Palestine Already Is a State : Mideast: The national movement has a firm foothold and can pursue justice through international law.

Palestinian violence and empty words of international condemnation are not the only possible responses to Israel’s inflammatory decision to begin construction of a huge settlement, Har Homa, in East Jerusalem. The situation presents an opportunity for the Palestinian leadership and the international community to dispel the dangerous illusions that the Palestinian lands conquered by Israel in 1967 are “disputed” rather than occupied and that Palestinian statehood is within Israel’s power to grant or deny.

There long has been a strange, other-worldly quality to the veil of words drawn across the face of Palestinian statehood. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Likud Party’s congress last fall: “You can dream every night and you will still wake up every morning and see: There is no Palestinian state, there is no Palestinian state, there is not and there will not be a Palestinian state.” Israel simply deals with the “Palestinian Authority.”

In fact, by the customary criteria of international law, there is a Palestinian state, proclaimed in 1988, and it is recognized as such by 124 other states that represent the vast majority of mankind.

The majority consensus view of the status of the Palestinian lands occupied by Israel in 1967 is today clear and (with the exception of expanded East Jerusalem, the only part Israel claims to have annexed) uncontested: The state of Palestine is sovereign, it is largely occupied by the state of Israel, and such occupation must end, being in violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, which confirms the “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war.”

After the signing in 1993 of the Declaration of Principles that began negotiations, Israel insisted on dealing with a “Palestinian Authority,” of which Yasser Arafat is the elected president. Arafat de-emphasized the most important of his titles, the one still listed first in his Arabic correspondence: president of the state of Palestine. Negotiating with Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, who a reasonable person could at least hope were negotiating in good faith, he presumably made the political judgment that the occupation was likely to end sooner if he did not thrust the state in the faces of his Israeli counterparts but rather let them adjust to it gradually as mutual confidence increased.

When, last spring, the Labor Party dropped its opposition to a Palestinian state from its election manifesto, the gentle approach appeared to be working. Today, with a fully functioning government--executive, judiciary, security forces and democratically elected legislature--in place in Palestine, the veil labeled “Palestinian Authority” has become transparently ludicrous.

While the wordplay may once have been necessary to the advancement of peace, this clearly is no longer the case. Polls show that a majority of Israelis now are willing to accept a Palestinian state. Indeed, in mid-December, Netanyahu’s chief advisor and spokesman, David Bar-Illan, said in a Jerusalem Post interview that the prime minister could accept a Palestinian state if Israel’s security needs were adequately assured. “They have foreign relations. They have embassies,” Bar-Illan said. “If they declare a state tomorrow, I’m sure that the whole world will recognize it.” This stunning reversal of positions provoked no significant public outrage.

Surely the time has come for the Palestinian leadership to drop the veil to affirm that the state of Palestine exists on the soil of Palestine and apply to upgrade Palestine’s status at the United Nations from observer to member state. At the Security Council level, China and Russia already recognize the state of Palestine. The strong public statements in favor of Palestinian statehood by French President Jacques Chirac and British Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind make it virtually inconceivable that France or the United Kingdom would now veto Palestinian membership. With President Clinton freshly reelected, knowing that he will never run for public office again and thus free for the first time to act in accordance with American principles and national interests, there is some reason to hope that the United States would not exercise its veto.

If Palestine were to become a member state of the United Nations, even the current Israeli government would (if only after a politically acceptable passage of time) have no choice but to recognize that the Earth is not flat and seek to negotiate a mutually agreeable relationship between the two states.

Now that the Palestinian national movement has established a firm foothold of “effective control” on the soil of Palestine, it is on the terrain of international law and international legitimacy that Palestine should and must pursue its struggle for peace with some measure of justice.

Significant progress on this terrain could give Palestinians the confidence, pride and patience to resist a desperate, self-destructive return to violence while waiting out a frustratingly prolonged period of Israeli hesitancy and minimal progress on the ground.

Palestinian membership in the United Nations would make Middle East peace a question of when, not whether. It is an opportunity that can and must be seized.