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This podcast uses government documents to illuminate the workings of the American government, and offer context around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life.
N. Rodgers: Hey, Aughie. Hey, Bill. How are you all of this morning?
B. Newmann: Doing great.
J. Aughenbaugh: Good morning Nia.
B. Newmann: How are you?
J. Aughenbaugh: Today, listeners. We are very fortunate to have our colleague, Bill Newmann join us. This is one of our in the new segments.
N. Rodgers: Indeed.
J. Aughenbaugh: We wanted Bill to come in and educate us as to why last week, it was such a big deal when a number of European countries publicly announced that they were recognizing Palestine as a nation-state.
N. Rodgers: We're going to do this in terms of Nia Land.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Because after I've been president and I've been exiled, which we all know is going to happen, considering what I'm going to do as president. I take my money that I've skimmed off the top and I buy a gorgeous island somewhere, and I want to declare it Nia land or I would go with Nia stand or Nia because lots of countries in the world have IA at the end of them. Who do I apply to to be recognized as a country? Like, that's my first question.
J. Aughenbaugh: You mean, is there some application form here, Bill?
N. Rodgers: Who do I bribe? Do I steal a nuclear weapon on my way out so that I can make a forceful case for why I should be recognized?
B. Newmann: You have to go to the DMV, and there's a lot of them.
N. Rodgers: Well, never mind. If I've got to go to the DMV, I said, I'm done. I don't want a country.
B. Newmann: That's why there are so few countries.
J. Aughenbaugh: For our international listeners or those.
N. Rodgers: Who haven't gotten a driver's license.
J. Aughenbaugh: Outside the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States.
N. Rodgers: Oh, no, I think it's DMV everywhere.
J. Aughenbaugh: There is a particular bureaucratic, hell, known as going to the Department of Motor Vehicles in Virginia.
N. Rodgers: You say something simple like I just want my license renewed. I've had a license this whole time. I know how to drive. I've not had any accidents and they go, take a number. Take a number is the most painful thing a person in bureaucracy can say to you. Because what it means is, I'm not getting to you anytime soon. You just need to get into the virtual line.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then they give you a form.
N. Rodgers: They give you a form.
J. Aughenbaugh: If you fill out the wrong parts of the form, they send you back to the end of the line.
N. Rodgers: That's right.
N. Rodgers: Just start over. Hence Bills like it's done through the DMV. If it were done through the DMV, there would be like three countries and the United States would not be one of them because we are too impatient for that. But is there a body that countries can apply to be countries, or do they just declare themselves countries and da da?
B. Newmann: If you want to be a country, declare yourself a country, and then you try to lobby other countries to recognize you.
J. Aughenbaugh: Through diplomatic channels, etc.
B. Newmann: On an individual basis and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Then you'll be recognized by 30 countries, 40 countries, 50 countries, or maybe nobody?
J. Aughenbaugh: That would really suggest a level of unpopularity on the playground.
N. Rodgers: What if nobody likes you? Not even one country out in the middle of the Pacific that doesn't care about any countries won't recognize you as a country.
B. Newmann: You have situations Somalia had been in the civil war since 1991, and then in the early 2000s, you had Northern Somaliland declare independence. Some countries recognize it as an independent country and some countries do not recognize it at all, but it functions separately.
N. Rodgers: It is essentially another country. Does the United States recognize that cause I don't recall seeing that on a list.
B. Newmann: No, we don't recognize it.
N. Rodgers: Is it important who recognizes you and who doesn't?
B. Newmann: In terms of your economic ties and in terms of maybe getting aid, yes.
N. Rodgers: You're going to lobby the richest countries that you can. You're going to lobby up, not equal or down. You're going to lobby up trying to get recognized by the world powers if you can.
B. Newmann: You also have the part of you're declaring independence because you don't like the country that you are in at this particular point.
N. Rodgers: Yes.
B. Newmann: You want to lobby countries who might be able to protect you from the country that you are currently in, that wants to keep you.
N. Rodgers: That's why the Quebec lobby France. They're like, look, we're French but in Canada, please help us, be French and the French are like, see, Canada is big, and we don't want to take it on.
J. Aughenbaugh: Like Taiwan in regards to Communists are mainly in China. Taiwan wants to go ahead and be recognized by the United States, have good relations with the United States, receive aid, military, or otherwise from the United States because China quite clearly has indicated over what the last seven decades, six decades.
N. Rodgers: That's it's not letting Taiwan go. Taiwan is China. It's just China on an island, as far as China is concerned.
B. Newmann: Right. It's a province. It's their old term for it, and they want it back and you have I guess right now, it's either 11 or 13 countries recognize Taiwan as a country and that's it.
N. Rodgers: Are we one of them?
B. Newmann: We are not one of them. We stopped recognizing them in 1971.
N. Rodgers: Oh, so we recognized them for a while.
B. Newmann: In 1979.
N. Rodgers: Then we forgot who they were.
B. Newmann: Well, it gets suplex because it was during the Cold War and both China and the United States saw the Soviets as their biggest threats. They wanted to work together, but the problem was the United States didn't recognize the People's Republic of China as anything, at all. We recognize the Republic of China. We recognize Taiwan as the legitimate government of the entire mainland, which the people who ruled Taiwan hadn't been on since 1949. We were a couple of decades after they had been thrown off, and we still recognized that government as legitimate government, and China basically said, you want to work with us to balance against Soviet power in East Asia, you got to dump those guys. We finally did in 1979, we derecognized Taiwan, and we recognized China, the People's Republic of China. But we kept a relationship with Taiwan as a economic entity, which we treat completely as if it's a country.
N. Rodgers: I was going to say, aren't we saying things like, don't be invading Taiwan now? We can't stand for that. You can't just be going around doing that stuff. That's an excellent example, Aughie.
B. Newmann: Yes. It's weird fuzziness that we maintain and China has said pretty clearly, if people start treating this as a real live country, or if Taiwan declares independence, which is a weird phrase because it is in reality, independent. But if they say, we don't believe in reunification with China someday in the future, China says, we'll invade.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's China's line in the sand.
N. Rodgers: What everybody's doing is pretending that reality does not exist and that we live in a world where you reunification is a possibility even though the Taiwanese do not want reunification, and America does not want Taiwan and China to be reunified.
B. Newmann: Right.
N. Rodgers: But so we're all just pretending that doesn't exist. It's like family relations when you have that black sheep in your family and they're all like, that's our Uncle Bob, and he's just weird, and we just leave him on the porch, and we just don't talk about him. But we're not going to boot him off the porch because he's still family. I see. Now, then that question morphs into the question of does it matter who recognizes you?
B. Newmann: It does. It's a very big deal. If you take the Taiwan and China aspect of it, when most of the countries in the world started to de-recognize Taiwan, Taiwan felt, okay, we're completely alone. Is this the end? Do we get gobbled up by China? Luckily, the United States said, We'll derecognize you, but we will continue to sell you weapons. We will continue to trade with you and we will have a non-embassy embassy in Taipei, and you will have a non-embassy embassy in Washington, DC. We maintain that. That's critical. Actually, I want to bring up one more thing, and I'll just throw this out there, and then you can ask questions. It also matters whether the United Nations recognizes you.
N. Rodgers: That was going to be my next question is, does the United Nations lend legitimacy to a recognition by sheer number of things that theoretically represents?
B. Newmann: It's got this political weight and if the United Nations considers you a country you want to recognize or if a regional organization does. Like in the case of when Yugoslavia was breaking up, when Germany recognized Croatia, that was gigantic. That started a snowball hill in which everybody else said, Germany recognized Croatia. I guess we're going to have to.
N. Rodgers: Now bringing us to our question of why we're in the news. Correct me if I'm wrong. It's Sweden, Spain, and Ireland?
B. Newmann: France, Ireland, Spain, Slovenia, and Sweden.
J. Aughenbaugh: Have all recognized Palestine and the UN had had a seat for Palestine, but a non-voting? We're just going to let you into room, but you don't actually get to do anything recognition for Palestine prior to this, right?
B. Newmann: Right. The Palestinian Liberation Organization, which was considered a terrorist group by most Western States was given observer status at the General Assembly in 1974.
J. Aughenbaugh: Just the PLO?
B. Newmann: Right. Because they were essentially considered the representatives of the Palestinian people by most of the countries in the General Assembly who had been colonized by someone in the world. This is still during the cold war, and the Soviets also supported the PLO, so you had this anti-colonial block and the Soviet block all said, "We want the PLO to have observer status." We had Western nations who said, it's a terrorist organization. But the other bunch had the numbers in the general assembly.
J. Aughenbaugh: I assume we opposed that in the United States.
B. Newmann: We opposed that, and then the Oslo Accords, and the run up to that, which was an agreement between Israel and the PLO to actually get the ball rolling on a two state solution. And the run up to that, Palestinians said, "We want to state in 1988 officially. Hey, everybody, we want to state, please start to recognize us, which was that first question you asked." Then they got observer status in the UN as part of the aftermath of the Oslo Accords, because they said, "Hey, we're going to have a two state solution. We got the ball roll in here. Things are finally going to lead to peace." So you had a Palestinian national authority now, which governed the West Bank and Gaza, and they were given observer status. But observer status doesn't really sound that great because you don't have a key word in there nation state. It's 2012 when the Palestinian National Authority became a nonmember observer state. Once that word date gets in there, then it starts looking, wow, that's what we generally call a country until we become political scientists, and then we call it a nation state.
J. Aughenbaugh: Taking your PhD in Poly then it all goes down hill.
B. Newmann: [inaudible]
J. Aughenbaugh: Then this isn't really a big deal. It's just recognizing what's already been recognized.
B. Newmann: It's only a big deal because it creates fishers in the EU and it's hard for the United States because now more of our allies are starting to recognize a Palestinian state, and then we get isolated.
N. Rodgers: Well, particularly, that's the case because the current leadership in Israel has rejected the bind administration's, if you will, desire to create a two state solution for what's going on in Israel.
J. Aughenbaugh: For listeners who are not familiar with a two state solution. The theory here is that Palestine will be its own sovereign thing, and it will be the combination of Gaza and the West Bank.
N. Rodgers: Yes.
J. Aughenbaugh: I assume some bridge space between given up to give them contiguous because otherwise, your country is not contiguous, and that sucks, so I'm assuming there's some accord that would be added to that, and then Israel would be the surrounding state. Similar to what I think of as Lesotho and South Africa, where Lesotho's that spot that's inside South Africa. But it's its own thing and recognized as its own country. Is that the two state solution that people keep talking about when they talk about a two state solution?
B. Newmann: It's a two state solution, and whether there would be a corridor connecting the West Bank and Gaza is a question that'll be negotiated through all of this, or not and what the actual boundaries of the state would look like. It's a really good question, how much territory from the West Bank Israel gets. There's something called the right of return, which are Palestinians who are kicked off land that is now in the state of Israel, do they get that back? That's one of the big issues. There's so much involved in this, would take like two hours. You didn't just ask the questions?
J. Aughenbaugh: That's not in the news. That's a full on three part episode. But that two state solution, what you're talking about there in terms of negotiation is they keep talking about in terms of the 48 boundaries and the 72 boundaries and the 2001 boundaries. It's maps that get drawn up when these accords happen and people start talking about, well, if we were going to do this, what would we do. That's why the years keep getting mentioned. It is because those maps morph over time. At this point, I'm not entirely certain who's invested in what year map. Is there a standard that everybody is, no that's the year we should go with, that's the map we should go with or is it still up in the air?
B. Newmann: The United Nations has lots of different resolutions on this, but most people look at it at UN Security Council Resolution 242, which is the one that happened when the 6-day war ended in 1967, which said, that's the map [inaudible]. The dilemma with that is that the current government of Israel rejects the two state solution. Hamas, which is the organization that attacked Israel on October 7, and they control Gaza, they reject a two state solution, and so you have the opposition in Israel, which accepts a two state solution. Some of the political parties there do, and the Palestinian National Authority, which is something different from Hamas.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because it's in the West Bank.
B. Newmann: It's in the West Bank, and it doesn't even control Gaza, and they haven't had an election for the Palestinian Legislative Council of the Palestinian presidency until since 2006. Even if the United Nations said, we're going to recognize Palestine, what's the government of Palestine? That's big issue.
J. Aughenbaugh: The complication here is the rest of the world wants a two-state solution, but the parties involved don't want a two-state solution.
B. Newmann: The parties involved are divided a bout [inaudible], and so you even had a situation in which Hamas is labeled a terrorist group by most of the West, as simple as that. I teach a course on terrorism, and we use Hamas as a classic example of, this is what a terrorist group looks like, this is what they do, this is how they operate. It's a perfect example of it and the evolution of it, in which it's a political party and a terrorist organization at the same time.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because why be boxed in? I'm just saying I can be both president of the United States and a dictator. You're acting like I can't do both.
B. Newmann: That's right.
J. Aughenbaugh: Don't box me. Don't fence me in.
B. Newmann: Political organizations choose terrorism as a strategy.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, similarly the Taliban. It's both a political organization and in some quarters in the world a terrorist organization.
B. Newmann: Hezbollah also.
J. Aughenbaugh: A couple more, which people often don't remember. But there were political organizations that were trying to create Israel independence in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. One of their strategies was to use terrorist attacks against the British. Agana did that Urgun, the Stern gang, and one of the leaders of the Urgun was a guy by the name of Manakam Begin, who became prime minister of Israel. One of the leaders of the Stern gang was Yitzhak Shamir who became a prime minister of Israel. The Leko Party, which is the party of Benjamin Netanyahu, before Israel independence, included people who were terrorists by the definition that we use for terrorism. It's one of the reasons why Israel was willing to negotiate with the PLO because they couldn't sit there and say, well, you've committed terrorist attacks, so therefore, you're illegitimate.
B. Newmann: Here's a mirror, I'd like you to look at it. Now, you have part of the EU recognizing Palestine and part of it looking in a different direction, trying not to get involved. I'm assuming that's really what most of the time when people don't recognize the country, it's because they just don't want to get involved in whatever that mess is. They're not trying to be all and your people should be crushed and you should all die. That's not what they want. It's just that they don't want to get involved in the weirdness of internal politics and other places because I feel certain that lots of Europeans have lots of feelings about our civil war. Our previous Civil War and any current divides we might have, but they don't really want to get involved in all that mess because it doesn't do them any good. If Spain, Sweden, whoever is recognizing, what does the rest of Europe do about that? Do they just say, well, we just have to agree to disagree or do they have some giant EU stressed out meeting were they all have to yell at each other until they come to some consensus or.
J. Aughenbaugh: You mean there isn't a giant stressed out meeting. There's some that aren't. The thing about this is to a certain extent, some people can look at it and say, this creates leverage in some ways.
N. Rodgers: For whom?
J. Aughenbaugh: In the sense that for the Europeans and even, I think for the United States. Think of it as leverage, in the sense that if countries are willing to say what's happened right now, the way Israel's responded to the October 7 attack. Some countries will look at it and say, this is so outrageous. This is so horrible that even people in Israel are protesting against this and that the Netanyahu government is going to fall. When this war is over, that's gone. Netanyahu was facing indictment and potential jail time, even before this happened. This essentially gives Netanyahu's opponents more leverage to get rid of him, and maybe to get rid of this entire government that is really far to the right and rejects a two state solution. You've got to say, if you don't believe that there can be a Palestinian state that co exists with the Israel state, what's your option then? We fight until the end of time.
B. Newmann: Exactly. This never ends, and everybody's kids get killed constantly, and it's all bad, it's the all bad channel.
B. Newmann: I see.
J. Aughenbaugh: Kind of puts leverage on Netanyahu. It also puts leverage on the Palestinians to say, hey, guys, you can have a state.
B. Newmann: But you can't have Hamas in charge of it. Is that going to be one of the things that I'm sure will come out of, if there is a two state solution, Hamas cannot be in charge of the Palestinian side of that?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Am I correct about that?
J. Aughenbaugh: Parts of the EU are saying, we're going to recognize a Palestinian state. But in January of 2024, the EU recognized Hamas as a terrorist organization.
N. Rodgers: We'll recognize you as a state, but they can't be in charge? It's got to be people who are less terrorist, less homicide, or less whatever, who were going to be in charge of Palestine. That leverages that as well, this, who's going to come to the table who can be reasoned with or…
J. Aughenbaugh: This group of people are legitimate as representatives. This other group, no. Right here in the room? That's it.
B. Newmann: This is the start of that.
J. Aughenbaugh: It can be.
B. Newmann: Or could be the start of that.
J. Aughenbaugh: It could be.
B. Newmann: It could be an utter failure because the rest of Europe could stand up and say, what are you doing? Then, well.
B. Newmann: Israel can produce essentially with its reactions right now with the continued attacks in Gaza. A lot of people start to say, we rejected two state solution because we don't want Israel being part of it. That's one of the things that I thought was really interesting and you look at the protests on the campuses in the United States. You'll see students who are carrying a sign that says, free Palestine and from the river to the sea, that phrase. I've talked to some of them, and they have no idea what it means.
N. Rodgers: They don't know which river.
B. Newmann They don't know which river, they don't know what sea. They don't.
N. Rodgers: It's the Jordan River, it's the Mediterranean Sea in case anybody's wondering.
B. Newmann: I've said to them I said, you understand that traditionally, that's a euphemism for killing all the Jews. One or at least in Hamas' exact words, the obliteration of Israel. They say, oh, no, I believe in a two state solution, and I said, well, your sign doesn't.
N. Rodgers: Your sign doesn't believe in a two state solution.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's what you're saying.
N. Rodgers: Your sign is a [inaudible] .
B. Newmann: Only war. Don't say that you're out here for peace. As I said to some of them, read a book. You know about this before you go out and protest a little bit.
N. Rodgers: Which is a whole separate image.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's a fair point. But I'm glad Bill that you came on this morning to explain this because listeners, these three European countries when we are recording, it's the last week of May.
N. Rodgers: Six of them.
J. Aughenbaugh: It was the third week of May when three additional countries went ahead and acknowledged or recognized Palestine as a country. It received a lot of press coverage, particularly in the West. Listeners, I want you all to take heed to what our colleague Bill Newmann has to say here in regard to why this might be a big deal. But also why it might not be a big deal, because as Bill just mentioned. There are a lot of moving parts here in regards to getting people to the table to negotiate and to recognize each other as legitimate representatives in any discussion going forward in regards to what happens in regards to a two-state solution or rejecting a two-state solution. I mean, that's the other thing here. I mean, there are significant numbers of people both within the Palestinian community, but also the Israeli community who are vehemently opposed to a two-state solution. Not only do you have questions about who are the legitimate representatives, but whether or not they actually represent the totality of the people who would be governed by a two state solution.
N. Rodgers: Well and as Bill pointed out in the very earliest part of this episode, you can take this back. You can say, I recognize you at any time, right Governments are not locked in once they say, Palestine looks like a state to us. They could next month, say, just kidding. The situation on the ground has changed. The leadership has changed. We don't believe this anymore. Taiwan, who's going along thinking everything's fine. Then the United States says, is that a rug you're standing on and they yank it out from under them?. But then they're like, we'll put down an area rug. Be calm, it's all going to be fine. Then you pretend recognized, like you're not actually recognized and not unrecognized, that is the hell of DMV. You were in no place in all the places at the same time, right? Basically, I think, Bill, what you're saying is, if I'm correct, and please correct me if I'm not correct in this summary is, this is all seriously nuanced and it is not getting solved anytime soon.
B. Newmann: Right. Let me add one more DMV problem to this. Thank you. Nuance not resolved. Gets complex. Let's say I'm France, and I say I recognize a Palestinian state. Then representatives of Hamas show up in Paris and say, I'm ready. Here's my credentials. I want to set up my embassy. No, not you. The national authority shows up and they said, you guys, and Hamas says, No, wait a second. We're the representatives of Palestine. No, you're not and then the two groups can argue amongst themselves, which has happened. Hamas has actually tried to kill leaders of the Palestinian national authority at different times. Who's recognized? That's something that has to be organized within the Palestinian community. The answer that they come up with could be something that the countries will reject.
N. Rodgers: They could say, no, we like Hamas and then the rest of the countries could say, never mind. We're not interested in recognizing Hamas as a legitimate government in the world. Even though you may say you have a country, we're not participating with you.
B. Newmann: The Taliban took over Afghanistan in 1996 and have never been recognized by the United Nations as a legitimate government of the country. They ruled that 1996-2001, when they were overthrown and a government in exile was represented there in 2001 and the new government supported by everybody in the world because the Taliban had allied with Al Qaeda, they continue that recognition. The Taliban take the country back in 2021 and they're not recognized by the United Nations.
N. Rodgers: Afghanistan is recognized as a country, but it doesn't have legitimate leadership.
B. Newmann: It has a government in exile.
N. Rodgers: Just pick up the person. Aughe is the president in Afghanistan because we don't find him objectionable or we don't find him as objectionable as the Taliban. Which we argue is a pretty low bar. But okay.
J. Aughenbaugh: I'm really enjoying us spinning out these examples where I'm slightly better than the Taliban.
N. Rodgers But what it sounds to me is that a huge amount of this is situational. It totally depends on who people put forward as the governor, whether the surrounding nations will accept that because I'm assuming that that's part of it, too, is that if your neighbors don't accept whoever is in charge. The nice thing about the United States is that no matter who's present in the United States, Canada and Mexico aren't going to argue about it because we could be like, look, more property for us. We're pretty big on the block. But if you're not that level of country, you have to get along with your neighbors too, right? Isn't that the whole history of Europe is I don't like my neighbors, so I'm going to take their country.
B. Newmann: Unless you've got a powerful client who's willing to recognize you. You can go back to the Cold War and say, North and South Korea. East and West Germany, North and South Vietnam, couldn't decide who the legitimate government was. You cut it in half.
N. Rodgers: When, you can't cut Palestine in half at this point. Because it would amount to dang near nothing if you cut it in half. It's not very big.
B. Newmann: Well, to some groups, it's cut in half. if it really exists.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, that's true.
N. Rodgers: Yeah, that's true.
B. Newmann: It's cut into half. If Palestine exists, and that's where the problem.
N. Rodgers: Yeah. Bill, how long will it take you to fix this in my administration?
B. Newmann: No. Have we declared independence already?
N. Rodgers: Oh, no. When I'm president of the United States.
B. Newmann: Oh, when you're president of-
N. Rodgers: I have to do that first because I have to come across a nuclear weapon before I make my own country.
B. Newmann: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: I have to be president of the United States. But I'm pretty sure in this election, I actually stand a chance.
B. Newmann: Here, I'll put a note of optimism on this. Generally, what happens in a lot of parts of the world is that things have to get really bad before they get worse. World War I wasn't enough to get Europeans to stop fighting with each other. World War II was.
N. Rodgers: This could be the conflict that drives these two into some agreement.
B. Newmann: The other thing underneath it is, and I think this is important and people forget the bigger political picture here, is the reason Hamas attacked when it attacked is Israel and Saudi Arabia were on the verge of peace. Iran had to stop that. Because the reason for Saudi and Israel Deaton is because Iran is a greater threat to both of them. Iran basically looked at Hamas and said, if you've been planning something, go ahead, do it. The hope was that Israel would do exactly what it's doing and overreact.
J. Aughenbaugh: Which now makes it almost impossible.
N. Rodgers: For the Saudis to make peace.
J. Aughenbaugh: In the short term for the Saudis and like-minded countries in the Middle East to have any Deaton or accord with the Israel government.
N. Rodgers: Because Israel took the bait.
B. Newmann: But you're seeing actually great restraint for most of those countries. Rhetoric, if you look at their actions, they're not flooding Hamas with money. Right now, to help them fight the war.
N. Rodgers: Well, they don't like Hamas either. They don't want Hamas. They just can't be seen supporting Israel. Now they're trying to look in different direction. Look over there, we're building a golf course or what's Saudi Arabia's doing building a golf tour.
B. Newmann: Work for the PGA Tour.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, I mean, I think it's not the muted response of the Egyptian government. I think to Bill's point, Israel may have taken the bait, but there are a number of nation states that have not reacted the way the Iranian government had hoped they would have. Now, we don't know how long the response will be muted, but nevertheless, that's one of the positives that we've seen so far.
N. Rodgers: Am I correct that a positive in this also will be the fall of Netanyahu's government, which will be seen as too extreme, and if more moderates are elected in Israel, then they will be seen as people who can be worked with by Saudi Arabia, by whoever?
B. Newmann: If you get groups of people who say we believe in a two-state solution, then that's a gigantic change. The dilemma there is, if you can get Israel working toward a two-state solution, can you get the Palestine political situation to be more unified and somehow weaken Hamas and isolate Hamas. They're not an obstacle because they're an obstacle. One of the things that people often forget, and I've talked to students about this and say be careful about you can support a Palestinian state, but be careful about Hamas, because if you believe in a Palestinian state, a Palestinian state was in the works back in the 1990s in the early part of the 2000, and Hamas is the key reason why that failed because they rejected the entire negotiation process and said we don't want two states. We want renewed terrorism, and they ramped up terrorism. Every time there was a one step forward in the negotiations, Hamas accelerated terrorist attacks to try to sabotage it, and it was successful in pushing the Israel political system to the right, saying, we can't negotiate with the Palestinian see what they do. That was basically.
N. Rodgers: Hardliners kept getting their point made by Hamas. See, we can't trust them. We can't live next to these guys. They're murderers jerks. The thing is, if I'm correct, and I don't know enough about Hamas to say for certain, but it seems to me from the outside that they are as horrible to their own people or almost as horrible to their own people as they are to Israel like, everything in the service of destroying Israel, even if it destroys us, we will have achieved the destruction of Israel and that's worth it. That's what seems to be there.
J. Aughenbaugh: Modus operandi.
N. Rodgers: Yeah, it is this I'm okay with cutting off my nose to spite all of our faces.
B. Newmann: If all of this people have forgotten Hamas's ideology, Hamas's ideology is the same as Al Qaeda. They believe in a religious theocracy. The Palestinian national authority wants to build a democracy. Hamas said no democracy, theocracy. It's we're Muslims, but we're a certain Muslim, a medieval version of Islam. A lot of the things that w I think in particular, when I've talked to some students about this, I said, a lot of the things that you think a Palestinian state would look like if it was run by Hamas, it would not be. Look at you think not be a democracy. There would be no religious freedom, there would be no.
N. Rodgers: There would be very little secular freedom. Like in this sense of your personal rights would be virtually non-existent.
B. Newmann: There are LGBTQ groups who say they support Hamas, and you sit there and say, if you were in Gaza, you would be thrown in jail.
N. Rodgers: Or off a building.
B. Newmann: Yeah. You're in danger. That's what.
N. Rodgers: Women. I'm a little surprised when I see female students who are wearing the is it called Kafa the headscarf?
B. Newmann: Different things in different countries.
N. Rodgers: Not the Hijab, but the scarf that was worn by Arafat, the black and white scarf. They're wearing, and I think to myself, you know that if you were actually in Hamas Palestine, you would not be allowed to do that like, there's some pretty serious prohibitions against women and their right to speak in public, which is more or less non-existent under Hamas.
B. Newmann: Under Hamas, which is why the building up the Palestinian national authority, which would believe in secularism, democracy, which would be a nation state that most people would argue would be a responsible nation state, not a terrorist state like Hamas would build. That's what's so important, but that's really hard because Hamas gets lots of funding from Iran. They get funding from Qatar, as well. They get funding from some members of the Saudi Royal family. You've got this division there, and that essentially has to be healed in order to have negotiations with a unified nation state.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, that's real tough stuff.
N. Rodgers: If enough countries recognize Palestine as a state, will it automatically become a state? You're a state?
B. Newmann: Well, if one country recognizes as a state, then that one country says they're a state.
B. Newmann: If you want the whole Ballo Act, you want to be in the United Nations, that's your ultimate goal.
N. Rodgers: So you want to move from observer status to just I am a country in the United Nations like every other country in the United Nations?
B. Newmann: That's what the Palestinians would like. That would be the ultimate goal. The way that works, again, there's another process within the UN Security Council. You've got to get nine out of 15 countries on the UN Security Council to support your bid as a state. But of those nine, it's got to be all five of the permanent members, United States, Russia, I was about to say the Soviet Union, United States, Russia, China, France, and the UK. The winners of World War II, so we're really involving the United Nations from this the way the world works. But the permanent membership on the UN Security Council can only be changed by a change to the United Nations Charter because that's in the charter and all permanent five members of the UN Security Council have a veto over any changes to the charter. They are not knocking themselves out or diluting their power by adding more countries.
N. Rodgers: Which is, I suppose, the winners get to write history. You get those five and four more on board. Am I correct that the other 10 nations revolves around various nations on the Security Council?
B. Newmann: You have the permanent five, and then the other 10 are selected by regional blocks from within the general assembly.
N. Rodgers: Everybody in the Middle East decides who they're going to send from the Middle East, everybody in Africa decides who they're going to send from Africa. You only got to get four of those.
B. Newmann: Even if you get four of those. In April of 2024, the United States vetoed UN Security Council resolution supporting a Palestinian state.
N. Rodgers: And it only takes the one.
B. Newmann: It only takes the one, so that was it. If it had passed, then it goes to the General Assembly where you'd have to have a two-third majority to add it.
N. Rodgers: Does the UN ever kick anybody out?
B. Newmann: Well, Taiwan would have been kicked out because there's also the credential aspect. Let's say you recognize the Palestinian state then you say, who represents a Palestinian state? That's a whole another process on that because you've got to come up with a contently have a credentials fight. Who is the legitimate representative of this state because Hamas could show up and say, we are in the offices? No, not you, and they say, Oh, yes, us. Then there could be some groups within the General Assembly who support that one, who support Hamas and another group that supports the Palestinian national authority. You could have a fight over that. That's what was happening with China. Since 1949, the United Nations was going to have to decide who was the legitimate government of China. You had votes year after year after year on that, and for up until the late 1950s, early 1960s, the United States was able to pretty clearly hold the line and say, we've got enough votes here to always keep Republic of China as the legitimate China and reject the People's Republic of China year after year. Then this is one of my amazing diplomacy is that in the early 1960s, the Kennedy administration said, we're going to lose this vote. Because the General Assembly is filling up with newly independent nations from Africa and Asia who are just ending their colonial period and they support the People's Republic of China, and they're going to come to the UN and they're going to vote for the PRC instead of the Republic of China, and we're going to lose this vote. They came up with a strategy. They used Rule 85, the General Assembly, which says that you can declare some issues important questions. If you can declare something an important question, which you only need a majority vote to declare something an important question, then to resolve that question, you need a two thirds majority within the General Assembly. The United States and the Kennedy administration was able to change the vote, so changing the Chinese seat from the Republic of China to the People's Republic of China, all of a sudden became a two thirds vote, not a majority vote.
N. Rodgers: There wasn't enough.
B. Newmann: There wasn't enough to get two thirds to vote for switching the representation.
N. Rodgers: This is why Aughie is going to be my Vice President because this kind of administrative stuff, machinations, is the kind of stuff he lives for. If IS President said, find me a way to not have to recognize China and not have to throw Taiwan under a bus, he'd be like, let me take a look.
B. Newmann: That worked for 10 years until you had to have a vote on majority question every year.
N. Rodgers: They had enough finally to kill the majority question.
B. Newmann: On the important question every year and then that was going to fail in the early 1970s, and the Nixon administration decided to go ahead and let it fail. Before they even got to the vote, Taiwan said, basically, we see what's happening here. We're not going to get thrown under the bus. We're going to leave and then they walked out.
N. Rodgers: Then Nixon opens China.
B. Newmann: That's in the process. That's the fall of '71 and Kissinger went to China in July of 1971 with the secret trip.
N. Rodgers: It's all a giant conspiracy theory, Bill, all of it. Well, this turned from an into news to the full episode. Thank you, Bill for staying with us. I'm sorry we took up so much of your time. But it really is an interesting question that I think people need to explore a little bit more. I'm glad you took the time with us because my first thought was, that seems like a terrible idea. But now what I'm basically coming around to is that's just the very tail beginning of something that may or may not even unfold into something else. Sorry, let me back up and say, the media has a way of making things seem more stressful, distressing, and immediate than they actually are. For instance, yesterday, there was a headline. We're recording this on May 31, yesterday, there was a headline guilty on all counts for Donald Trump. It was in 7,500 font, it was huge. They made it seem like and that's it. My first call was to Agios, is that he goes, oh, please. Do you have any idea how many appeals are going to be on this? This thing's going to drag out for months if not years. This is just the first salvo in a long battle.
B. Newmann: The way people present it is the sentencing is what, July 11?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
B. Newmann: As if they'll sentence him on July 11 and if he gets sentenced to jail on the 12th, he shows up with a duffel bag. That's the way they're presenting it. Go to Rikers, that's it.
N. Rodgers: First of all, I want to see that duffel bag.
J. Aughenbaugh: Nice one.
N. Rodgers: Yeah. On July 12, you're not going to see Donald Trump in an orange jumpsuit, it's just not going to happen.
B. Newmann: Yeah. I'm saying what is the Presidents in jail during the Republican Convention?
J. Aughenbaugh: He ain't going to be jail during the Republican Party's National Convention.
N. Rodgers: Even if he was, it wouldn't stop him because he's allowed to serve from jail. But the headline was screamingly dramatic. The same thing with the headline of these States recognizing Palestine is this giant. I thought, well, yeah, because they need clicks, they need me to click on that story so that they can sell me advertising on the side of the story. But it doesn't sound to me like it's as dramatic as the news made it seem.
J. Aughenbaugh: Bill, I'm in part wanted you wanted you on because I knew you were going to go ahead and explain that it's not some online form that a newly independent state goes ahead and fills out and says.
N. Rodgers: It should be.
B. Newmann: It's a Google form.
N. Rodgers: It should be a Google form.
J. Aughenbaugh: Right.
N. Rodgers: It would be funny if it were only like four questions, like, do you want to be a state? Yes or no?
B. Newmann: Please provide the name of your state?
N. Rodgers: Exactly. What is the name of your state? Please attach a file with the map of your state. Yes. Then your last thing is an e mail address where we can reach you.
J. Aughenbaugh: By the way, provide a Social Security number, so that we can run a credit check on you. There's your form. Thank you very much.
N. Rodgers: Man, can you stay for a couple more minutes because that brings up another interesting question? Can you be a state without money? Can you be a state without product like one of the problems Palestine has had is that it has very little economic stuff.
J. Aughenbaugh: Development.
N. Rodgers: Thank you, development. Thank you, Aughie. Stuff in the world. Aughie got the right word there, development. Either Gaza or the West Bank don't really produce a lot of export. Can you be a country if you don't? Do I have to come up with some production for my country?
B. Newmann: You can get a lot of aid and you can survive on that.
N. Rodgers: I could have a giant country GoFundMe?
B. Newmann: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Is that basically what foreign aid is? It's a GoFundMe?
B. Newmann: You need some rich friends, yeah. Also, if there was a Palestinian state that was accepted by Israel as part of a two-state solution, one of the biggest aid donors is going to be Israel. Or Israel wants one, the logical thing is you want economic development in Palestinian areas because the theory.
N. Rodgers: Then you can trade.
B. Newmann: The reality is that creates stability.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, because you eliminate economic deprivation as a reason for that second state, a Palestinian state to consider getting in bed with organizations like Hamas.
N. Rodgers: Or countries like Iran.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, so you eliminate one of the reasons why they might turn to more violent, if you will, groups nation states for support if they are economically sound.
N. Rodgers: On a moral level, it's good to create things in your country. It's good for your people to have jobs and income. We know that those things are psychologically beneficial. One of the things that happens with young men when they can't find a job is it hurts them psychologically. It hurts them mentally because that's not how most men are perceived in the world. They're perceived as earners or wage makers of some kind.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then they turn to crime.
N. Rodgers: Or violence.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then they become a burden on society and you don't want them to. You want them to pursue more, shall we say, legitimate, legal pursuits. But again, that's the other thing. If you want a Palestinian state, you support a Palestinian state, you don't necessarily want to get rid of Israel. Because Israel would be the key economically in the support of a Palestinian state because it would make sense for Israel to have a stable functioning regime in Palestine for that to work. Yes.
N. Rodgers: Is Israel financially able to do that?
B. Newmann: Well, Israel would do it, but I think the other countries in the region would do it. One of the things that people also often don't realize is that when you look at the Palestinian national authority, which was running the West Bank, and also was running Gaza until Hamas took control of it, most of their budget is supplied by Europe and the United States. Not by Middle Eastern countries.
N. Rodgers: Because we're looking for peace in the Middle East.
B. Newmann: We're looking for peace, but you sit there and you say, well, aren't there some really wealthy countries in the Middle East?
N. Rodgers: Yeah. Hello, why isn't Saudi Arabia pouring money into this?
B. Newmann: For a long time, people looked at that and said, it seemed just part of a strategy of, if the Palestinians are weak and are not middle class and economically satisfied, then they'll be more radical and they'll put more pressure on Israel.
N. Rodgers: That's a terrible thing to do.
B. Newmann: For decades, a lot of the Arab states have actually helped make life miserable for the Palestinians so that they would help destroy Israel. You're going back to the 50s and 60s and 70s. That was certainly part of the strategy because it's not until 1967 that Israel controlled the West Bank and Gaza. Before 1967, Jordan controlled the West Bank, and Egypt controlled Gaza. Why weren't these turned into stable nation states that were viable economically? The answer was no, we want to deprive them as much as possible, so they will be angry with Israel. Since Israel took over those areas, Israel's controlled them, but Israel actually also has interfered with the economic life there because they were worried about wealth generating more funding for terrorism. When the primary political organizations in those areas were terrorist organizations, starting in the late 1960s, going through the 70s and up until the late 1980s.
N. Rodgers: Correct me if I'm wrong. But that means that every single group that has come into contact with Palestinian people have screwed them.
B. Newmann: Yes.
N. Rodgers: When the signs say Free Palestine, that's actually a legitimate like no, they really should be free of all of these horrible influences in order to either make their way in the world or to fail as a nation if they can't make their way in the world, which also happens. We're seeing Sudan fall apart even as we record this. But, wow. I had no idea that the Palestinian people had been used as a weapon by pretty much every single group in the Middle East.
B. Newmann: Yeah. It's a classic definition of, here's your pawn, Egypt is using you, and even right now, some people would look at what's going on right now and say, what's going on right now is a battle between Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Iran for who's going to be in control of everything, and the Palestinians are essentially stuck in the middle of all of that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, collateral damage.
B. Newmann: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Man, see. As much as I think I know, then you guys go, and here, by the way, here's this piece of information you didn't have and I'm like, okay, well, now my mind's blown again. Because that's a horrible position to be in and it also makes their election of Hamas makes sense. If there's a group out there that is saying, we will fix it so that we are no longer the pawns on this board, that we actually have some autonomy and some say in the world. I would elect them too. If until then I had been abused by every different party and somebody said, I'm going to stop the abuse, I'd be like, great, I'm with you, whoever you are, whatever you do.
B. Newmann: You've got a situation there where in the early 1990s, this new Palestinian authority said, we're going to finally bring you a state. Then a decade later, they haven't succeeded. Then you've got another group that says, well, negotiation isn't working, folks.
N. Rodgers: Let's do it the other way.
B. Newmann: If the moderates fail, people become more extreme, and that's what happened.
N. Rodgers: Man. This just gets more complicate. Every time I turn over a rock, there are more worms. I need to stop turning over rocks apparently. Because now I've learned something new and I've got to go do some research on that. Thank you both. I'm not going to list this in the news even though we started saying that at the beginning. Because this is more like an explanation of this whole statehood and the importance of the statehood. Bill, will you come back if and when this actually moves towards more recognition and more statehood possibility?
B. Newmann: Yeah, of course. Thank you.
N. Rodgers: That'd be wonderful.
B. Newmann: Absolutely.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Thanks, Bill.
N. Rodgers: Because I don't think we've seen the end of this, do you?
B. Newmann: No. Nothing going on our entire lives.
N. Rodgers: That's true. I do think it's amusing that they were like, we'll send, what is his name, Kushner?
J. Aughenbaugh: Jared Kushner.
N. Rodgers: Jared Kushner. We'll just send him in. He'll fix the Middle East. Donald Trump, I think, was like me and thought, well, if you just pull this one string, surely, that will do it. In fact, what we ended up doing was pulling a string and unraveling an entire sweater all at once. Because it's not as simple. No one ever here is going to fix it.
B. Newmann: No.
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: You get rid of Netanyahu, that's not going to fix it. You get rid of Hamas, that's not going to fix it. There's a lot of things that have to come together to fix it.
B. Newmann: All of that is the start.
N. Rodgers: Well, when I'm president, you'll be in charge of my Foreign Policy Bill.
B. Newmann: Cool.
N. Rodgers: Start working up your ideas. I'm just saying that I'm only 10 points behind Bobby Kennedy in the running. Thank you.
B. Newmann: You need a party but I have a party.
N. Rodgers: Well, I could run as an independent.
B. Newmann: Yeah. That's true.
N. Rodgers: Nia for president.
J. Aughenbaugh: Thanks, Bill.
N. Rodgers: Thank you.