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Recognizing a Palestinian State before a Peace Agreement with Israel Undermines the International Rule of Law
(Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs) Peter Wertheim - Those who advocate immediate recognition of a Palestinian state, without a peace agreement with Israel, show cavalier disregard for well-established legal principles for the creation of states and their recognition. The four criteria of statehood set out in the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States (1933) are widely accepted as the minimum required by customary international law for the creation of a new state. Two of the criteria - a single, centralized government and the capacity to enter into relations with other states - are manifestly not satisfied by any Palestinian entity. For reasons which are entirely internal to Palestinian society, there is no reasonable prospect for the foreseeable future of any government being formed which would exercise effective control over both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and would have the capacity to give effect to any agreements purportedly entered into by "Palestine." Recognition of any such entity as a state would be to affirm a fiction, contrary to the imperatives of international law. Applying the additional requirements for recognition contained in the European Community Declaration and Guidelines (1991), the Palestinians have failed, and are likely to continue to be unwilling to make commitments to respect the inviolability of the frontiers with Israel, to repudiate all territorial claims by Palestine against Israel, and to settle all disputes with Israel by peaceful means. Recognition of a Palestinian state at the present time would also contravene the internationally recognized and witnessed Oslo Accords between the Palestinians and Israel. The writer is executive director of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.