By Seth Mandel
Tuesday, June 16, 2026
The city of Montreal is embroiled in a battle over
whether to cut ties with Israel. But the parameters of this fight are quite
literally imaginary. And it is a reminder that the more passionately one
opposes Israel, the less likely one is to know what one is talking about
regarding the details of the conflict.
What happened is this: The opposition political party put
forth a resolution for the city council to “recognize and denounce the
apartheid regime imposed in Palestine and the genocide being perpetrated there,
and that it affirm its solidarity with the Palestinian people” by “suspend[ing]
without delay its institutional ties with the current Government of Israel, its
institutions, and its municipalities, including by ceasing to invite
representatives of that state to official events held at Montreal City Hall.”
The resolution was supposed to be voted on yesterday,
though the mayor, who opposes the one-sided petition, managed to delay it until
August. The petition is nothing more than a naked attempt to incite
anti-Semitism in a city with a large Jewish population and whose institutions
have been the regular targets of violent anti-Semitic attacks.
As the Montreal Gazette reports,
“The mayor has expressed sympathy for those affected by the conflict, but has
maintained she is focused on municipal issues and does not feel Montreal should
become involved in international conflicts.” The opposition party wants to stir
up trouble by forcing city officials to eschew their actual responsibilities to
the people of Montreal.
So the bad faith behind this move is transparent. But it
also can be seen in the petition itself, which calls for the boycott of the
Jewish state “until Israel returns to its internationally recognized borders,
ceases its violations of the rights of the Palestinian people, and ends its
violations of international law.”
Of course, anyone referring to Israel as “the apartheid
regime… in Palestine” isn’t concerned with geographic or historical accuracy.
But some zombie anti-Zionist talking points need to be eviscerated repeatedly,
and this is one of them.
The fact is, Israel is abiding by its “internationally
recognized borders,” and anyone who says otherwise isn’t engaging in honest
debate.
The State of Israel as recognized by the UN doesn’t
itself have clear borders. This is because the British Mandate powers and the
UN proposed a two-state solution that would have had borders. The
Palestinian Arab leadership flatly rejected this offer of statehood and joined
a half-dozen Arab states in making war on the fledgling State of Israel
instead. That war ended with cease-fire lines, not internationally recognized
borders.
But over time, some Arab antagonists gave up the
genocidal war against the Jewish state and signed formal peace agreements with
it. Those agreements created actual internationally recognized borders.
Egypt, for example, has internationally recognized
borders with Israel. These came about through extended negotiations as part of
the 1979 Camp David Accords and were implemented over the following few years.
Israel packed up its settlements throughout the disputed territory and enabled
Egypt to permanently settle the area, outside of a demilitarized buffer zone.
Jordan, too, has an internationally recognized border
with Israel. How did it get that border? The same way, the only way: It signed
a peace agreement with Israel. Jordan even waited until Yasser Arafat and the
PLO signed accords with Israel in the 1990s to make its own peace with Israel
official. That prevented anyone from being able to claim that the Israel-Jordan
agreement cut the Palestinians out of the process.
The Palestinians, however, have since declined multiple
offers to establish permanent borders with Israel. So there is no state of
“Palestine” at this moment, and there is no fully sovereign Palestinian border.
When anti-Israel activists say “internationally recognized” they mean “I heard
it on the BBC.”
What about the other states? There’s Syria and Lebanon,
which both refused to engage in full mutual recognition with Israel and strike
a peace deal. There are lines in the sand that are generally understood as
demarcation lines, but they are not “borders.”
However, Lebanon and Syria can have internationally
recognized borders with Israel whenever they want. So can the Palestinians.
Until then, they’ve got armistice lines and cease-fire lines and a petulant
habit of complaining about the things they can fix any time they choose.
No comments:
Post a Comment