Thank you, Dorothy. And thank you, Herman, for joining me in what I hope will be a productive unpacking of a very heavy topic. To start, I want to be very clear about the position I am defending. This is not an argument that the land was literally empty, nor is it an argument that the people living there do not have human rights. Rather, it is an argument that in the realm of international law and the practical building of a stable peace, historical facts regarding sovereignty matter immensely. We cannot simply hand-wave away the distinction between a population of inhabitants and a sovereign state entity.
In international law, sovereignty is not a nebulous feeling of belonging. It is a specific legal status involving the continuous exercise of authority, the ability to enter into treaties, and a recognized standing among the community of nations. When we look at the history of the region prior to nineteen forty-eight, we find a clear historical reality. For four hundred years, the territory was part of the Ottoman Empire. It was governed from Constantinople, divided into administrative districts like the Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem and the Vilayets of Beirut and Syria. There was no distinct political entity called Palestine that exercised self-rule. Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War One, the territory passed to the British Mandate. Again, this was an external administrative authority.
This matters because the transition from a mandate or an empire to an independent state usually requires a clear legal successor. When the State of Israel was established, it was through a process recognized by the United Nations, building upon the Balfour Declaration and the League of Nations Mandate. The argument that a Palestinian state has never existed is not just a rhetorical jab. It is a statement of legal fact that complicates the claim to a specific, pre-existing national sovereignty. If a state never existed, then the current demand is not for the restoration of a lost sovereignty, but for the creation of a brand-new one on land where another recognized sovereign already exists.
We actually touched on the complexities of this administrative history in episode four hundred and eighty-three, where we discussed the legal lasagna of the region. If we ignore these historical layers, we risk building a peace process on a foundation of sand. Legal realism requires us to acknowledge that rights to territory in the modern world are largely determined by treaties, international recognition, and the actual exercise of governance. To suggest that the lack of prior statehood is irrelevant is to suggest that the entire framework of international law, which relies on the continuity of states, is also irrelevant.
Furthermore, we have to look at the phrase land without people for a people without land. While often criticized today, from a nineteenth-century legal perspective, it referred to the concept of terra nullius, or land that was not under the sovereignty of a recognized state. In the eyes of the international legal community of that era, a territory without a centralized, Westphalian-style government was legally vacant in terms of sovereignty, even if it was physically populated. While our moral sensibilities have evolved, the legal structures of our world were built on these definitions. To reach a viable two-state solution, as we discussed the mechanics of in episode five hundred and forty-four, both sides must deal with the world as it is, not just as they wish it to have been. Acknowledging that there was no prior Palestinian state provides the necessary clarity to negotiate the birth of a new state, rather than litigating a historical claim that lacks a legal precedent.
Dorothy: Thank you, Corn, for that grounded look at the legal and historical framework. Herman, the floor is now yours to present the argument for modern sovereignty and human rights.
Thank you, Dorothy. I appreciate Corn’s focus on the legal mechanics, and I think he accurately represents the traditional, state-centric view of international law. However, I believe that focusing on the lack of a Westphalian state is a profound category error. It is a semantic distraction that prioritizes the bureaucratic structures of dead empires over the living rights of actual human beings. My argument is that the right to self-determination is an inherent human right that exists independently of whether a people ever had a flag, a seat at the United Nations, or a formalized bureaucracy in the past.
First, let us address the land without people trope. Even if we interpret it through Corn’s lens of legal sovereignty rather than physical absence, it remains a dehumanizing narrative. By labeling a land as vacant because its inhabitants have not organized themselves into a European-style state, you effectively strip those people of their political agency. The people of the region had a distinct culture, a shared language, deep ancestral ties to the land, and a developing national identity long before the twentieth century. To say their claims are less legitimate because they were ruled by the Ottomans is like saying the Greeks had no claim to Greece because they were under Ottoman rule for centuries. Identity and the right to self-rule precede the state. The state is merely the vehicle for that identity.
Second, we must recognize that modern statehood itself is a relatively recent construct. Most of the nations on Earth today did not exist as independent, sovereign states two hundred years ago. The map of the Middle East, Africa, and Southeast Asia is filled with states that were created out of the collapse of colonial empires. If we applied Corn’s logic universally, we would have to question the legitimacy of dozens of modern nations. If a prior history of independent statehood were a prerequisite for sovereignty, then the United States, Jordan, Lebanon, and even arguably the modern State of Israel would face a crisis of legitimacy. Sovereignty in the modern era is defined by the presence of a distinct population with a national consciousness living within a defined territory. It is a forward-looking right, not a backward-looking reward for historical administrative success.
Furthermore, the focus on historical statehood ignores the evolution of international law after nineteen forty-five. The United Nations Charter and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights both place the self-determination of peoples at the very center of the global order. Article One of the Charter does not say the self-determination of previously recognized states. It says peoples. This shift was a deliberate move away from the legal realism Corn describes, which often served to justify colonial expansion. We moved toward a framework where the rights of the population are the source of the state’s legitimacy, not the other way around.
When we argue that a Palestinian state never existed, we are using a twentieth-century definition of statehood to retroactively disqualify a nineteenth-century population. It is a logical fallacy. It ignores the fact that the Palestinian national identity was forged in the same crucible of post-Ottoman transition as the Zionist identity. Both were emerging movements seeking a home in a world where old empires were dying. To grant legitimacy to one based on international recognition while denying it to the other based on a lack of historical bureaucracy is a double standard that undermines the very peace Corn seeks. We must move past the semantics of statehood and recognize that sovereignty belongs to the people who live on the land, regardless of what the Ottoman tax records or British mandate maps might say about their prior status.
Dorothy: Both strong opening positions. Corn has emphasized the necessity of historical continuity and the legal frameworks that define our world, while Herman has pointed us toward the evolution of human rights and the inherent right of self-determination. Now let us see how these positions hold up under scrutiny as we move into round two. Corn, you have the floor for your rebuttal.
Thank you, Dorothy. Herman, I want to start by conceding a very important point you made. You are absolutely right that a national identity often precedes the formal structures of a state. The Palestinian identity, much like the Zionist identity, was indeed forged and sharpened in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as the Ottoman Empire began to crumble. I am not disputing the existence of a people or their culture. However, where I must push back is on the idea that this identity automatically translates into a legal claim of prior sovereignty that can be used to invalidate other legal claims.
Herman, you called the focus on Westphalian statehood a category error, but in the world of international relations, those categories are the only thing preventing total anarchy. You mentioned that many modern states, like Jordan or Lebanon, did not exist two hundred years ago. That is true. But those states were created through a specific, recognized legal process of succession from the Ottoman Empire to the Mandate system, and finally to independence. They followed the rules of the international order of their time. The challenge with the Palestinian claim is that, historically, the leadership of the time often rejected the very legal frameworks that would have granted them that statehood. For example, in nineteen thirty-seven, the Peel Commission proposed a two-state solution. The Jewish leadership eventually accepted the principle of partition, but the Arab Higher Committee rejected it outright. In nineteen forty-seven, the United Nations General Assembly Resolution one hundred and eighty-one offered a legal path to statehood, which was again rejected by the Arab leadership in favor of a military solution.
This matters because you cannot argue that you are being denied a right that you historically refused to exercise within the established legal framework. When we talk about the Montevideo Convention of nineteen thirty-three, which defines the rights and duties of states, it sets out four criteria: a permanent population, a defined territory, a government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other states. While the population and territory were there, the lack of a centralized, recognized government that could engage in the international legal process meant that, legally speaking, the state did not exist. By ignoring this, Herman, you are suggesting that we should move to a system where sovereignty is based entirely on subjective feelings of national consciousness. If we do that, the entire map of the world becomes a site of perpetual conflict.
Dorothy: Herman, your response.
Corn, I appreciate the way you’ve framed the Montevideo Convention, and I think it actually helps prove my point. You argue that because the Palestinian leadership in the nineteen thirties and forties didn’t check every box of a twentieth-century legal definition, their claim to the land is somehow less foundational. But this is exactly the semantic trap I was talking about. You are using the rules of a club to exclude a people who were never invited to the club in the first place. You mentioned the rejection of the Peel Commission and Resolution one hundred and eighty-one. But from the perspective of the people living there, those weren’t fair offers of statehood; they were proposals to partition their ancestral home to accommodate a massive influx of people from another continent. To suggest that rejecting a plan to give away half your house means you lose the right to own the house at all is a very strange form of legal logic.
Furthermore, Corn, your reliance on the concept of legal succession from the Ottomans to the British assumes that the British Mandate was a legitimate sovereign authority. But under the League of Nations itself, the Mandates were supposed to be a sacred trust of civilization. The goal was specifically to lead the inhabitants toward independence. Article twenty-two of the Covenant of the League of Nations stated that the well-being and development of such peoples form a sacred trust. If the British Mandate failed to produce a Palestinian state while facilitating the creation of a Jewish one, that is a failure of the legal caretaker, not a lack of legitimacy on the part of the people.
I will concede that Corn is right about the importance of stability. We cannot have a world where every identity group claims total sovereignty tomorrow. But we must distinguish between a group seeking to secede from a long-established state and an indigenous population seeking to realize their rights in the wake of a collapsed empire. The Palestinians aren’t a group of people who moved into a state and then decided they wanted their own flag; they are the people who remained while empires moved over them. The argument that statehood never existed is often used to imply that the land was a vacuum. But if we look at the King-Crane Commission of nineteen nineteen, which was an official United States inquiry into the desires of the people in the former Ottoman territories, the results were clear. The people of the region wanted an independent, unified state. They had a political will. To use the remnants of colonial legalism today to deny a people their basic rights is to remain stuck in a nineteenth-century mindset.
Dorothy: This brings us to a very interesting intersection. Corn is arguing that the lack of formal statehood creates a legal void that must be acknowledged for a stable peace, while Herman is arguing that the legal void was itself an artifice of colonialism and that the people’s rights are the true source of legitimacy. I want to probe this. If we agree that the legal structures of the past were often flawed or colonial, as Herman suggests, but we also agree that we need an objective framework for peace, as Corn suggests, where does that leave us? Corn, does the fact that the international community has largely recognized the right of Palestinians to a state today suggest that the historical lack of one is becoming legally irrelevant?
That is a piercing question, Dorothy. I would argue that the international community's current recognition of the Palestinian right to statehood actually reinforces my point. That recognition is a modern political development, not a historical legal fact. Because it is a modern development, it must be negotiated within the context of the world as it exists now, which includes a sovereign State of Israel. If we pretend that a Palestinian state always existed in a legal sense, then the existence of Israel becomes an illegal occupation of another state's territory from day one. That is a recipe for eternal war. But if we acknowledge that there was no prior state, then we are talking about two peoples with competing claims to the same land, one of whom has successfully established a state and one of whom is seeking to do so. This framing allows for a compromise. It allows us to say that while the past was a series of administrative layers, the future requires a new legal agreement that draws new lines.
Dorothy: And Herman, if the historical lack of a state is truly irrelevant, how do we determine the borders and the specific legal character of a new state without relying on those very historical, administrative maps that you find so problematic?
To your question, Dorothy, I think we have to look at the people on the ground. The borders of a state should reflect the reality of the population that calls that territory home. The problem with relying on the Ottoman or British maps is that they were drawn for the convenience of administrators in London or Constantinople, not for the people of Nablus or Hebron. When we say that the lack of a prior state matters, we are essentially saying that the lines drawn by dead imperialists are more important than the lives of the people who have lived there for generations. My argument is that the legitimacy of a Palestinian state doesn't come from a nineteenth-century map; it comes from the fact that millions of people living there today have a shared identity and a desire for self-rule. We can use historical data as a reference point, but it shouldn't be a cage. If the international community recognizes the right to a state now, it is an admission that the previous legal frameworks were insufficient. We are correcting a historical oversight.
Dorothy: We have reached a point where the fundamental disagreement is clear. Is sovereignty a top-down legal status that must be inherited and recognized through established protocols, or is it a bottom-up human right that exists regardless of historical recognition? Corn sees the danger of chaos in the latter, while Herman sees the danger of injustice and colonial echoes in the former. This has been a remarkably substantive exchange on a topic that is too often reduced to slogans. Thank you both for your intellectual honesty. We are going to take a short break, and when we come back, I will provide a summation of the key points from this debate.
Thank you, Dorothy. I appreciate the chance to clarify the legal side of things.
And thank you, Corn. It is always a pleasure to sharpen these ideas with you.
Dorothy: Stay with us. We will be right back.
Dorothy: I want to express my sincere gratitude to both Corn and Herman for engaging in such a high-level and respectful exchange on a topic that is so often characterized by heat rather than light. It is rare to hear these specific legal and philosophical arguments unpacked with such clarity and intellectual honesty.
Dorothy: Corn grounded his argument in what he called legal realism. He made a compelling case that in the complex world of international relations, the continuity of states and the formal recognition of sovereignty are the primary tools we have for maintaining order. From his perspective, the historical fact that no independent Palestinian state existed prior to nineteen forty-eight is not a slight against the people, but a critical legal reality that shapes how any future state must be negotiated. He warned that ignoring these frameworks risks a return to a world where borders are determined by force and sentiment rather than law.
Dorothy: Herman, on the other hand, challenged the very foundation of that legal framework. He argued that the Westphalian definition of statehood is a modern, largely Western construct that has been used historically to delegitimize the rights of indigenous populations. For Herman, the right to self-determination is an inherent human right that belongs to a people, not a status granted by an empire or a mandate. He suggested that focusing on the lack of a prior state is a semantic distraction that ignores the living reality of a national identity that has existed for generations.
Dorothy: So, where does this leave us? Perhaps the most important takeaway is that both of these perspectives can be true at the same time. It is a historical fact that there was no sovereign Palestinian state in the modern sense, and it is also a modern reality that the Palestinian people possess a clear national identity and a recognized right to self-determination. The tension between these two truths is the very space where the peace process exists.
Dorothy: If we lean too heavily on Corn’s legal realism, we risk ignoring the human element and the historical injustices of the colonial era. If we lean too heavily on Herman’s human rights framework, we risk losing the objective legal structures that are necessary to turn a national aspiration into a stable, recognized state with secure borders. The challenge for the future is not to decide which of these arguments is "right," but to find a way to synthesize them—to build a legal framework that honors the historical reality while finally realizing the inherent rights of the people living on the land.
Dorothy: Thank you for joining us for episode one thousand two hundred and seventy-four. We hope this deep dive has given you a new way to think about the language of sovereignty and the history of the land. Until next time, keep questioning the prompts the world gives you. I am Dorothy, and this is My Weird Prompts.
