Olá Palestine

Last Friday, the outgoing Brazilian President announced that he would extend recognition to the Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. The response of the Israeli government was to express disappointment and declare that this would prevent resolution of the current conflict through discussion and negotiation. This settlement is an unfortunately tiresome process, which seems to be moving no further forward.

It is worth noting, however, the central flaw here: there is no Palestinian State to be recognised. Even the Palestinian Authority accept that position. Its time may come, but it has not come yet.

We must also consider what is at stake here. Whilst I will confess to perhaps an over-reliance on the word of the Israeli government, the primary objection to the creation of a Palestinian state is that it would be unable, or perhaps unwilling, to prevent attacks on Israel from within its territory. The 1967 borders particularly are held to be spectacularly indefensible from the Israeli military perspective. To simply create a Palestinian state now, within these borders, would not solve the current conflict.

Idealistic as this corner of the web is, I have always been attracted to the idea of a neutral and all-encompassing state comprising the entire region. This would give neither side their ideal, nationalistic state but would allow both communities to live peacefully without resorting to military struggles against one-another. Unfortunately, it also finds opposition from both sides. This was largely the substance of the White Paper of 1939 proposal issued by the British government under Chamberlain - many of the problems surrounding the proposal have now disappeared: significantly, Jewish migration to Israel has decreased dramatically. Whilst Zionist and Nationalist ideology opposes it, there is no material reason why Israeli and Palestinian peoples cannot adequately function together in a state. Albeit with a crude Consociationalism, this is what has happened in the Northern Ireland peace process and indeed the reconciliation process between the racial groups of South Africa.

What conclusions to draw here? Blindly supporting one side of a conflict as if it were some sort of macabre football match does nothing to resolve the problems which create conflict, or even to promote a moral outcome in the battles between two peoples.