. For their leaders (PA, Hamas — it makes no difference), murdering Jewish children and their mothers on buses and in ice-cream parlors has proven to be an enormously sound geopolitical strategy. After all, the UN`s International Court of Justice has ruled that what is mainly objectionable in the Arab-Israeli conflict is not Arab terrorism but Israel`s security fence to protect herself against terrorism.
To the United Nations and the civilized international community, the inconveniencing of Palestinian olive growers is surely a greater violation of essential human rights than the explosion of Israeli civilians. Jewish blood is less sacred than Arab olive trees. Here we are reminded that there is nothing new under the sun.
Unlike the Israelis, who still haven`t taken the trouble to understand and use relevant international law, the Palestinians have continuously engaged certain first-rate American professors of international law as policy advisors. While the Israelis have been busily developing complex weapon systems that will be entirely beside the point in the coming catastrophic war, the Palestinians — lacking Israeli self-destructiveness — have been thinking and consulting and killing.
While Israeli professors of international law worry conscientiously about protecting Arab rights from assorted "Zionist infringements," Arab scholars worry about the very same issue. For the Arab scholars, of course, Jihad is not a problem, but rather an expression of justice. Not surprisingly, Jewish rights to survival in Israel, already self-diminished in law, will be lost materially in the now inevitable war.
Returning to the Montevideo Convention, all states are legally equal, enjoy the same rights, and have equal capacity in their exercise. The moment that the PA declares a State of Palestine, the new state will be the full juridical equal of Israel. When Israelis begin to object fearfully to Palestinian claims for more territory — territory well within the extant State of Israel — the world will listen more than politely to the Palestinians. Palestine, after all, will now be fully equal to Israel under international law — courtesy of every government of Israel from Rabin to Sharon.
It is too late to change all this. But Israel can still learn some important lessons from its many inexcusable mistakes. In the final analysis, Israel will have to recall the very reason for its founding, its only raison d`etre as a state. Above all else, Israel must become an authentically Jewish State, not merely a stand-in for Los Angeles. Before it can act to save itself, Israel will have to first recall its special place among the nations as well as its special responsibility to ensure Jewish survival.
Article compliments of Profess Louis Rene Beres and "The Unity Coalition for Israel."