Fwd: BOUNCE lbo-talk at lists.panix.com: Non-member submission from [Bradford DeLong <jbdelong at uclink.berkeley.edu>]

[Doug Henwood]

>Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 15:25:58 -0700
>To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>From: Bradford DeLong <jbdelong at uclink.berkeley.edu>
>Subject: Moral Philosophy and the Recognition of Israel's Right to Exist
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed"
>
>Justin Schwartz wrote:
>>   Even the PLO and the PA have recognized Israel's right to exist...
>
>Has the Palestinian Authority recognized Israel's right to exist?
>
>My belief is that it--if belief can validly be ascribed to an
>organization--*believes* that it has not, and--if intentionality can
>validly be ascribed to an organization--has no intention of doing so.
>But I also believe that it *might* have, and that all of us need to
>work to turn the possibility that it has into a certainty that it did
>so some time ago.
>
>If you surf on over to the website of the PLO Permanent Observer
>Mission to the United Nations, and look for the text of the Palestine
>National Charter, you find a text written in 1968. Among other
>things, it says that:
>
>
>	Article 1: Palestine is the homeland of the Arab
>	Palestinian people; it is an indivisible part of the Arab
>	homeland, and the Palestinian people are an integral part
>	of the Arab nation.
>
>	Article 2: Palestine, with the boundaries it had during the
>	British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit.
>
>	Article 3: The Palestinian Arab people possess the legal right
>	to their homeland and have the right to determine their destiny
>	after achieving the liberation of their country in accordance with
>	their wishes and entirely of their own accord and will.
>
>	Article 4: The Palestinian identity is a genuine, essential,
>and inherent
>	characteristic; it is transmitted from parents to children. The Zionist
>	occupation and the dispersal of the Palestinian Arab people,
>through the
>	disasters which befell them, do not make them lose their Palestinian
>	identity and their membership in the Palestinian community, nor do
>	they negate them.
>
>	Article 5: The Palestinians are those Arab nationals who, until 1947,
>	normally resided in Palestine regardless of whether they were
>	evicted from it or have stayed there. Anyone born, after that date,
>	of a Palestinian father - whether inside Palestine or outside it - is
>	also a Palestinian.
>
>	Article 6: The Jews who had normally resided in Palestine until the
>	beginning of the Zionist invasion will be considered Palestinians...
>
>	Article 19: The partition of Palestine in 1947, and the establishment
>	of the state of Israel are entirely illegal, regardless of
>the passage of
>	time, because they were contrary to the will of the Palestinian people
>	and its natural right in their homeland, and were inconsistent with
>	the principles embodied in the Charter of the United Nations,
>	particularly the right to self-determination.
>
>	Article 20: The Balfour Declaration, the Palestine Mandate, and
>	everything that has been based on them, are deemed null and void.
>	Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are
>	incompatible with the facts of history and the conception of what
>	constitutes statehood. Judaism, being a religion, is not an
>	independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation
>	with an identity of their own; they are citizens of the states to
>	which they belong.
>
>	Article 21: The Arab Palestinian people, expressing themselves
>	by armed Palestinian revolution, reject all solutions which are
>	substitutes for the total liberation of Palestine and reject all
>	proposals aimed at the liquidation of the Palestinian cause, or
>	at its internationalization.
>
>This does not sound like a recognition of Israel. It sounds like a
>call for the destruction of Israel and the expulsion of all Jews who
>cannot trace their ancestry back to the old pre-1850 Yishuv.
>
>Why, then, the belief that the PLO and the PA have recognized
>Israel's right to exist?
>
>Because of certain letters written by and undertakings made by Yassir
>Arafat and others, and because of a 1996 meeting at which the
>Palestine National Council agreed: "A. To abrogate the provisions of
>the Palestine National Charter that contradict the letters exchanged
>between Chairman Yasser Arafat and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of
>September 9 & 10 1993. B. To mandate the legal committee of the PLO
>to present a new text of the Palestine National Charter."
>
>So the question arises: are the resolutions of the 1996 meeting
>performative utterances? Do they by virtue of their existence repeal
>the provisions of the 1968 charter that are not consistent with
>various letters and undertakings made by Yassir Arafat and others?
>You can say that they do, and are. And under this interpretation the
>Palestine National Charter is no longer its 1968 text, but is instead
>some other, different text that nobody has written down but that is
>nevertheless very real and that recognizes Israel's right to exist.
>Under this interpretation, the PLO and the PA have recognized
>Israel's right to exist.
>
>The alternative position is that the resolutions of the 1996 meeting
>are *not* performative utterances. Since the 1968 text of the
>Palestine National Charter contains no provisions for its amendment,
>it cannot be amended by any meetings, authorities, or councils acting
>under and deriving their authority by virtue of the Charter, but can
>only be amended by the equivalent of a constitutional convention.
>Under this alternative interpretation, the most that can be said is
>that the 1996 meeting was a call for such a constitutional convention
>and for a committee to prepare a new text for the convention to
>ratify. This has not happened. Until it happens, the 1968 text
>remains the text of the Palestine National Charter. And, by the
>simplest of legal principles, any letters written or undertakings
>made by officials or authorities of Palestine that contradict the
>charter--especially the charter's positions that Palestine is one and
>indivisible with the boundaries of the British Mandate, that only
>Jews who can trace their ancestry to the pre-1850 Yishuv are citizens
>of Palestine, and that the Zionist Entity is an illegal pirate
>organization--are null and void. Under this interpretation, the PLO
>and the PA have not recognized Israel's right to exist.
>
>As a liberal constitutionalist, I cannot help but believe that the
>alternative position is by far the stronger. But whatever Kant may
>have said, liberal constitutional principles are *not* engraved in
>the deep fabric of the universe. As Andrew Marvell wrote:
>
>	"Though Justice against Fate complain,
>	And plead the ancient rights in vain:
>	But those do hold or break
>	As men are strong or weak."
>
>And I can find no *reason* to be a liberal constitutionalist if it is
>not useful and convenient to be such. "Fiat justitia, ruat caelum" is
>a principle that does not appeal to me in the least. Thus, in this
>context, it is convenient--in the interest of peace, human happiness,
>prosperity, and not having 3 to 30 million people die horrible deaths
>in the first twenty-first century war waged using weapons of mass
>destruction--for us to say that the PLO and PA *have* recognized
>Israel's right to exist. If enough of us do that, then
>retrospectively the first interpretation will turn out to be true.
>
>So although I think Justin Schwartz is doing a *good thing* when he
>states that the PLO and PA have recognized Israel's right to exist, I
>think he has not told the "truth"--or, rather, that all of us who by
>our actions will retrospectively decide whether the 1996 meeting's
>utterances were performative or not will in the end decide whether he
>has spoken the truth or not.
>
>And I have to point out that there are many, many people who want the
>1996 meeting's utterances not to be performative, and who want the
>PLO and the PA to continue to work for the total destruction of
>Israel. One such person is Yassir Arafat. Remember what he said in
>South Africa in 1994:
>
>	This agreement--I am not considering it more
>	than the agreement between our prophet Mohammed
>	and the Quraysh. And you remember, Caliph Omar
>	had refused this agreement and considering the
>	agreement of the very low class. But Mohammed
>	had accepted it and we, are accepting now this
>	peace accord.
>
>The truce between Mohammed and the Quraysh arranged in 628 was for
>ten years. Less than 2 years later, however, when Muslim forces were
>sufficiently strong, the Quraysh were defeated by the Muslims and
>Mecca captured.
>
>
>
>Brad DeLong, who is not certain whether today is his day to be a
>Utilitarian, a Post-Modernist, a Sewer Diver for Silver Linings, or a
>Realist