Chapter two of my new book, Israel on Trial, discusses the legitimacy of the State of Israel.
The first thing to understand is that Israel is actually an old country in the world—not ancient Israel, not the Kingdom of Judea—but the modern State of Israel, founded on May 14th, 1948.
It was the 59th state accepted into the United Nations. There are now 193 countries, which makes Israel older than 67% of all the countries in the world.
It really was created at this moment in time very much like, and not in an aberrational way, all the other countries that were being created in this period of decolonization in the Middle East, Africa, and in Asia when colonists were leaving their colonies behind and drawing lines on a map.
And so, in that sense, Israel’s creation was not all that different from the creation of Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, or even Cameroon.
But the point here is that the claim that Israel is illegitimate can be analyzed very simply because although our anthropologists and linguists have identified over 7,000 distinct ethnic groups, different peoples around the world, the reality is that over 98% of them don't have states of their own.
What makes it possible for a group to gain independence, sovereignty, and have their own legitimate nation-state?
There is a legal test for statehood, and it comes from the Montevideo Convention, signed in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1933.
It's called the Montevideo Convention and it has four simple elements:
1. Do you have defined borders?
2. Do you have a defined population?
3. Do you have the capacity to engage in foreign relations?
4. Do you have a single effective government?
Israel has had all of those things from the moment it was founded until today, and every second in between.
By contrast, the supposed State of Palestine does not meet—and in fact fails—the four-factor Montevideo test. It lacks defined borders and is not governed by a single effective government, but rather by three separate authorities, none of which exercises legitimate governing authority over the whole population.