Just say no to a Palestinian state

The illusion has gone on long enough. For decades, world leaders have clung to the idea that peace in the Middle East depends on the creation of a Palestinian state, as though the next summit or resolution might finally unlock harmony. Deep down, everyone knows this is make-believe. A Palestinian state will never come into being—and more importantly, it should not. Not after October 7. Not after a century of rejection, terrorism, and deliberate bloodshed. The only real question left is what should take its place.

There are only two realistic outcomes: depalestinization or resettlement. Either Gaza and the West Bank return to their historical Arab neighbors—Egypt and Jordan—or Gazans are relocated abroad through an orderly, humane process, such as the one suggested by President Trump. What must never happen is the reward of sovereignty for the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Giving the Palestinians a state after October 7 would be like appointing a criminally insane arsonist as the fire chief—and then handing him a can of gasoline.

Consider the basics. Arabs already exercise national sovereignty in twenty-one independent states across the Middle East and North Africa. Jordan—created from 77 percent of the British Mandate for Palestine—was always intended to be the Arab state in this region. Demanding that the Jewish people give up the remaining 23 percent for yet another unstable Arab entity is not just unnecessary; it is fundamentally unjust.

The historical record is unambiguous. The Palestinian leadership rejected the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. They rejected the League of Nations Mandate in 1922, the Peel Commission in 1937, and the 1947 UN Partition Plan—choosing instead to launch a war that wiped out any moral or legal claim to statehood. They rejected UN Resolution 242 in 1967 and refused the peace offers from Clinton, Olmert, Kerry, and Trump. At every turn, they have chosen war over coexistence. No other nationalist movement in modern history has spurned so many opportunities, nor been indulged with so many second chances after doing so.

That is because this is not an organic national movement at all. “Palestinianism” is not a natural expression of culture or history. It is a political invention, a strategic tool designed to undermine the legitimacy of the Jewish state. As PLO official Zuheir Mohsen admitted in 1977: “The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity.”

A Palestinian state today would not be democratic, nor a partner for peace. It would be a violent Islamist dictatorship, an Iranian proxy glorifying suicide bombers, indoctrinating children with hate, and firing rockets from hospitals. We do not have to imagine it—Gaza is the model, and its record speaks for itself.

Many claim that if Germany could be denazified without ceasing to exist, “Palestine” could be deradicalized into a state. But the analogy falls apart instantly. Germany had existed for centuries before Hitler; being German was never the same as being a Nazi. Twelve years of dictatorship could not erase a thousand years of shared language and culture. Germany could shed its ideology and remain a nation.

“Palestine” has no such foundations. It is not, and never has been, a historic nation. Its “identity” was assembled in the 1960s by the Soviet KGB as a Cold War project, and its central purpose—the thread holding it together—is the destruction of Israel. Remove the ideology, and nothing remains to bind it as a national entity.

Depalestinization, therefore, cannot mean simply rewriting textbooks or disarming militias. It means dismantling “Palestine” as an idea and replacing it with the non-Palestinian Arab identities that existed before 1967: Gaza as part of Egypt, the West Bank as part of Jordan. This is not some arbitrary redrawing of maps. Gazans and Egyptians share language, culture, and history; the same is true for West Bank Arabs and Jordanians. In fact, many West Bank Arabs already hold Jordanian passports. They are Jordanians in all but name, held in a political limbo that exists only to keep the anti-Israel cause alive. Remove the ideology, restore the natural national framework, and you cut the conflict off at its roots.

A peaceful reintegration—backed by international guarantees and genuine incentives—could benefit all sides, but only after the ideological poison has been removed. The belief in a “Palestine” dedicated to Israel’s destruction must be dismantled before Gaza can rejoin Egypt or the West Bank can rejoin Jordan. This will not happen overnight; denazification in postwar Germany took years, even with total military defeat and Allied occupation. The same patience and determination will be needed here. Only once the idea itself has withered can Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank have a future in functioning states rather than an endless battlefield.

The alternative is resettlement, an approach with deep historical precedent. After World War II, over 12 million ethnic Germans were expelled from Central and Eastern Europe. Germany lost the Sudetenland, East Prussia, and other territories—not out of spite, but because starting a genocidal war had consequences. Those settlements created the stability that enabled modern Germany to become one of the most peaceful and prosperous countries in the world.

Gaza’s October 7 massacre was not just a Hamas operation. It was celebrated by much of the population. Polling shows majority support for the slaughter. The fiction of “good Gazans” held hostage by “bad Hamas” collapses under the evidence. Those who elect terrorists, cheer their crimes, and participate in them are not innocent victims—they are enablers.

A resettlement program would not be an act of vengeance but of moral clarity. It would give Gazans willing to start anew a path to safety and opportunity, while ensuring Israel—and the world—never again faces a second October 7.

What cannot be allowed is the creation of a Palestinian state as the direct outcome of October 7. That would be worse than appeasement—it would be appeasement after a pogrom. It would enshrine mass murder as a legitimate political tool and guarantee that more massacres will follow.

The Oslo experiment has failed. It is time to stop pretending that peace depends on rewarding intransigence and violence. Depalestinization and resettlement are not mutually exclusive. Gaza can be resettled while parts of the West Bank join Jordan. Some may be absorbed by Egypt under strict international oversight. The exact arrangement will depend on circumstances, but the guiding principle must not change: no more experiments in Palestinian statehood.

No to a terrorist state. Yes to depalestinization. Yes to resettlement. However it is achieved, the aim is the same: to end, once and for all, the century-long war against the Jewish people.