Legal Not-Niceties

It seems there's a problem developing:

Will settlers become illegal residents of Palestine?

Legal experts told Ynet Monday that if the Palestinians go through with their plan of unilaterally declaring a state in the West Bank, the settlers there could find their status changed to that of illegal residents.

The dean of Bar Ilan University's faculty of law, Professor Yaffa Zilbershatz, told Ynet that in the case of Palestinian statehood, "the settlers would become a minority that an enlightened [sic!] state must respect". Zilbershatz said that a growing trend in international law dictates the settlers could not be expelled as a minority, and that the Palestinians must offer them citizenship. "The Palestinians could claim that the settlers are not legitimate residents, meaning they reside on territory in violation of international law, because they are citizens of a holding country and they should not have been allowed to live in the held territory," she said. "On the basis of this claim, they could deport the population from the area, as though they were illegal residents."

...Dr. Robbie Sabel, former legal adviser to the Foreign Ministry, says the settlers' fate will be determined by Israel, not the Palestinians. "Israel is eventually the one to decide," he said. "In any case most countries in the world currently see the settlements as illegal… so their position according to international law is in a gray area."

Well, I think this area has other options.

Proclaiming, unilaterally, a state violates the Oslo Accords.

That leaves us, well, back in 1947 and the rather unfinished business.

Do the Arabs accept a Jewish state in the area of the Palestine Mandate?

Now, if they accept the "Palestine Mandate" as a starting point, we then go back to the original terms and original borders, not the proposed partitions of 1937-1939 or 1947.

That concept includes the reconstitution of the historic Jewish national home that respects non-Jews but the state apparatus is Jewish.

As such, international law must recognize my right as a Jew to live in Shiloh.

If expulsion is mooted, well, there go the Arabs of pre-67 Israel as well, it would appear logical. Two states of the former Mandate, Jewish and Arab.

And if Jews are illegitimate and illegal, so to say, in "Palestine New", then what are Arabs in "Israel Old"?

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P.S.

Implications of a Unilateral Declaration of Statehood

To unilaterally dictate and underwrite these delicate and central issues, as Fayyad seems to be proposing, is to poke a finger in the eye of the negotiating process.

More importantly, to act unilaterally outside the process could gravely undermine the framework itself and prejudice Salam Fayyad's own status, as well as the constitutional integrity of the Palestinian Authority. In this context, any unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state could set off a series of reactions - whether legal or political - that might create substantive, structural damage to the peace process...