Ed Bugus on the legitimacy of nation-state claims to territory and the two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict

The two state solution, which has been rejected and derailed many times, is a statist solution to a statist problem.  The cause of the current conflict was always the product of a nationalism encouraged in both the Jews and Arabs by the British in their maneuvering against Germany during WW1.  And the establishment of a state always expropriates coercively the land it takes, it never acquires it legitimately by homesteading it or by purchasing it.  Thus, “states have no legitimate claim to territory” writes Michael Rectenwald in agreeing with Israel’s critics that the state of israel is illegitimate and the British had no legitimate claim on it previously.

Even though a “two-state solution” is likely impossible after the unprecedented attack on Israel and the vicious and extremely disproportionate response, it was never the means to any lasting peace in the first place. Statism is the cause of the conflict, and not solution.

However, to base claims of legitimacy this way or based on original title would undermine every state’s claim and maybe every person’s claim to their property today.  Should the American government surrender its claims to the Indians it stole it from in North America?  Should the Turks give Constantinople back to the Greeks, the Greeks to the Christians?  And to whom belongs the region of Sicily?  The Italians, or the Spanish, or French, or the Greeks?  There is either constant war waged by peoples with legitimate title to past claims or there is a point at which we realize that they are there now and we can adopt the non aggression principle at any time. 

So that would be my defence of the Israeli state.  It is there now.  And to get rid of the state, like everywhere else, that has to happen from the inside, or else you turn the state into an idea for which people will die.

It is not conceivable at this point for any other state to deconstruct the israeli state because the only way that is legitimate for another state to do is by conceding its own illegitimate claims on its own lands.

~ Ed Bugus, "The Road to Peace: Israel and Palestine," November 7, 2023