As someone who is interested in the Israeli-Palestinian question one phrase that comes up in the pro-Israeli position is the insistence that the Palestinians recognise '"Israel's right to exist". (In fact this is one of the key conditions that the so-called honest broker, the USA insisted upon, on brokering the Oslo accords, without insisting on a quid-pro-quo from Israel, that is insisting on Palestines right to exist. This was especially important given Golda Meirs assertion that the Palestinian people didn't exist; and how can a people who don't exist have title to land? So the USA should have insisted on this quid pro quo - that it didn't do so showed it dishonesty as a so-called 'honest broker' - a term still current today(!)).

What should be understood by this assertion? 

After all, I don't ask a pear of its right to exist. It simply exists. Moreover I can't ask the pear to recognise my right to exist. Whereas, of course, the reciprocal question can be asked of Israel - that is the right of the Palestinian people to exist. After all, [Golda Meir infamously said](https://original.antiwar.com/srichman/2018/07/29/depopulating-palestine-dehumanizing-the-palestinians/):

> 
> When was there an independent Palestinian people with a Palestinian state? […] It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist.
> 
> 
> 

A right that can be demanded where the reciprocal right cannot be strikes me as a very curious form of right. It appears then less of a right and merely a demand and a demand backed up by force - the military might of one of the strongest militarised states in the Middle East backed up by the most militarised state on this planet - the United States (and that by a very large margin). Some right.

Moreover, when we look at the former Soviet Union - we see that the peoples of the Soviet Union are still there - they haven't gone anywhere. They still speak Russian (and other languages). They still practice their religion (apparently there was a resurgence after the fall of the Soviet Union). The buildings are all there too - Red Square and so on.

So what ought to be understood by "Israel's right to exist?". Is its particular political configuration? But then again, the United Kingdom is recognisably *still* the same state it was a thousand years ago despite many political changes - including its expansion into an empire in the 17th century and then its breakup in the 20th century (and apparently if the SNP has its way - the further break up of a four hundred year union!). 

Is there perhaps a legal dimension? But according to Wikipedia there is no such right under International Law. So it seems this then turns on what is meant by such a right - and hence my question: what is meant by such a right?

Answers that point to the serious literature will be appreciated.