"Teich then asks, “who, exactly, is being recognized? And to what end?” Palestinians are the Indigenous people of Palestine, and their right to self-determination is enshrined in international law. To question “who” is being recognized is to adopt the rhetoric of the colonizers’ intent on erasing an entire people."
Re: The false promise of unilateral recognition
Teich argues that recognizing the state of Palestine would cancel out accusations of Israeli apartheid, since she argues those charges only hold if Israel rules Palestinians under one regime. This reasoning is legally flawed and surprising coming from someone with expertise in international law.
Apartheid, as defined under Article 7(2)(h) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, is “committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.” The applicability of this crime does not depend on the recognition or non-recognition of a Palestinian state.
As Amnesty International has demonstrated, Israel is committing the crime of apartheid against the Palestinian people as a whole, including Palestinians under military occupation, Palestinians who hold second-class citizenship within Israel, and even Palestinian refugees in exile. Apartheid will only end when those conditions of subjugation, segregation, and domination are finally dismantled, and this has nothing to do with whether countries recognize the state of Palestine. To suggest otherwise conflates distinct areas of international law: state recognition, which falls within the domain of international relations, and the prohibition of apartheid, which is codified as a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
Teich then asks, “who, exactly, is being recognized? And to what end?” Palestinians are the Indigenous people of Palestine, and their right to self-determination is enshrined in international law. To question “who” is being recognized is to adopt the rhetoric of the colonizers’ intent on erasing an entire people.
Lynn Naji
Media Analyst
Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East