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Unilateral Recognition of a Palestinian State Will Undermine the Oslo Accords

(Jerusalem Post) Amb. Alan Baker - U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has reportedly requested that the State Department present policy options for possible U.S. recognition of a Palestinian state. It is inconceivable that responsible international leaders are either overlooking or deliberately ignoring the basic principles of international law and practice requiring resolution of the Middle East dispute through negotiation, rather than by unilateral, third-party imposition. The principle of a negotiated outcome for resolving the dispute figures in the still valid 1993-1995 Oslo Accords, in which Israel and the PLO Palestinian leadership, with the support and encouragement of the leaders of the international community, reciprocally obligated themselves to negotiate the permanent status of the disputed areas. In the Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and Gaza signed in Washington on September 28, 1995 (known as Oslo II), the parties agreed specifically that "Neither side shall initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations." Any unilaterally imposed recognition of a Palestinian state by the international community would be tantamount to undermining the Oslo Accords, to which the U.S., the EU, Russia, Norway, Jordan, and Egypt are signatories. Not only would it contravene their solemn commitments as signatories, but it would, in effect, be unilaterally prejudging the outcome of the negotiations on the permanent status of the territory. As such, it would constitute an attempt to unilaterally change the status of the West Bank and Gaza in contravention of the Accords. This would afford Israel the prerogative to consider the Accords as no longer valid, and to take whatever unilateral actions it may judge appropriate in order to protect its national and security interests. The writer, former legal adviser to Israel's Foreign Ministry who participated in the drafting of the Oslo Accords, heads the Institute for Diplomatic Affairs at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
2024-02-20 00:00:00
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