The Two State Delusion
by Cameron Hunt, published on Countercurrents, June 1, 2024
For any of you that may have failed to notice it, the World is now entirely seized by what can only be described as a ‘Two-State Stalemate’. In one corner, we have the USA and UK each declaring that they do not recognize the ‘State of Palestine’ – that ipso facto it therefore does not exist under international law – and that such recognition can only be legitimately given as a possible outcome of so-called peace negotiations with the ‘State of Israel’: that it is for Israel alone to decide if, when, and under which conditions the ‘State of Palestine’ is to be recognized by the World. In the other corner, we have what can be most accurately described as the ‘Rest of the World’: the majority of which recognized the ‘State of Palestine’ decades ago.
Analysing today’s stalemate in the context of real-world international law, the USA and UK are demonstrating what can be clinically diagnosed as ‘legal psychosis’. On 29 November 2012, the UN General Assembly (UNGA) – “Recognizing that full membership is enjoyed by Palestine in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia and the Group of Asia-Pacific States and that Palestine is also a full member of the League of Arab States, the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the Group of 77 and China”, and “Recognizing also that, to date, 132 States Members of the United Nations have accorded recognition to the State of Palestine” – decided “to accord to Palestine non-member observer State status in the United Nations” (A/RES/67/19).
Since that time, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has ruled that it has jurisdiction over Israel’s crimes committed on the territory of the State of Palestine: “premised on the practice of the United Nations General Assembly which is to be found in unequivocal indications from the Assembly that it considers a particular entity to be a State”. Recognizing that the ICC Chamber is not “endowed with the authority to challenge the validity of [UNGA] Resolution 67/19 that admitted Palestine as a non-member observer State and granted its eligibility to accede to the Statute” of the ICC, the Chamber consequently ruled that the ICC therefore has jurisdiction over international crimes committed on the territory of the ‘State of Palestine’ (ICC-01/18).
Despite the ICC’s own ruling on its self-same legal competencies, the UK has independently declared in recent weeks –deciding instead to unilaterally overturn the ICC’s own decision – that the UK does not recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC to investigate Israel’s crimes in the territory of Palestine, because the UK itself does not recognize such a state: case closed. Similarly, on 10 May 2024, the USA voted against a UNGA resolution enhancing the rights and privileges of the “State of Palestine” at the UN Organisation, and clearly exposed its own legal psychosis: “our vote does not reflect opposition to Palestinian Statehood… Instead, it is an acknowledgment that Statehood will come only through a process that involves direct negotiations between the parties”: Israel and Palestine. The USA Ambassador went on to make reference to “his country’s commitment to intensifying its engagement with the Palestinians and the rest of the region to advance a political settlement that will create a path to Palestinian Statehood”. A situation in which both the USA and UK declare that there is no ‘State of Palestine’ today under international law, because neither the USA nor UK declares it to be so, can also be clinically diagnosed: ‘Post-Empire Psychosis’.
On the other side of the debate, we have the ‘Rest of the World’ (RoW) which is equally entrenched in this very same psychosis, leading us to precisely where we find ourselves today: a ‘Two-State Stalemate’. The fact that the RoW even engages in the (decades-old) “vision” that recognition of the ‘State of Palestine’ – by the USA and UK – will lead to an immediate peace between Israel and Palestine, is to partake in the same psychosis; to fail to inform the Anglo King that he is juridically naked. The recognition of the ‘State of Palestine’ by Spain, Ireland and Norway will unfortunately do no more than to add fuel to the fire of our collective Two-State Psychosis: it will do nothing whatsoever to help the Palestinian cause.
There is in reality only one solution to the conflict, and fittingly, it can only come from a new Palestinian leadership: the day that such a leadership materializes. The Palestinian people can only escape from the decades-old Two-State Psychosis, by declaring openly and collectively that the recognition of their State by most of the World has in no way whatsoever led to an improvement in their condition; that life on-the-ground has only got worse, and gets worse with each new recognition (Israel having just announced that they will curtail the access of Spanish representatives to Palestinians from the West Bank). The Palestinian people can only escape our Western psychosis by declaring that they no longer believe in the Two-State trip, that there is – for a sane people – only one solution to the conflict: The ‘No-State Solution’ – a Solution first agreed to between the UK, France and Russia in May 1916, which proposed the full internationalization of historic Palestine, precisely because it holds sites sacred to the three major world religions (as it still does today).
Cameron Hunt is the author of Pax UNita – A novel solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.
