On Tuesday, when Norway was the first to announce it would now recognize the State of Palestine, many could not help but notice that it was none other than Oslo that broke the ice: the city where the political agreements between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the State of Israel were concluded in August 1993.
Less than a month later, the agreements were publicly ratified with the handshake between Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin at Camp David. The Intifada was on its last legs: the Oslo Accords seemed to mark its end. Very few at the time sensed the pitfall; the prevailing emotion was joy at the start of a path that was thought to be irreversible.
Some interpreted that handshake as a victory for the Intifada, but it was where its goals went to die. Because Oslo did not give rise to what Palestinians had dreamed of, and still do: not so much a “state” as freedom. The right to self-determination.
This offers us the right perspective to interpret the decision by Norway, Ireland and Spain (with Slovenia and Malta expected to follow) to recognize the State of Palestine. With this change by Oslo, Dublin and Madrid, the list of countries that are willing to recognize Palestine is up to 143. Two-thirds of the planet; and still, a State of Palestine does not exist. It does not exist because it lacks an indispensable element, namely self-determination.
The belief that the freedom to choose for oneself requires the founding of a state is the dominant conviction in liberal systems, but it does not follow with necessity. The idea that the nation-state is the way out of colonialism is even less obvious, all the more so in a region that has only taken up that model as a result of colonial mandates, with countries created by drawing straight lines on a map where there were no borders before. The nation-state model – forged with political elites imposed from outside along with rough-hewn unique “identities” – has been a disaster for the Middle East.
Palestinians should be allowed to decide for themselves, moving past the idea – predominant in Washington and Brussels – that any possible entity could only arise from negotiations between the parties, implying that its legitimacy would be granted by Israel. Not a liberation, but a concession.
This has been the narrative of Israeli governments over the decades, so much so that they constantly lay down diktats to postpone the process indefinitely (a decade ago, Netanyahu called them “footnotes”): we are willing to negotiate, but some points will never be on the table.
This includes Jerusalem, for instance, considered a single and indivisible capital by Israel’s basic laws. It also includes the borders of a possible state, whose control would remain with Israel. It also includes the colonies, deemed impossible to dismantle; as well as the right of return of seven million refugees (66 percent of the entire Palestinian people).
So, what state are we talking about? What state is being recognized? The legitimate existence of a state is recognized when there is an existing and already-sovereign entity. But this is not the case: the 1967 territories (West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem) are under occupation.
Thus, the recognition from other states becomes a political move with which one hopes to pressure Israel, as well as the United States and its veto power – which it used in April the Security Council resolution calling for making Palestine a full member of the UN. The need to overcome this blockade is the reason behind this push by chanceries and parties which, in Italy as elsewhere, have been insisting for months on a two-state solution while a hundred people are being killed each day in Gaza, more land is being confiscated in the West Bank and Palestinians in Israel remain second-class citizens.
In the face of the ruling of the International Court of Justice that it is “plausible” that Israel is committing genocide and what Amnesty and Human Rights Watch have called an “apartheid regime,” it would be more urgent to adopt other measures: international sanctions, a military embargo, a break in diplomatic relations. And it would be urgent to start a real process of decolonization: if there is no full self-determination, the Palestinians will end up with a state in name only and an apartheid paradoxically legitimized by the rest of the world.
