Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: a Libertarian Viewpoint

"The libertarian no-state solution would need to involve only individualistic claims ... over land and for criminal damages."

Israeli-Palestinian conflict  As no ^*states are ^*legitimate under ^*natural ^*law or within ^*anarcho-^*libertarian theory, there cannot be a legitimate solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that involves states. The idea of a ^*right of “a people” to “self-defence” and “self-determination” is statist ^*aggressive ^*collectivism. This conflict is primarily caused by the fact that states are, and were originally, involved. Although, if there were no ^*religions involved, or only one, then the conflict might not have occurred either. Jews were originally buying the land in Palestine until the point that the Israeli state was declared; with complicity from various external states. That new state then simply claimed and expropriated any further land comprising the new ^*“country”. Since then, various ^*wars, atrocities, and further land-expropriations have occurred.

The libertarian no-state solution would need to involve only individualistic claims (although these could sometimes be aggregated into class actions) over land and for criminal damages. These claims would not be against or on behalf of states or political organisations as such. However, they might be against people still alive who had been working for, or been part of, the state or against any property remaining in state hands. Genuinely impartial judges and jurors would be needed to adjudicate the cases; best arising from a ^*competitive private system of ^*law and order. The ideal outcome, however unlikely it might now appear, would be the settlement of all extant claims (some historical ones will be ^*unrectifiable) with everyone finally living in peace on ^*private property and neither side trying to ^*rule, let alone destroy, the other. Some private areas would likely be fully segregated by religion. Some more-^*tolerant individuals would possibly live in private areas that are mixed. Whether individual people then choose to call their ^*homeland “Israel” or “Palestine” need not be a matter of physical conflict.

Of course, there is no way that either side would currently contemplate any such ^*Utopian solution, or even view it as Utopian. But the whole world will eventually reject the greatest of errors and evils that is known as “politics” (in the sense of having states and what they do). In the meantime, it would probably exacerbate the situation if it were somehow possible to set up two states (which dominant actors on both sides do not appear to want, in any case). With two full states able to ^*tax and ^*conscript their ^*subject populations, the internecine conflict is more likely to escalate than with one side being overwhelmingly dominant.

What should be the Israeli state’s response to such atrocities as the recent one by Hamas? When a state has ^*aggressively ^*monopolised services that should ideally all be private, then the long-way-second-best solution is for the state to behave as normal ^*liberty-respecting private services would have done (as far as this can be reasonably and plausibly interpreted). This would appear to imply that it would be permissible for there to be a slow and dangerous building-to-building search for the perpetrators. But any activity that first and foremost adversely affects the general population would be illegitimate. For instance, if some of the perpetrators are known to be hiding in tunnels beneath a hospital, then it is not legitimate to demand that the hospital be evacuated so that it can then be bombed (by which time the tunnels would likely be evacuated too). But it would be legitimate to have armed forces storm the tunnels, although that would be much riskier for those doing this.

(This is an entry from A LIBERTARIAN DICTIONARY: Explaining a Philosophical Theory [draft currently being revised]. Asterisks indicate other entries.)