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The Idiocy of a Palestinian State
by Steve WhiteThere has been considerable talk recently of a 'two-state' solution to the problem of the Middle East. The sixty years of bad blood between Israel and the Arab states is supposed to be brought to an end by creation of a homeland for the Palestinian Arabs, a 'Palestine', a state equal to Israel in which the descendants of the land will live. That homeland is supposed to include, at a minimum, the West Bank, the Gaza district, and East Jerusalem. Some more vocal and, dare we say, 'progressive', advocates demand some sort of connection between Gaza and the West Bank (that this would bisect the Jewish state is of no major consequence), so that the citizens of the new Palestinian state could travel throughout their land without being hassled by the Israelis. Even more radical voices demand that Israel also accept what is called, as a code phrase, a 'right of return'; that is, the acceptance of the descendants of the Arabs who originally populated parts of the Israeli lands who fled at the time of the 1948 war. These descendants would not be subject to Israeli law, though they would live inside Israel, but rather would answer to the rulers of the new Palestinian state. People in the West see such a state as the price Israel must pay to have 'peace'. What peace is supposed to be generally is fuzzy in the details, but at a minimum it means some form of recognition for Israel's right to exist by the Arab states with an end to overt hostilities. It might or might not include formal diplomatic recognition, less likely will include trade and economic links, almost certainly will not include any diminution in the vitriol that currently comes out of the more respected mosques throughout the Arab world, and only in fantasy would result in an end of hostilities between Israelis and Palestinians. Governments in the West, particularly in Brussels and Washington, have over the years bought into the supposed peace that a 'two-state' solution would bring without publicly acknowledging, let alone examining, what the second state would look like. The world news media bangs a drum that says, simply and in line with their education from the progressive left, in turn thoroughly infiltrated by Palestinian agitators, that the Palestinians have been robbed and repressed, lacking only opportunity in their quest for a state of their own. Neither the political nor media spheres talk about what the two states would look like or how they would co-exist; the focus has been on the political wrangling. So what do the two states look like? We already know what the first state looks like: that state is Israel. Israel is a vibrant, liberal democracy with periodic elections and changes in government. Israel is western-oriented in its mores and culture. Its people speak not only a national language but also the languages of the west. It has a legal code, courts, and redress for its citizens. Israel is by no means perfect, but it shares all the attributes of a modern, western nation. We know what the first state looks like. What would the second state, Palestine, look like? We know that too. We have several examples. The first is Jordan, the Hashemite kingdom that was supposed to be a Palestinian state when it was created by UN mandate in 1948. The UN installed a royal family which keeps its power today by employing the usual tricks of a modern Arab state: a repressive secret police, court intrigue and massive corruption. Jordan survives today only because the only country that would kill it, Syria, is in even worse shape. Jordan is filled with unemployed young men who would rather pledge their support to Osama bin Laden than to their 'king'. The second example is the Palestinian Authority, perhaps the most laughable name in governance on the planet today. The Authority devolved, and that's the correct word, from Fatah and the PLO. It exists today because Israel, the European Union and the United States maintain the Authority as a fiction for a Palestinian state. It has thrown away every dollar in foreign investment, destroyed everything it touched, and terrorized any person with a whiff of spirit, independence and business sense. The Palestinian Christians have fled, and the men who remain work either for the Authority -- that is to say, for the various gangs and militias -- or the UNRWA, which means they do nothing. The third example is, of course, 'Hamastan', or Gaza, controlled by the Hamas Party which in turn is controlled by Iran. After wresting control of the district from the out-gunned and poorly-led Fatah, they have implemented hell on earth. Every bit of decent housing, industry, greenhouses, public buildings and basic sanitation has been ruined. Every decent person has been cowed, beaten, or murdered. Gaza is a disaster, and one that has been created deliberately by the thugs in Hamas who are in charge. Even worse from the standpoint of a 'two-state' solution, Gaza has been a launching point, literally, for attacks on Israel. Israeli towns around the district are now uninhabitable due to the Qassam rocket attacks, and Hamas is obtaining longer-range rockets to extend their kill radius. Israel is to blame, of course, as the world press lectures it about retaliating against people who mean to kill them. Israel has retaliated anyway, in ways large and small, without blunting the desire of the Gazans, fanned by the Hamas leaders, for an eventual dire revenge. That is what a Palestinian state would look like in a 'two-state' solution. It does not matter that the U.S. and E.U. would pledge more money to build a new Palestinian state. The thugs in charge of Palestine would spend the money on themselves, on arms, and towards their safety stashes in banks around the world. Whatever money that actually made it to the people of the new state would be a pittance, designed to keep them bound to a feudal patronage system. Money really is control in the Palestinian lands, and so it will be used in the new state. It does not matter that the U.N. would pledge more assistance. What the UNRWA has done so far would cause a normal person to thank the U.N. for any pledge and then back away. The 'refugee camps', home to people who now count grandchildren and great-grandchild as 'refugees', are among the worst slums on earth thanks to the U.N. A new Palestinian state will be more of the same, as no person with any independence will be allowed to create anything decent. It does not matter what political structure might be promised. Yasser Arafat, the old terrorist who wrecked many a 'peace' deal, demonstrated the callowness of Palestinian politics over the decades. A new Palestinian state will be, at first, anarchy, then civil war, than a satrapy. If one were to handicap the horse-race now, Hamas would be the clear favorite, as they have the will, the Iranian money and weapons, and the clearest vision of what should be. They would win the battle and install their vision of a Palestinian state. And that would be Hamastan, version two, larger, more volatile, and more dangerous to Israel, the region, and the 'world peace' fervently desired by so many. A new Palestinian state would continue to take funds from the E.U., U.S., and U.N. It would continue the presence of the UNRWA. To do otherwise would commit them to building a country, and that is the last thing Hamas wants. What is their vision? To understand that, one need simply read their charter. Hamas does not want a 'two-state' solution. They want a one-state solution, their state, all of 'Palestine', with Israel extinguished and its citizens dead or deported. Their state will be an Islamic one with a small cabal of religious thugs in charge. Democracy need not apply; it is un-Islamic. Israel, in their vision, is an infidel state whose very existence is an affront to Islam as defined by Hamas, by Iran, and by the Palestinian men and women who carry guns and bombs. No Palestinian leader will ever acknowledge the right of Israel to exist. Indeed, recent offers by Hamas, called a 'truce' proposal in the western press, are correctly read as a 'hudna': an Arabic word that means a cessation of hostility only long enough for the Palestinians to gather their strength for a new attack. The Palestinians have never been able to stand successfully against Israel in any conventional conflict so they have adopted the ways and values of terrorism. The short-term goal of terrorism is to terrorize, the long-term goal is to conquer. Accommodation with Israel is neither possible nor desired. The politicians and journalists of the West do not understand and thus continue to offer the Palestinians various bribes and deals. Thank you, the Palestinians will say, and then will terrorize some more. Whatever idealism (or not) that started the Palestinian movement, the movement today is run by armed gangs and thugs who derive their power and support from being terrorists. Like the scorpion on the back of the frog, it is what they do. The 'two-state' solution therefore is not a formula for peace and stability in the Middle East. It simply shifts the battlefield against Israel. Imagine the two states side-by-side. One 'splinter' group inside Hamastan (for that will be the practical reality of the Palestinian state) launches rockets into Israel. Israel responds with air strikes. Who will the world blame? We already know the answer to that from reading the world press today. Israel cannot win that kind of war. It has survived today because its enemies have never united, and because the West has recognized that Israel is one of them and has afforded it trade, recognition and weapons for defense. A new Hamastan that unites the West Bank and Gaza under one leadership, combined with ever-increasing pressure from the left-progressive West, makes Israel a long-term losing proposition, and that is without considering the existential threat of a nuclear-armed Iran. The 'two-state' solution is an idiocy promulgated by western leaders who wish a problem to go away without understanding the nature of the problem. It is a stepping-stone on the way to the final destruction of Israel and the deaths of millions of Jews. Accepting the 'two-state' solution requires one to be uncaring and unsympathetic to the fate of Israel. That, in the end, would require the West to be unsympathetic to its own fate. And that, as it turns out, is one of the central issues on which the far-left and far-right agree.
Posted by: Steve White 2009-05-24 |
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