Thread by @Alonso_GD

Judge Sebutinde’s Dissent has resurrected old claims that Israel is entitled to all of Palestinian Territory under the doctrine of uti possidetis juris. While this has encouraged many anti-Palestinian-rights actors, the argument remains as unconvincing as ever 🧵

Uti Possidetis is a doctrine that originates in the early 1800s during the independentist processes in Latin America, whose leaders used this Roman law concept to claim that colonial internal borders would continue after independence as the int’l borders of the new Latin states

In simple terms, therefore, the doctrine holds that the territory of the Viceroyalty of Peru is the same as the territory of the (now independent) Republic of Peru. Its a simple and intuitive way to solve the uncertainty of the transition to independence

It is important to be aware however that Latin American independence, while marking the end of Spanish/Portuguese colonialism in the region, did not mark the end of coloniality, as the white Westernised elites remained in control of social structure and political power

Uti Possidetis was a product of this new (post)colonial regional order. The Latin American subaltern - its indigenous populations, particularly in the at the time uncharted Amazon Basin - was fully excluded from it

There are, for instance, indigenous groups like the Yanomami whose ancestral lands are artificially divided by uti possidetis between Venezuela and Brazil. the Aymara people of Bolivia and Peru, similarly, had no say on what bonds they wanted to keep among each other

Uti Possidetis, therefore, has a long history of mascarading as a postcolonial concept while simultaneously reinforcing the colonial structures from which it comes from. Israel's reliance on it to explain its colonisation of Palestine is no different

Israel’s Uti Possidetis argument is that it, as the only resulting independent state to emerge from the end of the Mandate of Palestine, is entitled, through uti possidetis, to sovereignty over the entire colonial border - i.e. all of Palestine

But this makes no sense for the simple fact that Israel is not Palestine. Or, to put it in other words, Israel is not the postcolonial result of Palestine’s independence process in the same way as the Viceroyalty and Republic of Peru

When Israel declared independence in 1948 it had to make a choice. Either it declared the existence of the Jewish State envisioned by the UN Partition Plan or it declared a different Jewish state, not bound by the UN’s Plan and - importantly - its borders

There simply was no third option of it declaring the independence of Palestine as a whole, for the simple reason that the Jewish Agency for Palestine never represented all of Palestine. It represented only Palestine’s Jewish population

Thus, when in 1948, the Jewish Agency declared independence, it was not Mandatory Palestine who became independent, but the Jewish community of Palestine, creating a Jewish State *in* Palestine (as opposed to transforming all of Palestine into a Jewish State)

This is clear from the history itself: Israel’s own Declaration of Independence *establishes* “a Jewish State” inspired in the UN’s own *partition plan*. In other words, it accepts that it is not leading Palestine to independence, but separating a Jewish State from it

It is because of this, in fact, that the int’l community recognises the current Israeli borders and not the smaller borders of the Partition Plan: Israel is not the product of this Plan, but of an act of secession from Mandatory Palestine

It is because of this that Israel can claim the land it occupied during the Nakba. If Israel were not the result of secession, the lands beyond the 1948 borders would be illegally conquered and annexed. Since they are seceded territory, this new border can be recognised

and yet here is the interesting part: recognised by whom? As with any instance of secession, the recognition of the 163 states that recognised Israel is not enough. The original state from which Israel seceded needs to recognise it too - i.e. Palestine

Palestine, as Israel likes to remind us constantly, never accepted Partition. It consistently argued that there should only be one binational State of Palestine on the borders of Mandatory Palestine. This is what is similar to the Viceroyalty and the Republic of Peru, right?

So, if uti possidetis applies at all to the Israeli Palestinian conflict, it applies to the transition of Mandatory Palestine into the State of Palestine. It is the latter that has the right to maintain its pre-independence borders, not those who seceded from it

This is why Palestine’s “Historic Compromise” of 1988 is important. It accepted for the first time that recognition of a Palestinian State may need to follow the logic of partition - of accepting that it would cede to Israel its lands beyond the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza

Thus while the mainstream may conceive “The Peace Process” as Israel granting Palestine statehood, in reality it is the mechanism through which Palestine will finalise the legitimisation of Israel’s original secession from Palestine by letting go of its uti possidetis rights

So, no. Israel has no uti possidetis right to Palestine in the same way as Peru does not have uti possidetis right to Bolivia. Instead, it is Palestine who has an uti possidetis right to Palestine - and, quite painfully, it is willing to renounce to it in the name of peace

(If you made it this far, then this topic really interests you and you should maybe consider joining me on Sunday for a conversation on these and other topics. For more details see my pinned tweet)