I’m not sure whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was right to once again place the issue of Palestinian recognition of Israel as the Jewish nation-state in the center of political discourse. It is possible that people are right who say that Netanyahu’s purpose was to make the negotiations even more difficult. But we must remember that it was Tzipi Livni who first raised the issue, as far back as 2000 and later at the 2007 Annapolis Conference. Netanyahu has no copyright on this idea, and whereas Livni does not view this recognition as a precondition to negotiations, she clearly considers it an essential component of any future peace agreement.

I was not enthusiastic about the idea at the time and I still think it is misguided, first and foremost because it is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the issue of recognition. Political or diplomatic recognition is reserved for states, not organizations. Only a state can recognize – or not recognize – another state. And so people who say that the PLO – or the Palestinian Authority, which is not a state – is not authorized by international law to give recognition to the State of Israel are right, as are those who say that we do not follow the dictates of PLO or the PA.

Moreover, even when one state recognizes another it does not imply recognition of its political structure: When, after many years, the United States in 1933 formally recognized the Soviet Union, it was recognition simply as a state, not as a communist or Marxist state; and when most of the world’s democracies recognized Israel after its establishment, that too was as a state and nothing more, and that was doubtless sufficient.

Read the article in full at Haaretz.