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After the War: Why Palestine Would Be a Lawless and Militarized State

Teenage hostages before Oct. 7 and after their capture by Hamas to Gaza. Photo: Screenshot from Israeli government X/Twitter account

Once again, disparate voices are urging a “two-state solution” to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. For the most part, these urgings are either manipulative or naive, but the danger they pose for Israel is existential: Palestine would not coexist with the sovereign State of Israel, but would plan to replace Israel.

In essence, the two-state plan advocates that an Arab state of Palestine be constructed upon the ruins of Israel.

It is a position that openly displays criminal intent or mens rea toward Israel. It is unambiguously a one-state solution. It is a “final solution.”

Other legal and practical difficulties are associated with Palestinian statehood. A core difficulty would lie in deliberate Palestinian disregard of all pertinent jurisprudential standards. Even if an expanding number of existing states argue for an “official” recognition of “Palestine,” these approvals would not be legally binding. According to the Convention on the Rights and Duties of States (1934) — aka the governing “Montevideo” treaty on statehood — specific criteria must be met by nascent or aspiring states. For the case at hand, the case of “Palestine,” these standards do not include recognition.

In principle, declarations of support for Palestinian self-determination might not be unreasonable if the Palestinian side were sincerely committed to a two-state solution. But while Fatah and Hamas are very much at odds, they agree on one fundamental point, which is the long-ritualized mantra that Israel’s existence represents an intolerable abomination to Dar al-Islam (the world of Islam) and can never be anything more than “Occupied Palestine.”

The countries in world politics that seek a two-state solution are effectively urging the creation of an irredentist terror state. This advocacy position — one oriented towards Israel’s violent replacement by a protracted criminal insurgency ––originally stemmed from a diplomatic framework known as the Road Map for Implementation of a Permanent Solution for Two States in the Israel-Palestinian Dispute. Together with a Palestinian refusal to reject the “Phased Plan” (Cairo) of June 1974 and an associated no-compromise jihad to “liberate” all of “Occupied Palestine” in increments, the Road Map exposed an overlooked danger to Israel: Those well-intentioned states favoring statehood were misled by overly optimistic or flagrantly contrived hopes for Palestinian “demilitarization.”

On June 14, 2009, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to accept a Palestinian state, but made any such agreement contingent on Palestinian “demilitarization.” He said: “In any peace agreement, the territory under Palestinian control must be disarmed, with solid security guarantees for Israel.”

What Netanyahu failed to note was that there can be no “solid security guarantees for Israel.” A new state of Palestine could 1) easily evade any pre-independence promises made to Israel with impunity; or 2) fatally undermine such promises lawfully. Understandably, following the October 7, 2023 barbarisms, Netanyahu (restored to the premiership) no longer has any faith in Palestinian “security guarantees.”

Furthermore, as a fully sovereign state, Palestine might not be bound by pre-independence agreements even if the compacts were to include UN and/or US reassurances to the contrary. This argument applies even though unrestricted Palestinian claims of statehood could never satisfy the amply codified expectations of authoritative international law. It would be the likely Palestinian argument even though Palestine would have garnered no legal entitlement to any rights of treaty termination.

There would be additional legal problems. Because authentic treaties can be binding only upon states, any agreement between a non-state Palestinian authority and the sovereign State of Israel can have little tangible effectiveness. But what if the government of Palestine were willing to adhere to “peremptory” (fundamental) legal expectations for states — that is, to consider itself bound by its pre-state, non-treaty agreements?

Even in such relatively favorable circumstances, the government of Palestine could retain ample legal pretext to identify grounds for lawful treaty termination.  It could, for example, withdraw from the agreement because of what it would regard as a “material breach.” This would be an alleged violation by Israel that credibly undermined the object and/or purpose of the agreement.

Other Palestinian manipulation options could arise. To wit, Palestine could point towards what international law calls a “fundamental change of circumstances” (rebus sic stantibus). If a Palestinian state were to declare itself vulnerable to previously unforeseen dangers, perhaps from forces of other Arab armies, it could lawfully end its previously binding commitment to remain demilitarized.

There is another method by which a treaty-like arrangement obligating a new Palestinian state to accept demilitarization could quickly and legally be invalidated. The grounds that may be invoked under domestic law to invalidate contracts can also be applied under international law to treaties and treaty-like agreements. This means that a new state of Palestine could point to alleged errors of fact or duress as permissible grounds for terminating the agreement.

Any treaty or treaty-like agreement is void if, at the time it was entered into, it conflicts with a “peremptory” rule of general international law — a jus cogens rule accepted and recognized by the international community of states as one from which no derogation is permitted. Because the right of all sovereign states to maintain military forces essential to self-defense is certainly such a rule, Palestine, depending upon its particular form of constitutive authority, could arguably be within its right to abrogate any arrangement that had “forced” its demilitarization.

Thomas Jefferson wrote about obligation and international law. While affirming that “Compacts between nation and nation are obligatory upon them by the same moral law which obliges individuals to observe their compacts…,” he also acknowledged that “There are circumstances which sometimes excuse the nonperformance of contracts between man and man; so are there also between nation and nation.” Specifically, Jefferson said that if performance of contractual obligation becomes “self-destructive” to a party, “…the law of self-preservation overrules the law of obligation to others.”

Historically, demilitarization has been a legal remedy applicable to “zones,” not to whole states.  This could offer a new state of Palestine yet another legal ground upon which to evade compliance with its pre-independence commitments to demilitarization. It could simply be alleged that these commitments are inconsistent with traditional or Westphalian bases of authoritative international law, rudiments found in treaties and conventions, international custom, and the “general principles of law recognized by civilized nations.” These commitments, the argument would stipulate, would not be legally binding.

In making its strategic and legal choices, Israel should draw no comfort from any purportedly legal promise of Palestinian demilitarization. If the government of a new state of Palestine should choose to invite foreign armies and/or terrorists onto its territory (possibly after the original government authority is displaced or overthrown by even more militantly Islamic, anti-Israel forces), it could do so without practical difficulties and without violating international law.

Prevailing plans for Palestinian statehood are still built upon the moribund Oslo Accords, ill-founded agreements that were undermined and destroyed by persistently egregious violations by the Arab side. The basic problem with the Oslo Accords that underpinned those violations should now be apparent. On the Arab side, Oslo-mandated expectations were never anything more than a cost-effective step toward the dismantling of Israel. On the Israeli side, these expectations were taken, more or less, as a promising way to avert Palestinian terrorism and prevent catastrophic Arab state aggressions.

This asymmetry in expectations, never acknowledged by the UN, enhanced Arab power while it weakened and degraded Israel.  Even now, genocidal Palestinian calls to “slaughter the Jews” (more recently phrased as calls for “Palestine from the river to the sea”) have failed to dampen international enthusiasm for a new criminal state. Much of the “international community” hopes to midwife the birth of such a state while refusing to acknowledge that state’s openly declared genocidal intentions.

What does this mean for any alleged Palestinian demilitarization “remedy” and for Israeli security? Above all, it signals that Israel should make rapid and far-reaching changes in the manner by which it conceptualizes the policy continuum of cooperation and conflict. Israel must desist in wishful thinking and recognize the zero-sum calculations of its enemies. After the Gaza War, this means acknowledging the force-multiplying calculations of Hamas and Iran.

Understood more specifically in terms of international law and world order, this could also mean an Israeli willingness to accept the peremptory right and obligation of “anticipatory self-defense.”

The Arab world and Iran still have only a “one-state solution” in mind for the Middle East. It is a “solution” that incrementally eliminates Israel altogether. Corroboratively, “official” maps of “Palestine” show an already extant Arab state in all of the West Bank (Judea/Samaria), all of Gaza, and all of Israel.

These maps exclude references to any indigenous Jewish population and include the holy sites of only Christians and Muslims. An official cartographer, Khalil Takauji, was commissioned by the Palestinian Authority (PA) to design and locate a Palestinian Capitol Building. This was drawn by Takauji on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, directly on top of an ancient Jewish cemetery.

On September 1, 1993, Yasser Arafat clearly affirmed that the Oslo Accords would be an intrinsic part of the PLO’s 1974 Phased Plan for Israel’s destruction:  “The agreement will be a basis for an independent Palestinian State, in accordance with the Palestinian National Council Resolution issued in 1974. This PNC Resolution calls for “the establishment of a national authority on any part of Palestinian soil from which Israel withdraws or is liberated.”  On May 29, 1994, Rashid Abu Shbak, then a senior PA security official, remarked ominously: “The light which has shone over Gaza and Jericho will also reach the Negev and the Galilee.”

Since these declarations, nothing has changed in Palestinian definitions of Israel and “Palestine.” This is true for the current leadership of both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. It should make no difference to Israel whether one terror group or the other is in power.

In a sermon presented on PA Television on December 12, 2014, and in the presence of PA President Mahmoud Abbas, Mahmoud al-Habbash, the Supreme Sharia Judge and Abbas’s advisor on Religious and Islamic Affairs, said: All of this land will return to us, all our occupied land, all our rights in Palestine –  our state, our peoples’ heritage, our ancestors’ legacy — all of it will return to us, even if it takes time.”

Earlier, on October 22, 2014, Al-Habbash reaffirmed that any acceptance of Israel’s physical existence is forever forbidden under Islamic law: “The entire land of Palestine (i.e., territory that includes all of Israel) is waqf (an inalienable religious endowment under Islamic law) and is a blessed land. It is prohibited to sell, bestow ownership, or facilitate the occupation of even a millimeter of it.”

But back to basics. A presumptively sovereign Palestinian state could lawfully abrogate its pre-independence commitments to demilitarize. The Palestinian Authority has been guilty of multiple material breaches of Oslo and of “grave breaches” of the law of war. Both the PA and Hamas remain unwilling to rescind their genocidal calls for Israel’s annihilation.

When he accepted the idea of a Palestinian state that had formally agreed to its own demilitarization, Benjamin Netanyahu believed he had taken a reasonable step towards reconciliation. But the Palestinian leadership and their allies in Iran will never accept or even consider any Israel-proposed idea of “limited” Palestinian statehood, particularly a state that would lack the core prerogatives of national self-defense. Whether Jerusalem likes it or not, this means that if Israel ever accepts a Palestinian state, it will be accepting an intransigent enemy endowed with all the normally unhindered military rights of sovereignty.

This does not mean Israel will have no choice but to surrender to a future “Palestine,” but that Jerusalem should fashion its post-Gaza War security policies with fact-based expectations. Among other things, this means Israel’s leaders will need to assess the existential threat of Palestinian statehood as part of a larger strategic whole; that is, in tandem with the rapidly expanding perils of catastrophic conventional or unconventional war. More precisely, this means a comprehensive analytic focus on plausible synergies between Hamas/Iranian aggressions and Israel’s problematic nuclear doctrine. To do anything else would be to seek justification for the immutably discredited promises of Palestinian “demilitarization.“

International law is not a suicide pact. Rather than pass from one untenable position to another, Israel must understand that a two-state solution can quickly become a final solution. Israel has no moral or legal obligation to carve an irredentist enemy state out of its own still-living body.

Louis René Beres, Emeritus Professor of International Law at Purdue, is the author of many books and articles dealing with nuclear strategy and nuclear war, including Apocalypse: Nuclear Catastrophe in World Politics (University of Chicago Press, 1980) and Security or Armageddon: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (D.C. Heath/Lexington, 1986). His twelfth book, Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy, was published by Rowman and Littlefield in 2016. A version of this article was originally published by The BESA Center.

The post After the War: Why Palestine Would Be a Lawless and Militarized State first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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As Gaza War Continues, Hamas Calls for Global Protests While Israel Marks Breakthroughs in Medical Innovation

A pro-Hamas march in London, United Kingdom, Feb. 17, 2024. Photo: Chrissa Giannakoudi via Reuters Connect

As the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas calls for global protests amid stalled Gaza ceasefire talks, Israel has broken new ground despite the ongoing conflict, achieving a major medical breakthrough in synthetic human kidney development.

The contrast illustrates a stark contrast between the priorities of Hamas, an international designated terrorist group that has ruled Gaza for nearly two decades, and Israel, the lone democracy in the Middle East that has long been a leader in tech and medical innovation.

On Wednesday, Hamas urged worldwide protests in support of Palestinians, calling on the international community “to denounce Israel’s genocidal war and starvation policy in Gaza.”

“We call for continuing and escalating the popular pressure in all cities and squares on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday … through rallies, demonstrations and sit-ins outside the embassies of the Israeli regime and its allies, particularly in the US,” the statement read.

The Palestinian terrorist group also called to expose what it described as “the terrorism of the Zio-Nazi occupation against defenseless civilians.”

Hamas’s latest move against Israel comes amid stalled indirect negotiations over a proposed 60-day ceasefire and hostage release deal, which collapsed last month after the group vowed it would not disarm unless an independent Palestinian state is established — rejecting a key Israeli demand to end the war in Gaza.

In its statement, Hamas demanded the opening of all border crossings to allow immediate aid into the war-torn enclave and urged a global condemnation of “the international community’s inaction on the Israeli crimes.”

Amid mounting international pressure to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, Israel announced new measures to facilitate the delivery of aid, including temporary pauses in fighting in certain areas and the creation of protected routes for aid convoys.

Israeli officials have previously accused Hamas of diverting aid for terrorist activities and selling supplies at inflated prices to civilians, while also blaming the United Nations and other foreign organizations for enabling this diversion.

Hamas’s statement also emphasized that the “global resistance movement must continue until Israeli aggression on Gaza ends and the siege on the coastal strip is lifted.”

Meanwhile, as Israel faces escalating hostilities and the heavy toll of war, the Jewish state continues to push the boundaries of innovation and resilience, achieving new medical breakthroughs while confronting ongoing challenges.

In a major medical breakthrough, scientists at Sheba Medical Center and Tel Aviv University have successfully grown a synthetic 3D miniature human kidney in a lab using specialized stem cells derived from kidney tissue — one of the most promising advances in regenerative medicine.

Dr. Dror Harats, chairman of Sheba’s Research Authority, described this achievement as a reflection of Israel’s leading role in global medical innovation.

“Despite growing efforts to isolate Israel from international science, breakthroughs like this prove our impact is both lasting and essential,” he said.

In a landmark study, a team from Sheba’s Safra Children’s Hospital and Tel Aviv University’s Sagol Center for Regenerative Medicine created synthetic kidney organs that matured and remained stable for 34 weeks — the longest-lasting and most refined kidney organoids developed to date.

Nearly a decade ago, the research team became the first to successfully isolate human kidney tissue stem cells — the cells responsible for the organ’s development and growth.

Previous attempts to grow kidneys in a lab using general-purpose stem cells were short-lived, typically lasting only a few weeks and often producing unwanted cell types that compromised research accuracy.

However, this Israeli research team used stem cells taken directly from kidney tissue — cells that naturally develop into kidney parts — allowing them to create a much purer and more stable model with key features found in real kidneys.

This medical breakthrough could have far-reaching implications, redefining the current understanding of kidney diseases and advancing the development of innovative treatments.

Researchers believe the model could help assess how medications impact fetal kidneys during pregnancy and move science closer to repairing or replacing damaged kidney tissue with lab-grown cells.

The discovery came days after researchers from Hebrew University of Jerusalem and international partners discovered a way to boost the immune system’s cancer-fighting ability by reprogramming how T cells, which are white blood cells critical to the immune system, produce energy.

The researchers explained in a study published in the peer-reviewed Nature Communications that disabling a protein known as Ant2 in T cells greatly enhances their effectiveness against tumors.

“By disabling Ant2, we triggered a complete shift in how T cells produce and use energy,” Prof. Michael Berger of Hebrew University’s Faculty of Medicine, who co-led the study with doctorate student Omri Yosef, told the Tazpit Press Service. “This reprogramming made them significantly better at recognizing and killing cancer cells.”

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Netherlands to Push EU to Suspend Israel Trade Deal but Won’t Recognize Palestinian State ‘At This Time’

Netherlands Foreign Affairs Minister Caspar Veldkamp addresses a press conference, in New Delhi on April 1, 2025. Photo: ANI Photo/Sanjay Sharma via Reuters Connect

The Netherlands is spearheading efforts to suspend the European Union-Israel trade agreement amid rising EU criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza, while simultaneously refusing to recognize a Palestinian state, contrasting with other member states as international pressure mounts.

On Thursday, Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp announced that the Netherlands will push the EU to suspend the trade component of the EU-Israel Association Agreement — a pact governing the EU’s political and economic ties with the Jewish state.

This latest anti-Israel initiative follows a recent EU-commissioned report accusing Israel of committing “indiscriminate attacks … starvation … torture … [and] apartheid” against Palestinians in Gaza during its military campaign against Hamas, an internationally designated terrorist group.

Following calls from a majority of EU member states for a formal investigation, this report built on Belgium’s recent decision to review Israel’s compliance with the trade agreement, a process initiated by the Netherlands and led by EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas.

According to the report, “there are indications that Israel would be in breach of its human rights obligations” under the 25-year-old EU-Israel Association Agreement.

While the document acknowledges the reality of violence by Hamas, it states that this issue lies outside its scope — failing to address the Palestinian terrorist group’s role in sparking the current war with its bloody rampage across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Israeli officials have slammed the report as factually incorrect and morally flawed, noting that Hamas embeds its military infrastructure within civilian targets and Israel’s army takes extensive precautions to try and avoid civilian casualties.

In a Dutch parliamentary debate on Gaza on Thursday, Veldkamp also announced that the government would not recognize a Palestinian state for now — a position that stands in sharp contrast to the recent moves by several other EU member states to extend recognition.

“The Netherlands is not planning to recognize a Palestinian state at this time,” the Dutch diplomat said.

“This war has ceased to be a just war and is now leading to the erosion of Israel’s own security and identity,” he continued.

This latest decision goes against the position of several EU member states, including France, which has committed to recognizing Palestinian statehood in September.

The United Kingdom has likewise indicated it will do so unless Israel acts to ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and agrees to a ceasefire.

For its part, Germany said it was not planning to recognize a Palestinian state in the short term, and Italy argued that recognition must occur simultaneously with the recognition of Israel by the new entity.

Spain, Norway, Ireland, and Slovenia all recognized a Palestinian state last year.

Israel has been facing growing pressure from several EU member states seeking to undermine its defensive campaign against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza.

On Thursday, European Commission Vice President Teresa Ribera strongly condemned Israel’s actions in the war-torn enclave, describing the situation as a “grave violation of human dignity.”

“What we are seeing is a concrete population being targeted, killed and condemned to starve to death,” Ribera told Politico. “If it is not genocide, it looks very much like the definition used to express its meaning.”

Until now, the European Commission has refrained from accusing Israel of genocide, but Ribera’s comments mark one of the strongest European condemnations since the outbreak of the war in Gaza.

She also called on the EU to take decisive action by considering the suspension of its trade agreement with Israel and the implementation of sanctions, while emphasizing that such measures would require unanimous approval from all member states.

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Graduate Student Unions Promoting Antisemitism, Reform Group Says

Students listen to a speech at a protest encampment at Stanford University in Stanford, California US, on April 26, 2024. Photo: Carlos Barria via Reuters Connect.

Higher-education-based unions controlled by United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (UE) are rife with antisemitism and anti-Zionist discrimination, according to a new letter imploring the US Congress’s House Committee on Education and the Workforce to address the matter.

“Tracing its roots to communism in the 1930s, the UE is a radical, pro-Hamas labor union that has a long history of antisemitism,” the National Right to Work Foundation (NRTW), one of the US’s leading labor reform groups, wrote on July 30 in a message obtained by The Algemeiner. “The UE openly supports the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, which is designed to cripple and destroy Israel economically. Today, the UE furthers its antisemitic agenda by unionizing graduate students on college campuses and using its exclusive representation powers to create a hostile environment for Jewish students. The hostile environment includes demanding compulsory dues to fund the UE’s abhorrent activities.”

NRTW went on to describe a litany of alleged injustices to which UE members subject Jewish student-employees in the US’s most prestigious institutions of higher education, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to Cornell University. At MIT, the letter said, “union officers” aided a riotous group which illegally occupied a section of campus with a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” participating in the demonstration and even denying access to campus buildings. UE members at Stanford University, meanwhile, allegedly denied religious accommodations to Jewish students who requested exemption from union dues over that branch’s supporting the BDS movement. And Cornell University UE was accused of denying religious exemptions in several cases as well and followed up the rejection with an intrusive “questionnaire” which probed Jewish students for “legally-irrelevant information.”

The situation requires federal oversight and intervention, NRTW said, including Congress’s possibly clarifying that student-employees are not traditional employees and are therefore afforded protections under sections of the Civil Rights Act which apply to the campus.

“These continuing patterns of antisemitism are illegal, immoral, and must be stopped,” the letter continued. “We encourage you to do all that is in your power to investigate and help bring an end to the UE and its affiliates’ nonstop harassment and intimidation of Jewish students … The Trump administration can also use tools available to it under Title VI and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act against colleges who work with unions to create a hostile environment for Jewish students.”

July’s letter is not the first time NRTW has publicized alleged antisemitic abuse in unions representing higher education employees.

In 2024, it represented a group of six City University of New York (CUNY) professors, five of whom are Jewish, who sued to be “freed” from CUNY’s Professional Staff Congress (PSC-CUNY) over its passing a resolution during Israel’s May 2021 war with Hamas which declared solidarity with Palestinians and accused the Jewish state of ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and crimes against humanity. The group contested New York State’s “Taylor Law,” which it said chained the professors to the union’s “bargaining unit” and denied their right to freedom of speech and association by forcing them to be represented in negotiations by an organization they claim holds antisemitic views.

That same year, NRTW prevailed in a discrimination suit filed to exempt another cohort of Jewish MIT students from paying dues to the Graduate Student Union (GSU). The students had attempted to resist financially supporting GSU’s anti-Zionism, but the union bosses attempted to coerce their compliance, telling them that “no principles, teachings, or tenets of Judaism prohibit membership in or the payment of dues or fees” to the union.

“All Americans should have a right to protect their money from going to union bosses they don’t support, whether those objections are based on religion, politics, or any other reason,” NRTW said at the time.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

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