Justice & Law Quote by Silvan Shalom

Shalom’s line is doing the kind of political jiu-jitsu that turns a messy historical record into a clean legal vacuum. By invoking King Hussein’s 1988 “disengagement” from the West Bank, he tries to launder a contested reality through a single, seemingly decisive act: Jordan stepped away, therefore no one holds title, therefore the ground becomes negotiable on Israel’s terms. The phrasing “doesn’t belong to anyone” isn’t just a claim; it’s a strategic deletion. Palestinians vanish not by insult but by omission, replaced with the soothing neutrality of “those territories,” a bureaucratic euphemism that depersonalizes people into acreage.

The intent is obvious: shift the argument away from occupation and self-determination and toward a property dispute with missing paperwork. Once you frame the land as ownerless, the next move is to present Israeli control as default administration rather than domination. “According to international law” functions here less as citation than as costume. International law is invoked as an authority figure, but not actually argued; the statement cherry-picks one state’s renunciation while sidestepping the broader legal consensus about occupation, the status of the territory, and the rights of the population living there.

Context matters: 1988 was Hussein conceding that the PLO represented Palestinians, not granting the world a blank deed. Shalom’s subtext is that if Jordan isn’t the claimant, then the Palestinian claim can be treated as political preference rather than legal entitlement. It’s a rhetorical attempt to re-map responsibility: no sovereign, no violation, no urgency. Only “disputed” space waiting to be settled.