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Israel, Palestine, and Democracy

(Commentary) Eugene Kontorovich - Israelis are a fundamentally liberal, democratic people who desperately do not wish to be put in the role of overlords. But the reality is that Israel does not rule the Palestinians. It is true that the Palestinians are not represented in the Knesset. But Israeli residents of the West Bank are similarly not represented in the Palestinian Legislative Council. Simply put, both the Palestinians and Israelis vote for the legislature that regulates them. That is democracy. The Palestinians have developed an independent, self-regulating government that controls their lives as well as their foreign policy. They have been recognized as an independent state by the UN and have diplomatic relations with almost as many nations as Israel does. They have their own security forces, central bank, top-level Internet domain name, and a foreign policy entirely uncontrolled by Israel. The Palestinians govern themselves. To anticipate the inevitable comparison, this is not an Israeli-puppet "Bantustan." From their educational curriculum to their television content to their terrorist pensions, they implement their own policies without any subservience to Israel. The Palestinians now demand to increase the geographic scope of their legislative powers to "Area C," where 100% of the Jewish settlers live, some 400,000 people, and only 50-75,000 Arabs. The Palestinians rejected full independence and statehood on three separate occasions in the past twenty years. As part of their strategy, they perpetuate their semi-independence to maximize their diplomatic leverage. But that is not Israeli domination; that is Palestinian tactics. Imagine if Israel in 1948 refused to declare independence until all its territorial claims were satisfied. The writer is a professor at Northwestern University School of Law.
2013-12-18 00:00:00
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