Legitimacy of the State of Israel
The legitimacy of the State of Israel has been challenged since before the state was formed. There has been opposition to Zionism, the movement to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, since its emergence in 19th-century Europe. Since the establishment of the State of Israel and the concurrent Nakba in 1948, a number of individuals, organizations, and states have challenged Israel's political legitimacy and its occupation of territories belonging to Palestine, Syria and Lebanon. Over the course of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and broader Arab–Israeli conflict, the country's authority has also been questioned on a number of fronts.
Criticism of Israel may include opposition to the belief that the state has a right to exist or, since the 1967 Arab–Israeli War, the established power structure within the Israeli-occupied territories. Israel has also been accused of crimes against humanity and war crimes—such as apartheid, starvation and genocide—including by scholars, legal experts, and human rights organizations. Israel regards such criticism as attempts to delegitimize it. According to Agnès Callamard, the Secretary General of Amnesty International, Israel has maintained "the longest and one of the most deadly military occupations in the world".
On 11 May 1949, Israel was admitted to the United Nations as a full member state. It also has bilateral ties with each of the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council., 29 of the 193 UN member states do not formally recognize Israeli sovereignty; 26 of the 29 non-recognizing countries are located within the Muslim world, with Cuba, North Korea, and Venezuela representing the remainder. Most of the governments opposed to Israel have cited the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict and Israel's ongoing military occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip as the basis for their stance.
In the early 1990s, Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian political leader Yasser Arafat exchanged the Letters of Mutual Recognition. Pursuant to this correspondence, the Palestine Liberation Organization formally recognized Israel's right to exist as a sovereign state while Israel formally recognized the PLO as a legitimate entity representing the Palestinians. This development aimed to set the stage for negotiations towards a two-state solution, through what would become known as the Oslo Accords, as part of the Israeli–Palestinian peace process.
Background
On May 14, 1948, in the midst of the 1948 Palestine war, leaders of the Zionist Organization, the Jewish Agency, and the broader Yishuv declared the establishment of the State of Israel in what was at the time Mandatory Palestine. The Israeli provisional government was promptly granted de facto recognition by the United States, followed by Iran, Guatemala, Iceland, Nicaragua, Romania, and Uruguay. The Soviet Union was the first country to grant de jure recognition to Israel on 17 May 1948, followed by Nicaragua, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Poland. The United States extended de jure recognition after the first Israeli election, on 31 January 1949.Diplomatic normalization and legitimacy
In 1988 the Palestine Liberation Organization, the official representative of the Palestinian people, accepted the existence of the State of Israel and advocated for the full implementation of UN Security Council 242. Following the Oslo I Accord in 1993, the PLO officially recognized the State of Israel and pledged to reject violence, and Israel recognized the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people. Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas said, while speaking at the UN regarding Palestinian recognition, "We did not come here seeking to delegitimize a state established years ago, and that is Israel."Hamas denies the legitimacy of the Oslo I Accord, but has said it accepts the framework of peace based on two states on 1967 borders.
File:Hussein Clinton Rabin.jpg|thumb|280px|right|A handshake between King Hussein of Jordan and Yitzhak Rabin, accompanied by Bill Clinton, during the Israel-Jordan peace negotiations, 25 July 1994
In the 1990s, Islamic and leftist movements in Jordan attacked the Israel–Jordan Treaty of Peace as legitimization. Significant minorities in Jordan see Israel as an illegitimate state, and reversing the normalization of diplomatic relations was, at least until the late 1990s, central to Jordanian discourse.
In 2002 the Arab League unanimously adopted the Arab Peace Initiative at their Beirut summit. The comprehensive peace plan called for full normalization of Arab-Israeli relations in return for full Israeli withdrawal from the territories occupied in June 1967. Turki bin Faisal Al Saud of Saudi Arabia said that, in endorsing the initiative, every Arab state had "made clear that they will pay the price for peace, not only by recognizing Israel as a legitimate state in the area, but also to normalise relations with it and end the state of hostilities that had existed since 1948". Subsequently, there are currently six members of the Arab League which unambiguously recognize Israel: Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, United Arab Emirates and Palestine; and most of the non-Arab members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation also recognize Israel. Mauritania, Oman and Sudan are ambiguous on this question, having publicly retreated or not formally concluded recognition of Israel.
, 29 United Nations member states do not formally recognize the State of Israel. This includes 16 members of the Arab League ; 10 non-Arab members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation ; and Cuba, North Korea, and Venezuela.
Starting from 27 June 2024, Germany requires all those applying for naturalization to affirm Israel's right to exist. Opponents of this law say that it infringes on freedom of speech.
Rhetoric of delegitimization
Following the 2006 Palestinian legislative election and Hamas' governance of the Gaza Strip, the term "delegitimization" has been frequently applied to rhetoric surrounding the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Professor Emanuel Adler of the University of Toronto says that Israel is willing to accept a situation where its legitimacy may be challenged, because it sees itself as occupying a unique place in the world order. Stacie E. Goddard of Wellesley College suggests that the legitimacy of Israeli historical narratives is used as a tool to secure territory.Legitimacy rhetoric in regional politics
Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iran's official position has been to not recognize the State of Israel. According to psychologist Rusi Jaspal, Iranian officials and state media often employ pejorative terminology to delegitimize Israel. For example, he says they refer to Israel as the "Zionist regime" and "Occupied Palestine" to imply that it is an oppressive regime rather than a legitimate sovereign state. Jaspal says that such language is not reserved for the state alone, and that Israelis are often labelled "Zionists". Jaspal further says such rhetoric has been consistent in Iranian media, especially in English-language publications targeting international audiences.Jordanian linguistics scholar Ibrahim Darwish suggests his own country's language use has changed following the peace treaty signed with Israel on 26 October 1994. Darwish suggests that before the treaty, Jordanian media employed terms like "Filastiin", "al-ardh al-muhtallah", and "al-kayaan as-suhyuuni", mirroring the state of war and ideological conflict. He says that, post-peace, there has been a noticeable shift to terms such as "Israel" and "the state of Israel".
Legitimacy rhetoric as antisemitism
, head of the Jewish Agency, and Canadian ex-Foreign Minister John Baird have characterized Israel's delegitimization—the third of the Three Ds of antisemitism—as the "new antisemitism". Sharansky and Alan Dershowitz, an American legal scholar, suggest that delegitimization is a double standard used to separate Israel from other legitimate nations. Sharansky says "when Israel's fundamental right to exist is denied – alone among all peoples in the world – this too is anti-Semitism"; Dershowitz says "only with respect to Israel does criticism quickly transform into demonization, delegitimization, and calls for its destruction". According to former Canadian attorney general Irwin Cotler, the number of anti-Israel resolutions passed by the UN is an example of this delegitimization.Dore Gold, President of the Israeli think tank Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, suggests there is a "campaign to delegitimize Israel" based on three themes: a "denial of Israel's right to security", "portrayal of Israel as a criminal state", and "denial of Jewish history". Israeli philosophy scholar Elhanan Yakira also says portrayal of Israel as "criminal" and denial of Jewish history, specifically the Holocaust, are key to delegitimization. Dershowitz suggests other standard lines of delegitimization include claims of Israeli colonialism, that its statehood was not granted legally, that it engages in apartheid, and that the one-state solution is necessary to resolve the Israel–Palestine conflict.
Legitimacy rhetoric as distraction
US President Barack Obama said, in a May 2011 speech, "efforts to delegitimize Israel" or "isolate Israel at the United Nations" would not work for the Palestinians and would not create "an independent state".In June 2011, M. J. Rosenberg, writing in the Los Angeles Times, suggested that the term "delegitimization" was a "distraction", whose purpose was to divert attention away from world opposition to the "illegitimate" Israeli occupation of the West Bank and blockade of the Gaza Strip, from the legality of Israeli settlements, and from "the ever-louder calls for Israel to grant Palestinians equal rights". He concludes that "It's not the Palestinians who are delegitimizing Israel, but the Israeli government, which maintains the occupation. And the leading delegitimizer is Netanyahu, whose contemptuous rejection of peace is turning Israel into an international pariah."