August
By Daanish Mustafa
In Western media, especially since the start of the Gaza genocide, the question “Does Israel have a right to exist?” has been asked constantly. My friend, Martin Saps, a PhD student at King’s College, London, says this question is almost never asked in good faith. I agree. The question itself is foolish. Israel is a state—a concept. Concepts and ideas don’t have rights; they simply exist or they don’t. While humans and even some non-human things can have rights, a state cannot. And Israel undeniably exists.
Equally, human societies can agree that the non-human river should flow freely and without pollution. If the social consent is there, the non-human river can be deemed to have a right to flow without obstruction and any pollution. In Islamic thought, for example, animals are deemed to have the right to drink water. Depriving an animal the opportunity to quench their thirst is considered a violation of their God-given right and hence subject the offender to social opprobrium or even punishment.
Rights can flow from an idea but concept and ideas cannot have rights. Capitalism is a concept, as is modesty. No one will deny that capitalism exists. Reasonable people can disagree on the desirability of capitalism or modesty, but no one will say that the existence of capitalism or modesty has or can have universal consent. Practice and behaviour can be moulded by capitalism or modesty, but the concepts themselves cannot have any concrete reality, or an ability to make a claim upon society.
The state as a concept emerged from the Treaty of Wesphalia in 1648, at the end of the 30-year war in Europe. The treaty established the principle of state sovereignty. That principle became a template for political organization, resulting in the modern state system that we see today. The concept fashions physical reality and social behaviour, and in itself, the state remains a concept in perpetual need of reinforcement and maintenance. Afterall the anthems, flags and trappings of statehood have to be perpetually paraded to maintain social consent for the concept.
The territorial integrity and sovereignty of the modern state is guaranteed by the United Nations Charter. All the 193 signatories of the Charter have agreed to respect the territorial integrity and sovereignty of all the other signatories. The act of signing the UN Charter makes the signatory a ‘state’ under international law. Israel is a signatory to the UN Charter and hence a state under international law whose territorial integrity and sovereignty has to be respected and protected by all the other signatories to the Charter. Kurdistan or Kashmir, for example, are not signatories to the UN Charter and hence do not exist as states, however meritorious morally or otherwise their ambitions to statehood may be.
Israel exists, as does Afghanistan or so did apartheid South Africa. The world community does not deny their existence. It objects to their nature. The world decided a long time ago that the existence of South Africa as a white apartheid state was unacceptable. Once it stopped the practice of white apartheid, it was welcomed back into the international community. Today, the world community finds the gender-apartheid state of Afghanistan to be unacceptable. Afghanistan’s territorial integrity and sovereignty is not an issue—its gender apartheid is. Similarly, no one is asking for the physical destruction of the state of Israel or genocide against its population. Everyone is saying that its existence as a Jewish supremist and ethno-religious apartheid state is unacceptable.
One could ask, if there are Islamic states and Christian states why can’t there be a Jewish state? Sure, there can be a Jewish state. There may be many discriminatory social practices against religious or ethnic minorities in Islamic, Christian or ethnic states. But as long as there is no super structure of legal apartheid against those minorities, the issue is of inclusion and democracy for all, which is a work in progress in practically every polity in the world. Legal super structures of discrimination foreclose the possibility of social change towards inclusion. And hence legal apartheid is the litmus test for whether a polity is acceptable or not. And on that metric, Israel, like Afghanistan, is not an acceptable polity.
The state of Israel is quite unique. It is the only state in the world which has not submitted its official borders to the UN subsequent to which international law can award it the right to: (1) exercise sovereignty within a defined territory and (2) call upon the protection of the UN Charter for territorial integrity. Israel itself has made it impossible, by that very act, to be afforded the protection of the UN Charter for its statehood. Israel’s statehood could encompass all of West Asia and North Africa or it could be limited to just the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. Legally, one cannot say. So, how can one make a case for the protection or respect for Israel’s statehood in the face of such massive self-created ambiguity?
The list of Israel’s transgressions, legal and military, is long—from wars of aggression, and genocide to legal principles on non-Jews’ ability to own property, their equality before the law, or economic opportunity. These can be the topic of another essay. The point here is that the fundamental characteristic of the state has to change before it becomes acceptable. If it can become a state where Jews, Christian, Muslims and everyone within its territorial confines can have equal rights and can live in peace and dignity–then for sure, let there be a state of Israel or whatever it chooses to call itself in such a scenario.
The writer is a Professor in Critical Geography at King’s College London.