Communicated: TefillaChillul Tefila Bifarhesia, as well as halachicly challenged verbiage and dress, are external manifestations of a critical lack of personal yiras shomayim which has lethal consequences.
tell a friendOver the past several weeks the media have been enamored by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s push to obtain United Nations recognition of a Palestinian state. The media coverage has exclusively focused on the political aspects of Abbas’s effort and its relationship to the so called peace process involving the Israel and PA.
Lost in the circus-like coverage of the UN bid is virtually any mention of the applicable legal issues, despite Abbas’s deliberate departure from Yasir Arafat’s two-decade strategy of seeking approval of the PA’s statehood claim by invoking international law.
Starting in the late 1980s, the PA’s numerous legal advocates, notably led by former U.S. attorney general Ramsey Clark, have repeatedly tried to wrest judicial recognition of a Palestinian state in dozens of legal proceedings in the federal courts by arguing that the Palestinians already have a sovereign state under the legal standards of international law.
Despite their best efforts, every attempt (at both the district court and appellate levels in Washington, New York, Rhode Island and Boston) has ended in utter failure.
For several obvious reasons, the strivings of advocacy groups, and even legitimate nationalities, for recognition of independence is not simply a political matter. For instance, without objective legal criteria of sovereignty, dissident groups could capriciously feign independence. Therefore universally recognized norms of international law contain criteria by which a true sovereign state can be identified and recognized.
Unlike Abbas’s current political gambit in the United Nations, Arafat urged U.S. courts to apply these norms of international law to the Palestinians. For decades, the PA’s lawyers (personally supervised by Arafat) have invoked the application of international law arguing that it meets the criteria for statehood.
This strategy began after Palestinian terrorists pushed the wheelchair-bound 69-year-old Leon Klinghoffer over the rails of the Achille Lauro and into the Mediterranean Sea. In response to a suit by the Klinghoffer family, Clark asserted that the PLO could not be held liable because it was in actuality a “State of Palestine” and thus shielded by the doctrine of sovereign immunity, an ancient legal precept that immunizes foreign states from lawsuits. The Klinghoffer court soundly rejected this argument.
Subsequently, enactment of the Anti Terrorism Act of 1990 (also known as the “Klinghoffer Act”) ushered in the modern era of terrorism litigation during which dozens of victims brought suit against the PLO and the PA. Each time they were sued, Ramsey Clark again raised the sovereign immunity defense, trying both to ward off damage claims and to give judicial birth by obtaining legal recognition of a Palestinian state. However, every attempt was rebuffed by the federal judges who consistently ruled that the PA did not meet the criteria of sovereignty under international law.
Ironically, in each case the terror victims agreed with Arafat and Clark that the determinative standards for statehood were based on the Montevideo Convention of 1933 as later codified in the Restatement (Third) of Foreign Relations § 201 (1987) which requires “an entity that has a defined territory and a permanent population, under the control of its own government, and that engages in, or has the capacity to engage in, formal relations with other such entities.”
The Ungar case, in which two orphans sued the PA for the murder of their parents, was the first to wind its way to an appellate court. After a thorough routing at the trial level, the PA revived its sovereignty arguments in the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston. In the leading opinion on the subject, Judge Bruce Selya wrote that the PA’s statehood claim “has a quicksilver quality: it is hard to pin down exactly when or how the defendants assert that Palestine achieved statehood.”
tell a friendAbout the Author: David J. Strachman, a Providence lawyer, represented dozen of victims in numerous lawsuits over the past decade against the Palestinian Authority. He is an adjunct professor at UMASS Law School and Roger Williams University School of Law and author of “Civil Terrorism Law” (Lawyers & Judges Publishing, 2008).
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I was at an AJC meeting in Princeton where an AJC employee and attorney, Mr. Stern made comments that showed him to have the same double standard described in this excellent article. Certain comments made by Mr. Stern require clarification as they sound dangerously close to the arguments used in the campaign to delegitimize Israel. Mr. Stern says that “Israeli officials will tell you they are revising their doctrines in order to possibly minimize the harm to civilians.” In fact, the Israeli military has an extraordinary record of protecting civilians. As Richard Kemp, former Commander of British Forces in Afghanistan said on BBC, “I don’t think that there has ever been a time in the history of warfare when any army has made more efforts to reduce civilian casualties and deaths of innocent people than the IDF is doing today in Gaza.” Second, the West Bank is not “occupied territory” according to the Geneva Convention. In 1948, Jordan occupied the West Bank through “aggressive conquest” and two years later, unilaterally annexed the area in an act that was recognized by only two members of the international community – Britain and Pakistan. Israel’s 1967 capture of the West Bank was defensive and lawful. No one called for a Palestinian state until 1967 when Israel re-united Jerusalem and Jews were again allowed to worship, live, and work in the “old city”. Third, when you call Jewish people living outside the Green Line set out by the 1949 Armistice Agreements “settlers”, the implication is that Jews should be restricted to the same kind of small ghettos as they have been throughout history. Arabs have been allowed to live on both sides of the Green Line, why not Jews? In 2005, Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza, dismantling all of the settlements. This did not lead to peace. On the contrary, it has led to civilian casualties on both sides. No one wants peace more than the Israeli people. We should not be giving comfort to Israel’s enemies by accepting their semantics. For more on the importance of language, please see Dr. Frank Luntz’s book, Words That Work: It’s Not What You Say, It’s What People Hear. We recommend that readers “Step Up for Israel” at http://www.jerusalemonlineu.com to learn to advocate for Israel.