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8 Miskolc J. Int'l L. 1 (2011)

handle is hein.journals/miskolc8 and id is 1 raw text is: William R. Slomanson': Palestinian Statehood: A Secessionist Dialogue Introduction No one has previously invoked a secessionist dialogue apropos Palestine.2 It is the prototypical geo-political hotspot, and the object of next year's presumptive Palestinian National Authority's announced declaration of de facto Statehood.' But given the long-term moniker Occupied Territories, one must acknowledge the increasingly thin line between Israeli occupation and its defacto sovereignty. One thing that Palestinians and Israelis have in common would be their belief that Israel is not a mother State. But Israel's resumption of West Bank and East Jerusalem Jewish settlement construction-in violation Geneva IV-exemplifies Israel's complete (de facto) sovereignty. The 2008 secessions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgia, and Kosovo from Serbia, may spark yet another skirmish-in this instance, how the US could denounce Palestinian Statehood, while embracing Kosovo's secession as legitimate. Per the unwittingly allied Russian and American rhetoric, all three of these 2008 secessions were: (a) legitimate, (b) unique, and (c) not precedent for any other separatist claim to Statehood. Nonetheless, I will demonstrate why the secessions of Kosovo, South Ossetia, and Abkhazia were not legitimate under Customary International Law.' Palestine's presumptive 2011 unilateral declaration of Statehood, on the other hand, will present a comparatively more defensible claim to legitimacy. Of course, no one would predict that Israel will accept such a declaration of Statehood.' That is another topic for another day. Yet, 1 William R. Slomanson is Professor of Law at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law (San Diego); Visiting Professor, Pristina University (Kosovo). The author thanks Christian Albut (TJSL 2011) for transcribing the initial speech version of this article. 2 The scholarly collection in E. Playfair (ed.), International Law and the Administration of Occupied Tenitories: Two Decades of Israeli Occupation of the West Bank and Gaga Stnt (Oxford, Eng: Clarendon Press, 1992) is perhaps the leading treatment of this subject, even today. Its many excellent analyses did not then (almost twenty years ago) consider the claim-made in this article-that one may apply a secessionist analysis to a location that has been effectively subject to almost complete Israeli sovereignty since the region's 1967 wars. 3D. Diker & P. Inbari, Peace Process: Prime Minister Salam Fayyad's Two-Year Path to Palestinian Statehood: Implications for the Palestinian Authority and Israel, MESI (Middle East Strategic Information Blog, Oct. 22, 2009), available online, at: <http://mesi.org.uk/VTiewBlog.aspx?Articleld=73>. 4 But see: Mikulas Fabry, Recognition of Kosovo, Ahkhaia and South Ossetia: What are the Implications Jor Nagorno- Karabakh?, available online at: <http://www.umich.edu/~iinet/asp/Docs/FabrvyMichiganpresentation.pdf> (Jan. 30, 2009) & The Kosovo Precedent-Directly Applicable to Abkhazia and South Ossetia, 3 Caucasian Rev. Int'lAffairs 108 (2009), available online at: <http://cria-online.org/6_11.html>. 5 This argument appears in Legitimacy of the Kosovo, South Ossetia, and Abkhazia Secessions: Violations in Search of a Rule, 6 MiskolcJ. Int'lLaw 1 (iiskolc, Hungary: 2009), reprinted in 3 Ukrainian Yearbook Int' Law (Kiev: 2010). 6 This is a likely impetus for the Obama Administration's launch of its August 2010 initiative, inviting Palestinian President Abbas and Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu for face-to-face negotiations-with a predictable view toward avoiding the entrenchment which will be spawned by the continuing failure of external efforts to negotiate a www.mjil.hu Miskolc Journal of International Law VOLUME 8. (2011) No. 1. PP. 1- 16. 1

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