Thursday, 23 January 2020

Territorial disputes: the Israel-Palestine difference (Part 19) [Post 59]





The egalitarian shared sovereignty applied to territory in relation to the Israel-Palestine difference

The post today covers BORDERS (as a sub-element that has to do with territory) in the context of the Israel-Palestine difference and introduce how the EGALITARIAN SHARED SOVEREIGNTY applies to this issue.

Borders are volatile (to say the least) in the already tense Israel-Palestine difference. With communities presenting very different living standards and the myriad of checkpoints the situation deteriorates on an ongoing basis. This past few weeks’ events are self-evident.

 

A general approach previously used in the region (and in many others around the world by former colonial powers imposing them to former colonies) has to do with partition solutions. They work under the assumption that the hostilities between opposing ethnic groups makes it impossible for them to live peacefully together in a single state (Haklai and Loizides, ed., 2015).

 

The territories contested between Israel and Palestinians are the ones Israel conquered from Jordan in the 1967 war, including those commonly referred to as the West Bank and East Jerusalem (Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005 and makes no ownership claim of this territory). Many Jewish Israelis, religious and secular, view these territories as part of their ancient homeland, Eretz Israel (Land of Israel).”

 

In recent years, all the solutions explicitly or implicitly suggest partition:

  • The “two-state solution” presented by President Bill Clinton during the Camp David Summit and Taba talks (2000).
  • The Roadmap to Peace introduced by President George W. Bush (2003) and endorsed by the United States, the United Nations, the European Union, and Russia.
  • The UN Security Council Resolution 1397 (2002).
  • The UN Security Council Resolution 1515 (2003).
  • The Arab Peace Initiative, endorsed by the Arab League (2002 and 2007).

Haklai, Oded and Loizides, Neophytos. 2015. Settlers in Contested Lands. Territorial Disputes and Ethnic Conflicts. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.

 

There are many reasons to disagree with the partition solution. For an academic reference see for example Laitin (2004), Sambanis (2000), Sambanis and Schulhofer-Wohl (2009), and others. We’ll see tomorrow why the egalitarian shared sovereignty may rule out extreme situations.

 

NOTE: This post is based on Jorge Emilio Núñez, “Territorial Disputes and State Sovereignty: International Law and Politics,” London and New York: Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group, 2020 (forthcoming)

Previous published research monograph about territorial disputes and sovereignty by the author, Jorge Emilio Núñez, “Sovereignty Conflicts and International Law and Politics: A Distributive Justice Issue,” London and New York: Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group, 2017.

 

NEXT POST: The egalitarian shared sovereignty applied to territory in relation to the Israel-Palestine difference (cont.)

 

Thursday 23rd January 2020

Dr Jorge Emilio Núñez

Twitter: @London1701




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