No state has an inherent ‘right to exist’, not even Israel

The quote “Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth,” attributed to Adolf Hitler’s propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, encapsulates what modern psychology has proven: that repetitive statements can overpower our critical thinking to the point of accepting falsehoods as self-evident truths. In other words, brainwashing works.

The notion that “Israel has the right to exist” is a case in point. It is a statement so often asserted by mainly Western leaders and media that it appears to be correct. And if it is a “right”, it must be rooted in law.

Thus, when French President Emmanuel Macron reportedly stated during an October 15 cabinet meeting that “Mr Netanyahu must not forget that his country was created by a UN decision” in reference to the 1947 United Nations General Assembly’s Resolution 181(II), he suggested that Israel’s existence stems from an international legal act, which, therefore, confers on it legitimacy – the so-called “right to exist”. This often-shared misconception is a distortion of historical and legal realities.

To begin, the idea of a state’s inherent “right to exist” is fallacious. Conceptually or legally, no such natural or legal right exists – for Israel or any other state – as the establishment of nation-states is not rooted in international law. Nation-states are the outcome of, ultimately, a proclamation by those purporting to represent the newly formed state.

Once declared, the new state and its government may (or may not) be formally recognised by other states and governments. The new state thus exists because of a political fact and not a legal act – that is, not because it has a “right” to exist.

Whereas the “constitutive” legal theory deems a state to exist only if it is recognised by other states, the “declaratory” theory deems a state to exist even in the absence of diplomatic recognition. In practice, however, wide diplomatic recognition remains necessary for a proclaimed state to be able to function as a full-fledged legal and political entity although the exceptional case of Taiwan appears to contradict this postulate.

In this sense, UN Resolution 181(II) “Future Government of Palestine” did not create the State of Israel. Instead, it proposed a plan to partition British-occupied Palestine into three entities: a “Jewish State”, an “Arab State” and Jerusalem under a special international regime.

Ahead of the vote, the United States exerted intense pressure on some developing countries as well as France to vote in favour of the resolution. But remarkably, the US itself was also threatened as President Harry Truman recalled in his memoirs: “I do not think I ever had as much pressure and propaganda aimed at the White House as I had in this instance. The persistence of a few of the extreme Zionist leaders – actuated by political motives and engaging in political threats – disturbed and annoyed me.”

After delaying the vote by a few days to secure the necessary support, the General Assembly adopted the resolution by a narrow margin of two votes on November 29, 1947. The UN Partition Plan for Palestine, which it introduced, was never endorsed by the Security Council and thus never became binding under international law. But even if it had, the Security Council – just like the General Assembly – could not have created Israel because neither has the juridical competence under the UN Charter to “create” a state.

Six months after the vote on the Partition Plan, the State of Israel was proclaimed by David Ben-Gurion, the head of the Jewish Agency for Palestine. This political act was the culmination of pre- and post-World War II Jewish migration to Palestine and the ethnic cleansing and a violent land grab campaign by Zionist militias, including the Haganah, the Stern Gang (Lehi) and the Irgun, which Albert Einstein called in a 1948 letter a “terrorist, right wing, chauvinist organization”. They all acted in tandem to implement Plan Dalet, which was conceived by the Jewish Agency for Palestine and which Israeli historian Ilan Pappé calls a “blueprint for ethnic cleansing”.

The Partition Plan was rejected by the five Arab states that were members of the UN at the time and other governments primarily because it was deemed to violate the inalienable rights of Palestinians (of all faiths) to self-determination under Article 55 of the UN Charter.

Legally, this view holds true today because the right of self-determination of colonial peoples is a peremptory norm of customary international law accepted by the international community as a fundamental legal tenet from which no derogation is permitted. It is a foundational legal norm stipulated in Article 1 of the charter, which defines the objectives of the United Nations.

On the eve of the vote, Iraq’s foreign minister, Fadhel al-Jamali, a signatory of the charter, declared before the General Assembly: “Partition imposed against the will of the majority of the people will jeopardise peace and harmony in the Middle East. Not only the uprising of the Arabs of Palestine is to be expected, but the masses in the Arab world cannot be restrained. The Arab-Jewish relationship in the Arab world will greatly deteriorate. There are more Jews in the Arab world outside of Palestine than there are in Palestine. … In short, whoever thinks that the partition of Palestine will settle the problem of Palestine is mistaken. Partition will create a dozen new problems dangerous to peace and international relations. It is much better to let Palestine alone than to attempt to enforce a solution which will bear bitter fruit.”

Al-Jamali’s words were prescient. Although Israel wasn’t established by the UN as Macron believes, the international community is still reeling from a historical injustice done to Palestinians of all faiths, including Jewish Palestinians. Before and after the Holocaust, Zionists had promised European and North American Jewish settlers a safe haven in Palestine, but that promise proved empty.

Since its establishment, the State of Israel has been hypermilitarised and in a constant state of warfare. It will have no prospects for peace unless and until its occupation of Palestinian, Syrian and Lebanese territory ends, its borders are delineated and its quest for a biblical “Greater Israel” be formally abandoned.

Repeating propaganda does not nullify international law, according to which no state has an inherent “right” to exist, but peoples have an inalienable right to self-determination. An occupying power has no inherent right of self-defence against the people it subjugates, but the people under occupation have an inherent right of self-defence against their occupiers, as the International Court of Justice has ruled.

The powers that could make a difference, chief among them the US, seem incapable or unwilling to right a historical wrong and look at these tenets of international law clear-eyed.

Even in the face of an ongoing genocide that they enable, both militarily and diplomatically, they are incapable or unwilling to remove their political blinders and even listen to their own public opinions. Worse, they now prefer to risk a regional conflagration and even a nuclear strike by a genocidal Israeli regime. Hoping it will never come to that is not a cogent strategy.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.