Right to exist


The right to exist is said to be an attribute of nations. According to an essay by the nineteenth-century French philosopher Ernest Renan, a state has the right to exist when individuals are willing to sacrifice their own interests for the community it represents. Unlike self-determination, the right to exist is an attribute of states rather than of peoples. It is not a right recognized in international law. The phrase has featured prominently in the Arab–Israeli conflict since the 1950s.
The right to exist of a de facto state may be balanced against another state's right to territorial integrity. Proponents of the right to exist trace it back to the "right of existence", said to be a fundamental right of states recognized by writers on international law for hundreds of years.

Historical use

used the phrase "right to exist" to refer to forms of government, arguing that representative government has a right to exist, but that hereditary government does not. In 1823, Sir Walter Scott argued for the "right to exist in the Greek people". According to Renan's "What is a Nation?", "So long as this moral consciousness gives proof of its strength by the sacrifices which demand the abdication of the individual to the advantage of the community, it is legitimate and has the right to exist. If doubts arise regarding its frontiers, consult the populations in the areas under dispute." Existence is not a historical right, but "a daily, just as an individual's existence is a perpetual affirmation of life," Renan said. The phrase gained enormous usage in reference to the breakup of the Ottoman Empire in 1918. "If Turkey has a right to exist – and the Powers are very prompt to assert that she has – she possesses an equally good right to defend herself against all attempts to imperil her political existence," wrote Eliakim and Robert Littell in 1903. In many cases, a nation's right to exist is not questioned, and is therefore not asserted.

Examples

[Armenia]

The right to exist of Armenia became known as the Armenian Question during the Congress of Berlin in 1878, and would again be asked during the Armenian Genocide in World War I.

Basque nation">Basque Country (autonomous community)">Basque nation

According to Basque nationalists, "Euzkadi is the country of the Basques with as such right to exist independently as a nation as Poland or Ireland. The Basques are a very ancient people..."

[Chechnya]

The phrase, "right to exist" has also been used in reference to the right of Chechens to establish a state independent from Russia.

[Israel]

The League of Nations formally awarded Britain a mandate over Mandatory Palestine in 1922, when Jews made up 11% of the population. The land west of the Jordan River was under direct British administration until 1948, while the land east of the Jordan was a semi-autonomous region known as Transjordan Emirate, and gained independence in 1946.
In 1936-39 there was a nationalist uprising by Palestinian Arabs against British colonial rule and mass Jewish immigration into Palestine.
In 1947, a United Nations General Assembly resolution provided for the creation of an "Arab State" and a "Jewish State" to exist within Palestine in the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine. This has been described by Prof. Joseph Massad as "a non-binding proposal that was never ratified or adopted by the Security Council, and therefore never acquired legal standing, as UN regulations require." The Jewish Agency, precursor to the Israeli government, agreed to the plan, but the Palestinians rejected it and fighting broke out. After Israel's May 14, 1948 unilateral declaration of independence, support from neighboring Arab states escalated the 1947–48 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine into the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The legal and territorial status of Israel and Palestine is still hotly disputed in the region and within the international community.
According to Ilan Pappé, Arab recognition of Israel's right to exist was part of Folke Bernadotte's 1948 peace plan. The Arab states gave this as their reason to reject the plan. In the 1950s UK MP Herbert Morrison cited then Egyptian leader Abdel Nasser as saying "Israel is an artificial State which must disappear.". The issue was described as the central one between Israel and the Arabs.
After the June 1967 war, Egyptian spokesman Mohammed H. el-Zayyat stated that Cairo had accepted Israel's right to exist since the signing of the Egyptian-Israeli armistice in 1949. He added that this did not imply recognition of Israel. In September, the Arab leaders adopted a hardline "three nos" position in the Khartoum Resolution: No peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, and no negotiations with Israel. But in November, Egypt accepted UN Security Council Resolution 242, which implied acceptance of Israel's right to exist. At the same time, President Gamal Abdel Nasser urged Yasser Arafat and other Palestinian leaders to reject the resolution. "You must be our irresponsible arm," he said. King Hussein of Jordan also acknowledged that Israel had a right to exist at this time. Meanwhile, Syria rejected Resolution 242, saying that it, "refers to Israel's right to exist and it ignores the right of the refugees to return to their homes."
Upon assuming the premiership in 1977, Menachem Begin spoke as follows:
Our right to exist—have you ever heard of such a thing? Would it enter the mind of any Briton or Frenchman, Belgian or Dutchman, Hungarian or Bulgarian, Russian or American, to request for its people recognition of its right to exist?..... Mr. Speaker: From the Knesset of Israel, I say to the world, our very existence per se is our right to exist!
As reported by the Financial Times, in 1988 Yasser Arafat declared that the Palestinians had accepted Israel's right to exist. In 1993, there was an official exchange of letters between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Chairman Arafat, in which Arafat declared that "the PLO affirms that those articles of the Palestinian Covenant which deny Israel's right to exist, and the provisions of the Covenant which are inconsistent with the commitments of this letter are now inoperative and no longer valid." In 2009 Prime Minister Ehud Olmert demanded the Palestinian Authority's acceptance of Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, which the Palestinian Authority rejected. The Knesset plenum gave initial approval in May 2009 to a bill criminalising the public denial of Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, with a penalty of up to a year in prison.
In 2011, the PA Ambassador to India, Adli Sadeq, wrote in the official PA daily: "They have a common mistake or misconception by which they fool themselves, assuming that Fatah accepts them and recognizes the right of their state to exist, and that it is Hamas alone that loathes them and does not recognize the right of this state to exist. They ignore the fact that this state, based on a fabricated enterprise, never had any shred of a right to exist." In a different part of the article the PA ambassador explained this explicitly: "There are no two Palestinians who disagree over the fact that Israel exists, and recognition of it is restating the obvious. But recognition of its right to exist is something else, different from recognition of its existence."
In 2011 Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said in a speech to the Dutch Parliament that the Palestinian people recognise Israel's right to exist and they hope the Israeli government will respond by "recognizing the Palestinian state on the borders of the land occupied in 1967."
In 2013 Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh reiterated that the Palestinian Arabs as a whole will never recognize Israel: "We had two wars...but Palestinians did not and will not recognize Israel".
John V. Whitbeck argued that Israel's insistence on a right to exist forces Palestinians to provide a moral justification for their own suffering. Noam Chomsky has argued that no state has the right to exist, that the concept was invented in the 1970s, and that Israel's right to exist can not be accepted by the Palestinians.
International law scholar Anthony Carty observed in 2013 that “the question whether Israel has a legal right to exist might appear to be one of the most emotively charged in the vocabulary of international law and politics. It evokes immediately the ‘exterminationist’ rhetoric of numerous Arab and Islamic politicians and ideologues, not least the present President of Iran."

[Kashmir]

Representatives of the Kashmiri people regularly assert their right to exist as a nation, independent from both India and Pakistan.

[Kurdistan]

Representatives of the Kurdish people regularly assert their right to exist as a nation.

[Northern Ireland]

The constitution of the Irish free state claimed the national territory consisted of the whole of the Island, denying Northern Ireland's right to exist.

Novorossiya

Supporters of an autonomous Novorossiya in eastern Ukraine equally argue for a Novorossiyan right to exist. Due to ongoing media controversy around the driving forces behind the unrest in Ukraine, however, the term carries significant weight. RT News reported in December 2014 that Soika, a self-professed 23-year old Slovak volunteer who had then been in Donbass for two months, told them: "Novorossiya has the right to exist. Although Europe declares the rights of peoples, it recognizes them in a selective manner." Euromaidan generally sees the state not as a grassroots movement, but rather as Russian-backed astroturfing.

North Korea

In the context of South Korea's and the United States non-recognition of the North Korean state and what the North views as a 'hostile policy' pursued by the US, the North's government frequently accuses the US of denying the 'right of existence' of North Korea. For instance, a 2017 Foreign Ministry statement declared, "The DPRK will redouble the efforts to increase its strength to safeguard the country’s sovereignty and right to existence." North Korea itself does not recognise the right of existence of the Republic of Korea in the south.

[State of Palestine]

The League of Nations formally awarded Britain a mandate over Mandatory Palestine in 1922, when Jews made up 11% of the population. The land west of the Jordan River was under direct British administration until 1948, while the land east of the Jordan was a semi-autonomous region known as Transjordan Emirate, and gained independence in 1946.
In 1936-39 there was a nationalist uprising by Palestinian Arabs against British colonial rule and mass Jewish immigration into Palestine.
In 1947, a United Nations General Assembly resolution provided for the creation of an "Arab State" and a "Jewish State" to exist within Palestine in the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine. This has been described by Prof. Joseph Massad as "a non-binding proposal that was never ratified or adopted by the Security Council, and therefore never acquired legal standing, as UN regulations require." The Jewish Agency, precursor to the Israeli government, agreed to the plan, but the Palestinians rejected this and fighting broke out. After Israel's May 14, 1948 unilateral declaration of independence, support from neighboring Arab states escalated the 1947–48 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine into the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The legal and territorial status of Israel and Palestine is still hotly disputed in the region and within the international community.
In June 2009 Barack Obama said "Israelis must acknowledge that just as Israel's right to exist cannot be denied, neither can Palestine's."
As reported by The New York Times, in 1988 Yasser Arafat declared that the Palestinians accepted United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, which would guarantee "the right to exist in peace and security for all". In 1993, there was an official exchange of letters between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Chairman Arafat, in which Arafat declared that "the PLO affirms that those articles of the Palestinian Covenant which deny Israel's right to exist, and the provisions of the Covenant which are inconsistent with the commitments of this letter are now inoperative and no longer valid."However, the actual wording of the revision only stated the provision would be removed at a future date; the non-recognition of Israel remains in the charter.
In 2009 Prime Minister Ehud Olmert demanded the Palestinian Authority's acceptance of Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, which the Palestinian Authority rejected. The Knesset plenum gave initial approval in May 2009 to a bill criminalizing the public denial of Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, with a penalty of up to a year in prison.
In 2011, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said in a speech to the Dutch parliament in the Hague that the Palestinian people recognize Israel's right to exist and they hope the Israeli government will respond by "recognizing the Palestinian state on the borders of the land occupied in 1967."
Israeli government ministers Naftali Bennett and Danny Danon have repeatedly rejected the creation of a Palestinian state, with Bennett stating "I will do everything in my power to make sure they never get a state." Bennett stated that "relinquishing control of the West Bank would expose Israel's home front to infiltration tunnels leading into the heartland of Israel," citing the case of Gaza as a scenario that could repeat itself. In an August 2011 interview with Teymoor Nabili on Al Jazeera English, Danny Danon said "There is place only for one state on the land of Israel.... I do not believe in a two-state solution.", reaffirming his stance in June 2013: “Oy vey! Is it such a criminal offense to oppose a two-state solution?” In June 2016 a poll showed that only 4 out of 20 Israeli ministers accepted the state of Palestine's right to exist. A poll carried out in 2011 by the Hebrew University indicated that 58% of Israelis and 50% of Palestinians support a two-state solution based on the Clinton Parameters.
In 2011 Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said in a speech to the Dutch Parliament that the Palestinian people recognise Israel's right to exist and they hope the Israeli government will respond by "recognizing the Palestinian state on the borders of the land occupied in 1967." Abbas said he sought United Nations recognition of a Palestinian state only after the Israeli government refused "the terms of reference of the peace process and the cessation of settlement building" in the occupied territories.

Citations