RUTHFULLY YOURS

For purposes of clarification, let us spell out the typical justifications for creation of a state.  The justification for Israel, for example, was fourfold: Israel was the historic homeland of the Jews from which they had been expelled, but had never stopped attempting to return; Jews required a homeland to prevent the consistent attempts to destroy their existence; Jews have a distinct culture, history, language and religion; Jews were a toehold for civilization in a brutally backward part of the world.

The so-called Palestinians fulfill none of these requirements.  There was no historic Palestinian homeland because there was never a historic Palestine governed by Arabs. In fact, even the Palestinians seem unclear on whether Jordan (which is 70% “Palestinian”) is part of historic Palestine.  Palestinians did not attempt to rise up against Jordanian or Egyptian rule between 1948 and 1967; instead, they focused on destroying Israel.  Nobody has attempted to wipe the Palestinian Arabs from the face of the earth – they flourish in mass numbers across Europe and the Middle East, and now threaten to take control of Jordan.  Palestinians are not a distinct people; their leaders hail largely from Jordan or Egypt.

Its population defined itself by recently electing Hamas to govern Gaza.  Even its “moderate” faction, Fatah, was an armed wing of the terrorist PLO.  Mahmoud Abbas, Fatah’s current leader, has honored planners of the murder of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich.  Every governing body the Palestinians have ever had is a rehashed terrorist group – and its population appears to like it that way.

In fact, establishment of an independent Palestinian state would be profoundly immoral, being, as it would, a huge base for all efforts to wipe the Jews off the face of the earth, once and for all.  The Arab states would funnel weapons and armaments into the new Palestinian state.  As “moderate” PLO representative Faisal Husseini said in May 2001, “There is a difference between the strategic goal of the Palestinian people, which is not willing to give up even one grain of Palestinian soil, and the political [tactical] effort that has to do with the [present] balance of power and with the nature of the present international system.  The latter is a different effort than the former.  We may lose or win [tactically] but our eyes will continue to aspire to the strategic goal, namely, to Palestine from the river to the sea.”

The Palestinian terror state would be another anti-American terror state in the Middle East.  It would provide a training and resource outlet for terrorists who seek to harm America.  If the Palestinian areas were famous for their chief export being terrorism before, a Palestine would up the ante, turning the territory into a veritable mini-Iran.

Sadly, a Palestinian state would not even be good for the Palestinians.  That is because the Palestinian terrorists who control the area are profoundly anti-women’s rights, anti-gay rights, and anti-freedom of religion.  It would be heaven for Islamists.

Finally, what of the claim that an independent Palestinian state would quiet agitation about the Mideast “conflict”?  Not likely.  Muslims around the globe are just as incensed by the existence of Tel Aviv as the existence of Efrat.  And even were Israel to magically disappear overnight, their grievances against the West would not end, but escalate.  Virtually every anti-American message ever delivered by Islamists includes a bevy of rationales for their hatred, including, but not limited to, America’s decadent lifestyle, system of economics, interest in oil, Christianity, in addition to tolerance for Jews worldwide.

There is no peace in which the lion lies down with the lamb.  There is only security.  Whatever preserves Israel’s security benefits the West; whatever undermines it makes the West’s influence over the region less and less relevant. That’s how to think about Palestinian statehood.