this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023
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GenZedong
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No they aren’t.
They lack one of the four primary distinctions that make any country a country. They lack sovereignty over the land they control and occupy. An occupation is not a country, and much of the world recognizes that either Palestine and Israel but hold sovereignty, or Palestine holds sole sovereignty, the Israeli position is to shaky to be definitively stated as such.
For example, the United States also falls under this classification of being a settler colony, but they are still a country in that they satisfy all four requirements to be considered one. No matter how morally unethical the process was to accomplish those 4 main requirements were.
Israel can’t even do that.
Might want to look into Wittgenstein's Language Games, can help clarify the purpose and function (and at times pointlessness, not saying that is the case here) of the sorts of pedantic and 'technically correct' dysentery folks seem to engage in.
I’ll look into it! Sounds like a good read!
But I’m really not trying to be pedantic, it’s essentially just elementary school level politics that a country must have 1. Land, 2. Population 3. Government and 4. Sovereignty. It really isn’t negotiable.
What does sovereignty mean in this context?
The ability to exert recognized control over a defined territory.
Israel defacto satisfies this, but their territory is undefined (what borders do they go by)? The territory overlaps with what is rightfully considered Palestinian sovereign territory, and the Palestinian population is not recognized by the Israeli authority.
What does “recognized authority” mean?
Also apologies if I’m misreading your statement, but you seem to be saying that having disputed territory/borders renders you no longer a country. Surely that can’t be the case. For example, various island nations (e.g. Philippines, Japan, Brunei) have disputes with China (and each other) over whether certain islands are part of their territory. Yet these 4 entities are countries.
Not just disputed territories, territory disputes are very common and normal. But not when your entire country is disputed territory. The only other contemporary example of this would be Taiwan, which is not considered a country.
No one is disputing that the Hokkaido is Japanese, or Manila is Philippine, but all of Israel is disputed.
Also recognized authority means that the people living there, and international observers agree that the governing body of a territory is the one they identify with. The vast majority of Palestinians do not see the Israeli government as legitimate, and Israel doesn’t recognize Palestinians as citizens or as people.
Was China not a country prior to 1971, because Taiwan had the Chinese seat in the UN (it meets the international observers standard(?)) and the entirety of China was “disputed”?
As for recognized authority, isn’t it the case that for certain areas of Israel (e.g. certain areas within the 1948 UN partition plan, or 1967 borders) it meets the test you laid out? I.e. people living there agree that the Israeli government is the one that they identify with and international observers agree to recognize the Israeli government’s control over those areas? In that case, Israel would be a country with some disputed borders (I.e. everywhere outside that area with recognized authority).