1. Introduction As embodied in the nineteenth century Zionist-embraced slogan, “a land without a people for a people without a land,”1 Israeli-Zionism has long engaged in efforts to frame the Palestinian right to self-determination on Mandatory Palestine as an illusory, unrealizable right. Simultaneously, it has contrived a purported IsraeliJewish self-determination that is somehow exclusive, legitimate, and applicable on the whole of Mandatory Palestine. This myopic slogan is relevant to selfdetermination, which necessarily encompasses a people and a land, in that it: (1) attempts to deny the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination by stating that the land was historically free of a people, despite the existence of the Palestinian people on the land for centuries and their de jure recognition as a people, and (2) expresses the Zionist movement’s claims to self-determination by referring to Jews as a ‘people’, despite their different nationalities and physical presence in Europe and several other countries at that time. Generally, self-determination is a right owed to peoples, allowing them to “freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development”2 on their land. As a peremptory norm, the recognition of a people as such and their consequent entitlement to the right to self-determination constitutes a fundamental foundational basis for independence, autonomy, and statehood in the land where they exist. It is therefore only logical that the Zionist movement, to legitimize its colonial enterprise, namely Israel, and achieve its exclusive statehood claim, has actively strived to not only frame itself as a people entitled to the right to self-determination, but to also exclude the competing Palestinian right to selfdetermination on the same land that it has fixated on as its headquarters for its enterprise. In accordance with this objective to destroy the Palestinian right to self1 Referenced in: Edward Said, The Question of Palestine (New York: Times Books, 1979), p. 9 2 United Nations General Assembly [UNGA], International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights [ICCPR], 999 UNTS 171, 16 December 1966, art.1(1), available at: https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/ pages/ccpr.aspx [accessed 1 November 2021]; UNGA, International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights [ICESCR], 993 UNTS 3, 16 December 1966, art.1(1), available at: https://www.ohchr.org/ en/professionalinterest/pages/cescr.aspx [accessed 1 November 2021]. 1