# Legitimacy of the State of Israel

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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 in 1948, a number of individuals, organizations, and states have challenged Israel's political legitimacy and its occupation of territories claimed, at various times, by 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 country's 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. Israel has also been criticized for maintaining "the longest and one of the most deadly military occupations in the world".
On 11 May 1949, Israel was admitted to the United Nations (UN) as a full member state. It also has bilateral ties with each of the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. As of 2022, 28 of the 193 UN member states do not recognize Israeli sovereignty; 25 of the 28 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 (PLO) 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 (i.e., Israel alongside the State of Palestine), through what would become known as the Oslo Accords, as part of the Israeli–Palestinian peace process.

## Diplomatic normalization and legitimacy

In 1988 the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), 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.
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 nine members of the Arab League which recognize Israel: Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Sudan, United Arab Emirates and Palestine; and most of the non-Arab members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation also recognize Israel.
As of 2020, 30 United Nations member states do not recognize the State of Israel. This includes 13 members of the Arab League (Algeria, Comoros, Djibouti, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen); nine members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Brunei, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Mali, Niger, and Pakistan); 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" (Palestine), "al-ardh al-muhtallah" (the occupied land), and "al-kayaan as-suhyuuni" ("the Zionist entity"), mirroring the state of war and ideological conflict. He says that, post-peace, there has been a noticeable shift to more neutral terms such as "Israel" and "the state of Israel".

### Legitimacy rhetoric as antisemitism

Natan Sharansky, 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 (JCPA), 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 a 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 [Palestinian] 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."

### Calls for the destruction of Israel

Joel Fishman suggests that "the purpose of delegitimization on the international level is to isolate an intended victim from the community of nations as a prelude to bringing about its downfall and ultimate destruction".$^{:389}$ Explicit or implicit calls for the destruction of the State of Israel as a political entity have been made in official statements, speeches, charters, or public discourse, and have sought such destruction through military, political or ideological action. Irwin Cotler coined the term "genocidal antisemitism" to describe public calls and incitements to destroy Israel, which he says includes official promotion of anti-Israel sentiments in Ahmadinejad's Iran; the ideologies of groups like Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, and al-Qaeda, which have advocated for Israel's destruction or endorsed acts of terror to achieve this goal; and religious fatwas and execution writs which frame genocidal calls against Israelis as religious obligations or portray Israel as a collective enemy.
Calls for the destruction of Israel have been reported since the 1940s. In October 1947, in response to the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) report, Azzam Pasha, the Secretary-General of the Arab League, said:
   Personally, I hope the Jews do not force us into this war, because it would be a war of extermination and momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacre and the Crusades.
Efraim Karsh and David Barnett have characterized this quote as a genocidal threat. Tom Segev contests the interpretation, saying Pasha was resigned to a war which he was not sure the Arabs would win. He further quotes Pasha as saying:
   Whatever the outcome, the Arabs will stick to their offer of equal citizenship for Jews in Arab Palestine and let them be as Jewish as they like.
In the years running up to the 1967 Six Day War, Egyptian president also Gamal Abdel Nasser made calls for the annulment of Israel's existence as a solution to the Israel–Palestine conflict, associating Israel with European imperialism. In 1964, he said:
   We swear to God that we shall not rest until we restore the Arab nation to Palestine and Palestine to the Arab nation. There is no room for imperialism and there is no room for Britain in our country, just as there is no room for Israel within the Arab nation.
Palestinian Islamist organizations like Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad have advocated for Israel's destruction. Elements of pro-Palestinian discourse have also been described as advocating for the destruction of Israel, including slogans, boycotts, proposals for a one-state solution, and calls for the Palestinian right of return. For example, Germany's Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution has described the BDS's 2005 founding manifesto, which calls for an end to the "occupation and colonization of all Arab lands", as a direct demand for "the end to the existence of Israel as a state".
Anti-Israeli protests in the Middle East often involve the burning of Israeli flags and chants like "Death to Israel". Pierre Birnbaum says that, in Paris, North African demonstrators have also uttered cries of "death to the Jews, death to Israel". During Quds Day held in Iran and other countries, rallies and marches frequently result in chants of "Death to Israel, Death to America".

## Effect of delegitimization to peace

According to Gerald Steinberg, attacks on Israel's legitimacy are a barrier to the Israeli–Palestinian peace process. Former head of Israeli intelligence Amos Yadlin and Israeli politician and diplomat Tzipi Livni have suggested that delegitimization threatens Israeli security. Yadlin said delegitimization was "a graver threat than war" while Livni said it "limits our ability to protect ourselves". During Operation Pillar of Defense, David Schwartz said that demands for Israel to not enter Gaza were a "delegitimization of Israel's right to defend itself".
In 1993, Thomas Friedman, writing in The New York Times, said that a century of delegitimization of the other side had been a barrier to peace for Israelis and Palestinians, and "made sure that the other was never allowed to really feel at home in Israel". Daniel Bar Tal suggests that "mutual delegitimization" in the Israel–Palestine conflict deepens and prolongs antipathy, writing:
   Delegimization allows practices that would otherwise be unthinkable, practices like discrimination, exploitation, expulsion, mass killings, and genocide. Without the justification provided by delegitimization, many people would have great difficulty to commit such acts. Thus, it is absolutely imperative that any movement towards conflict resolution and especially reconciliation requires abolition of the delegitimization.
Amnesty International says that the peace process is already dead, and is often used as an excuse to violate the human rights of Palestinians. Irwin Cotler, former Canadian Attorney General, says that delegitimization is "masked" in UN resolutions against Israel and abuses of universal jurisdiction, which are "laundered under the cover of human rights" or accusations of racism and apartheid against Israel. Yousef Munayyer suggests it is important for international actors to realize that Israel is practicing apartheid, and accurately describing Israeli policies will motivate the international community to take action against Israel's human rights violations.
Nathan Thrall suggests the most effective way to peace is to pressure Israel to change course. As examples for the effectiveness of this strategy, he highlights the actions of President Eisenhower in the 1956 Suez Crisis, President Ford in 1975, President Carter in 1977 and 1978, and US secretary of state James Baker in 1991. Thrall has said that "occupation delegitimises Zionism and causes discord within Israel", whereas a long-term peace agreement would hinder "efforts to delegitimise Israel and [facilitate] the normalisation of relations with other nations of the region". He further suggests that suppressing protest makes violence more likely "to those who have few other means of upsetting the status quo".