A State By Any Other Name

As Israel finishes celebrating the anniversary of its creation the Palestinian Authority with help from Palestinians in Syria and Lebanon and Gaza converge at border points to express their peaceful protest against the existence of the State of Israel. Molotov cocktails and rocks aside, the issue was that people have a right to protest that which grieves them. And the existence of a State within the Middle East, comprised of Jews is horribly aggravating.

Uriel Sinai/Getty Images Two Palestinian men with rocks during clashes with the Israeli police on Sunday near Ramallah.

As the Middle East and the Arab States within it are gripped with the drama of people agitating for their rights and the obligations of those who govern them to recognize their human rights, the core issues slip by as protesters are urged to vent their frustration not at those who govern them but at the existence of a Jewish State. Positioned where it is for the express purpose of irritating the Arab population to infuriated distraction.

The United Nation's plan for Partition was unacceptable to Arab Palestinians, and no less so to to the Arab States surrounding Israel. One attempt after another with combined Arab armies was launched to dislodge the new country from existence in a rage of exclusion and hatred. The original 1948 borders were increased to reflect the last of those attacks, enabling Israel to better defend itself.

And now that the Palestinians are united politically as well as in their incessant and indomitable need to express their outrage at the existence of Israel and to continue mounting their 'resistance' against the 'occupier', there is no longer any need at the pretense of searching for a peace agreement. United, Fatah and Hamas see themselves as conquerors.

But for international consumption the fable of the search for peace continues, and the Palestinian Authority has laid out its preconditions. These preconditions have a limited shelf life, for when, once again, elections take place at a time when Fatah can no longer stave them off, it may very well be Hamas that constructs the preconditions, and Hamas's precondition for peace is war.

Meanwhile the PLO's call for the right of "return" of the Palestinian people to land upon which Israel now sits is considered an 'inalienable right' under international law. A newly-constructed international law that has been practised nowhere else in the world. The popular' struggle' against the West Bank settlements must be re-commenced.

The infamous "refugee camps" for which the international community has footed the bill for over 60 years must remain as a living blight. Until such time - and it cannot be too soon - as the State of Israel is but a dim and bad memory. When such profound errors of judgement from within the international community take place, they must be reversed. There is a first time for everything.

The United Nations must recognize the racist character of the State of Israel which designates itself a Jewish State. That characterization of a Jewish state is clearly apartheid in nature, placing the status of Arabs in question for what kind of Arab would agree to live in a Jewish state? The fact that the Jewish state still honours equitable justice and citizenship for all is insultingly irrelevant.

With the dissolution of the Jewish state and the eventual absence of the State of Israel, there will be but one state, that of the Palestinians. It will be named the State of Palestine. And it will be recognized as an Islamic state.