The mythical underpinnings of Palestinian statehood

Because it codifies the principles that govern statehood and sovereignty, the Montevideo Convention is a foundational document in international law. It also reflects the principles of equality among states and the importance of peaceful relations between them.

Signed on December 26, 1933, in Montevideo, Uruguay, the Convention established the following four criteria for statehood:

1. A clearly defined territory over which it exercises effective control;
2. A permanent population composed of individuals who reside within its territory on an ongoing basis;
3. A functioning government capable of maintaining law and order, the provision of public services, and representation of the interests of its population;
4. The capacity to engage in diplomatic relations and allied interactions with other states.

Mark Carney arbitrarily and unilaterally announced Canada’s recognition of Palestine

Prime Minister Mark Carney ignored three Convention criteria, either out of sheer ignorance or a deliberate rejection of their application, when he arbitrarily and unilaterally announced Canada’s recognition of Palestine as a sovereign state on Sunday, September 21.

This recognition of Palestinian statehood also contradicts Canada’s support since 1947 of a two-state solution as part of a negotiated settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Canada’s decision was also based on “commitments to Canada” by the corrupt and incompetent Palestinian Authority to introduce much-needed reforms, including general elections next year, disarming Hamas and complete demilitarization, a pipe dream at best.

Carney claimed that Canada’s new policy is part of a coordinated international effort to preserve the two-state vision, rejecting criticism by political opponents and Jewish groups that such recognition legitimizes or rewards terrorism and compromises Israel, its people, and their security.

Not only did Carney bypass parliament in making this announcement, he repudiated all but one of the Convention’s criteria, the existence of a “permanent population.” He also ignored other Gaza-specific conditions like the establishment of a democratic government and disarmament.

Still, more than 150 countries now recognize Palestinian statehood. It’s unclear what the next steps will be, given that many commentators see recognition as largely symbolic and performative rather than substantive and binding.

This gratuitous move is not only a clear repudiation of Canadian diplomatic values, but it is also best seen as a transparent political ploy to gain support from antisemitic Canadian voters. Conversely, the announcement is meaningless in the broader context of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, given that Canada lacks meaningful international diplomatic influence.

The Peel Commission concluded that partition between a small Israeli state and a much larger Muslim one was the only solution

Carney’s decision also ignores the elementary fact that there has never been an autonomous Palestinian state in human history or pre-history. Indeed, Palestinian identity surged in near lockstep opposition to the re-creation in 1947-48 of the modern state of Israel by the United Nations, a body now controlled by Jew-hating countries hell bent on its destruction.

As the war between Israel and its many terrorist foes — Hamas, Hezbollah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Islamic Jihad, the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Houthis, the Muslim Brotherhood, and others whose overarching goal is the destruction of the only Jewish state in the world — grinds on, many deeply entrenched myths are barely being exposed. Three of these myths are that the Palestinians have always wanted a state of their own, Israel has always prevented the Palestinian people from achieving that goal, and Israel itself is an apartheid regime.

Those myths are bolstered by the relentless cry from dozens of nations that the Palestinians deserve a state of their own.

Except for a shift in Israeli public and official opinion following the genocidal invasion of Israel by Hamas and its supporters on October 7, 2023, the myth of Israeli opposition to the establishment of a Palestinian state is groundless because Israel has expressed its willingness to accept Palestinian statehood on several occasions: 1937, 1947-1948, 1967, 2000-2001, and 2007. But whenever statehood was offered, it was soundly rebuffed by a Palestinian leadership and its regional and global supporters who rejected any two-state solution that would see an Arab state next door to a Jewish one.

In 1937, for example, the British, who by then controlled much of the former Ottoman Empire, published the Palestine Royal Commission Report (also known as the Peel Commission Report).

That report called for a partition plan to resolve what it characterized as “irrepressible conflict … between two national communities within the narrow bounds of one small country.” The report also stated that given the intensity of the antisemitism of Arab and other Muslims, “national assimilation between Arabs and Jews is … ruled out.”

The Peel Commission concluded that partition between a small Israeli state and a much larger Muslim one was the only solution.

Israel’s enemies did not want a Palestinian state. Instead, they wanted there to be no Jewish state

Jews, both inside and outside the report’s two unconnected territories, reserved for a new state of Israel accepted the Peel partition plan. The Arabs said no, insisting instead that all of what was then called Palestine be placed under Arab control and that nearly all its Jews be deported — read “ethnically cleansed” — from that area because “this country cannot assimilate the Jews now in the country.”

Although not clearly stated by the Peel Commission, it seemed evident from the Arab reply that their aim was not independent statehood for the “Palestinians” but rather a deeply rooted antipathy to Jewish sovereignty over a small portion of the Biblical Promised Land where Jews had become the majority people by 1937.

After the conclusion of World War II, the United Nations also called for the partition of the area into two states, one for Arabs and one for Jews. Once more, this was rejected by the Arabs and accepted by the Jews.

Still, in 1948, sanctioned by the United Nations call for a separate Israeli state, the Jewish leadership declared statehood in the tiny area granted to it. As for the Arab leadership, the response was a genocidal war against the renewed state of Israel.

The resulting war of liberation saw Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon invading the new sovereign state of Israel, supported by Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Libya. The Arab armies aimed to eliminate the new Jewish state and exterminate its population in a Nazi-style extermination.

In short, Israel’s enemies did not want a Palestinian state. Instead, they wanted there to be no Jewish state.

The same intransigence characterized offers to negotiate a partition following the Six-Day War of 1967, the 2000-2001 attempted agreement spearheaded by American President Bill Clinton, and the 2007 deal offered by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Meanwhile, a refusal to share the land with the Jews is enshrined in the 2017 Hamas Charter, which reads:

“Palestine, which extends from the River Jordan in the east to the Mediterranean in the West and from Ras al-Naqurah in the north to Umm al-Rashrash in the south, is an integral territorial unit. It is the land and the home of the Palestinian people. The expulsion and banishment of the Palestinian people from their land and the establishment of the Zionist entity therein do not annul the right of the Palestinian people to their entire land and do not entrench any rights therein for the usurping Zionist entity.”

For nearly 13 centuries, from 638 to 1917 no separate administrative or socio-cultural entity called “Palestine” existed

Another reason for questioning the statehood denial myth involves the belief that the Palestinians are an ancient people who once had their own sovereign state that was stolen from them by other people, the latest one being the Jews of Israel.

History shows that this is false.

Before Israel, there was a British mandate, not a Palestinian state; before the British Mandate, there was the Ottoman Empire, not a Palestinian state; and before the Ottoman Empire, there were a dozen or so other states and empires governed the disputed territories, including the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, not a Palestinian state.

More particularly, since the destruction of the second kingdom of Judea (the southern half of the alleged “occupied territories”) in the second century, the land the Roman conquerors re-named Syria Palaestina (to obscure Jewish association with the land of Israel) has been governed by one foreign power after another. The name Syria Palaestina disappeared, and “Palestine,” the Gentile name for the land of Israel, ceased to exist as a separate entity after it became part of the Arab-Muslim empire in 638.

In short, for nearly 13 centuries, from 638 to 1917 (when the British took charge following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire headquartered in Turkey), no separate administrative or socio-cultural entity called “Palestine” existed.

Indeed, the Ottoman Turks, who ruled the Middle East from 1516 to 1917, regarded the geographical region of Palestine as part of Southern Syria. For most of human history, Palestine has only existed as a Western Christian term to describe the Jewish Holy Land and its Hebrew and Christian inhabitants. From the beginning of recorded history until nearly the present, neither foreigners nor residents recognized a unique people – other than the Jews themselves – called “Palestinians” living in a place called Palestine.

The absence before 1948 of a deep, historically substantiated Palestinian identity, apart from the occupation of lands that were always owned by outsiders such as the Ottoman Turks, is because there is no unique and separate Palestinian language, religion, nationality, or culture. The people who now call themselves Palestinians have slowly done so only since the beginning of the 20th century because their primary sense of identity is tied to Arab Muslim ideology and membership in localized lineages, clans, and tribal groups. A strong sense of pan-Arab identity and belief in Islam, not some fictitious ethnic identity, are what have consistently united the “Palestinians.”

The Palestinians have a far weaker claim to statehood than most of these age-old ethnicities, such as the Kurds, Tibetans, Chechens

None of this history has affected the widespread claim that, like all other peoples, the Palestinians deserve a state of their own.

However, there are thousands of unique ethnic groups today — peoples with distinct languages, cultures, religions, and histories that stretch back millennia — few of which have their own sovereign countries. The Palestinians have a far weaker claim to statehood than most of these age-old ethnicities, such as the Kurds, Tibetans, Chechens, and hundreds of other stateless people. These other age-old ethnicities, unlike the Palestinians, have never been granted statehood, let alone repeatedly turning it down.

Conversely, most Palestinians will only accept a one-state solution encompassing an apartheid-based Judenrein Palestinian state from the Jordon River to the Mediterranean Sea, a view that rejects the notion that European Jews have a right to a homeland in the area that is historical Palestine by denying the continuous occupation of the Promised Land by small and large groupings of Jewish people — despite repeated attempts at total ethnic cleansing — since well before the emergence of the United Monarchy of Israel and Judah over 3,000 years ago, as described in the Old Testament and confirmed by the archeological record.

Historical and factual ignorance or denial, Arab propaganda, left-liberal guilt, and outright antisemitism serve to legitimize a demand for a sovereign Palestinian state where none has ever existed. The claim of apartheid is only the latest charge in a well-organized, global effort to delegitimize a state whose modern existence was created not by lethal force, as were most nations of the world — including Canada to a certain extent — but by a democratic vote of the United Nations.

Finally, if Israel and the non-state Palestinian territories are part of an apartheid regime, so are many other countries regarding the status and treatment of their aboriginal and other ethnic minorities (not to mention women in Islamic states), including the indigenous peoples of Canada whose reserve system was employed as a model for apartheid in South Africa, more proof that Israel is always held to a higher and inexplicably anti-Semitic moral standard than any other nation on the face of the earth.