Palestinian statehood

[mAd_ScIeNtIsT]

Re: Palestinian statehood

@Minar_e_moor

I don’t know a whole about the past details of Palestine but I have some questions about current status:

1. It is a significant number of people living in a land mass - why do someone else have to accept or authorize them to be a country? Don’t we have many recent examples of sections of countries simply voting themselves into split up nations?

2. Is Israel saying Palestine cannot be a country and if so that it is a part of Israel? If so, why?

3. I can understand Jerusalem being an issue because of religious issues but can’t that be just an issue about Jerusalem and nothing to do with Palestine being a country?

Would like some historically knowledgeable person to respond

1. Countries that don’t secure recognition by the UN do not get access to the protections that UN members have. For example, Kosovo is recognised by the USA and most Western European countries as an independent country, but not by Russia and China, who prevent Kosovo from joining the UN. As a result, Kosovo is not able to join most international treaties, finds that countries are pressured by Russia and China into refusing to recognise its existence, etc.

In the case of other countries that voted independence for themselves, such as Croatia and Bosnia, they were able to successfully get all members of the UN security council to accept their independence and existence, and thus get treated like any other country.

In the case of the Palestinians, the complicating factor is that the 1993 Oslo accords that the USA negotiated between Israel and the PLO stated that in exchange for starting a negotiated peace process, the PLO would not seek to declare independence until a final peace had been agreed. As a result, the USA views that a Palestinian declaration of statehood would undermine the Oslo peace process, so it blocks Palestine from being declared as an internationally recognised country.

2. Israel’s official position, bound by the 1993 Oslo Accords, is that Palestine can be a country just as soon an Israel and Palestine can agree on just what territory should be part of Israel and what territory should be part of Palestine. There has been no such agreement for the past 29 years, and no sign that any agreement will happen in the forseeable future.

3. Both parties have very strong religious views on possession on Jerusalem. The PLO wanta part of Jerusalem (East Jerusalem, the currently mostly Arab part) and refuses to compromise, the Israelis want all of Jerusalem, and refuse to compromise.

As time goes by, the Israeli position gets more and more entrenched. Israel is becoming a much more religious society compared to its mostly secular attitude when founded, and is thus becoming increasingly attached to the importance of possessing all of Jerusalem.