Does Israel, does any state, have a right to exist?

A settler state, even one that is heavily armed, is unlikely ultimately to prevail.

Displaced Palestinians in Gaza City. Credit: Mahmoud Issa/Reuters

For over a quarter of a century Benjamim Netanyahu has been preparing to light the blue touch paper and ferment a war against Iran, drag the United States into it and achieve his ambition for a ‘Greater Israel’. The catalyst that allowed him finally to attempt to fulfil it, were the attacks by Hamas on October 7^th. In the horrific months that have followed, he has reduced Gaza to a moonscape and is intent on exterminating and driving out those Palestinians who remain. He, and his far Right backers in his Cabinet, have given the green light to settlers in the West Bank to torch Palestinian villages, while turning Palestinian towns into open air prisons. He has attacked Lebanon repeatedly and taken advantage of the fall of Assad in Syria by initiating bombing campaigns and occupying more Syrian territory. He has now succeeded in potentially opening the gates of Hell with his attacks on Iran. Notwithstanding the horrors he has unleashed across the Middle East, he has driven a burning chariot through international humanitarian law and dealt, with the willing help of the United States, a series of body blows to the United Nations. As for those who could have halted much of this, principally the United States, the EU and Britain, they have not only failed to do so, they have been complicit throughout in providing the military and diplomatic cover for Israel’s actions.

So, at a time when Netanyahu is closer to achieving his dream of a ‘Greater Israel’ to include the Occupied Palestinian Territory, with as few Palestinians remaining as possible, as well as including occupied Syria and possibly southern Lebanon, this may be an odd moment to ask the question; ‘Can Israel survive? And to follow that question with another; ‘Does Israel, does any state for the matter, actually have the right to exist?’

Israel’s current military strength comes courtesy of the Western taxpayer, increasing numbers of whom are extremely angry that this is the case. It comes courtesy of the political weakness on display from the rest of the Arab World and it comes courtesy of the impunity allowed it by Western countries, whose oft stated attachment to a ‘rules based order’ now hangs in shreds. The underlying reality though is that the state of Israel is today floating on a sea of molten lava of its own creation. It is a settler state, built upon racial supremacy, that could very possibly not ever have come into existence had Britain held elections throughout Palestine in 1948, instead of scuttling in the face of widespread settler terrorism against the British army and handing the territory to Ben-Gurion. A settler state, even one that is heavily armed, is unlikely ultimately to prevail, unless as in the case of the United States or Australia it succeeds in wiping out most of the indigenous majority altogether. The Algerian French colons, with the full support of the Fourth Republic, lost their bitter war, and the collapse of colonial, settler, Algeria led directly to the fall of the French Fourth Republic. The white settler regime in South Rhodesia also eventually collapsed leading to majority rule as the new Zimbabwe. The Portuguese white minority regime in Angola had collapsed, albeit into a bitter civil war, a few years earlier with half a million Portuguese leaving for Metropolitan Portugal. The omens for a settler state determined on a defeat and partial eradication of native population, are therefore not good. And through the prism of the historic borders of Palestine and the Palestinian refugee camps both inside and out, the Palestinians amount to a majority. On top of this we are now entering a phase of enormous disruption, war, suffering and incalculable, unknown consequences as a result of Israel’s attack on Iran. Within hours of those attacks, the Abraham Accords were unravelling and Saudi Arabia had both condemned the attacks against Iran and declared her solidarity with her neighbour. The isolation of Israel and the United States diplomatically was further demonstrated by yet another overwhelming vote at the UN General Assembly – one in which the US and Israel were left with the support of far Right Hungary, Argentina and a handful of US semi protectorates in the Pacific. None of this amounts to an existential threat to Israel, but it underlines the complete isolation of the settler state, an isolation that is now underwritten by massive global campaigns for sanctions, and end to military assistance and expulsion from the United Nations. Pariah nation status may not concern Netanyahu and his supporters, but for those in Israel who want to see an end to constant conflict and who provide the best hope of at least preserving some of Israel in the longer run, it does.

Alternatively, it may be possible that the current trajectory does see the brutish creation of a ‘Greater Israel’, with all those within its new boundaries obliged to become Israeli citizens. Under this scenario, a de facto ‘One State Solution’ would have been arrived at and one in which Palestinian Arabs, despite the depredations, inevitably come to form a majority and eventually, inevitably an Israeli Palestinian Arab emerges as Prime Minister. Under such a scenario, those remaining militant settlers would be as isolated as the white Afrikaaners who refuse to accept the reality of majority rule and who live in their own self-declared, white reservations.

But as Netanyahu has succeeded in making Israel into a pariah state, so too have others begun to ask whether not only whether Israel can continue to exist in its current form but if it actually has a right to do so in its current form? Those who have long argued for a one state solution, based upon a secular democratic model – the model in fact favoured by most of Israel’s Western supporters, do not feel the need to go down this particular rabbit hole. But in the face of Israeli intransigence the question becomes pertinent. For Statehood is a political reality and not a legal one, and there is no legal guarantee of a state's continued existence – especially if a majority within the country do not want it. International law does not provide a legal framework that obligates other states to recognise or protect the existence of a particular state and States can change their borders, merge, or dissolve, as has been the case with Somalia which merged with Somaliland for instance in 1960. So, while the rights of people to self-determination is recognised under international law, the actual boundaries of any State that wishes to re-invent itself are not. In the case of Israel, it was carved from within historic Palestine largely through the action of settlers, with the United Nations latterly determining the borders of two states within it. The fact that the Western World decided to immediately recognise Israel but not Palestine partially explains why there is such little faith in achieving a ‘two state solution’ today, especially when one side, the Israelis, are hostile to the very idea. The idea that a state has a ‘right to exist’ was in reality ended when the Prussian State was officially abolished altogether in February 1947 by the Allies who had defeated Nazi Germany. Prussia had historically been the core of imperial Germany, providing much of its officer and political class. The defeat of Nazi Germany also meant the defeat of Prussia and the complete re-drawing of the German State, which lost a third of its lands in the east, mainly Prussia, and emerged in the post war period, until the fall of the Berlin Wall, as two Germanies.

This then is the reality. What may seem impossible today can become a new reality tomorrow. And while there is no doubt that we stand on a precipice that has been in the making since the Balfour Declaration in 1917, there is no guarantee now of what may happen next. The profound weakness and failure of the Western political elites and those of the Arab World, alongside the increasing irrelevance of the post war institutions created to ensure that ‘never again’, really does mean ‘never again’, does not inspire hope.

But since when have failing political elites ever managed to get in the way of unstoppable, popular movements?