Recognizing facts would help the Palestinians enormously

The main obstacle to Palestinian prosperity and Palestinian statehood isn’t Israel. It isn’t even the Israeli extreme right or the extremist settlers. It is the Palestinians’ own inability to distinguish fact from fiction, and only they can overcome that obstacle.

The mainstream Palestinian narrative is based on the claim that they are the tragic victims of colonization by “Zionists”. Palestinian terrorists use that narrative to justify the worst crimes, and they use it to indoctrinate children to grow up to be become terrorists themselves. But that narrative is a blatant lie.

Jews have a far deeper and complex history in the Israel/Palestine than Palestinians do. Therefore, Jews have at least as much right to their own state as Palestinians do. This is not a big revelation. This is a fact that is obvious from any unbiased reading of Middle Eastern history.

But this isn’t the only problematic fiction that most Palestinians believe. There is a domino effect of fictions that result from this.

Believing that they are purely victims leads the Palestinians to accept other fictions: That they have no choice but to engage in violence to gain their freedom. That any act of violence is justified. That no matter what Palestinians do and how violently and viciously they attack Israel, Israel has no right to respond. That no matter how careful Israel is in its response, every Palestinian death is completely the fault of Israel.

Believing in these fictions has repeatedly led the Palestinians to make bad decisions that have had negative consequences on them.

It has led them to reject several two-state solutions. If they had accepted any of them, they would now have self-determination in their own state.

It has led them to repeatedly engage in violence which inevitably resulted in Palestinians being killed or injured. The attack of October 7, 2023, was only one of many, albeit the worst by far, and the consequences on the Palestinians have also been dire. But what did they expect? What were they thinking when many of them celebrated the attacks, in Gaza, in the West Bank, and abroad?

The inability of most Palestinians to get a grasp on reality has had several negative consequences for them: They have failed to build an economy that would prepare them for statehood. They have turned Israeli public opinion against the idea of a two-state solution. They have suffered tremendous tragedies and disruptions over decades. They have lost the support or at least the enthusiasm of much of the Arab world. They are divided, weak, poor, dependent on others, and facing a very uncertain future.

It didn’t have to be this way. When Palestinians see that by contrast, Israel has done tremendously well, this may increase their sense of grievance. It should, instead, increase their grasp on reality.

At the time of the 1947 UN partition plan, Jews and Arabs (Palestinians) were at pretty much the same point. Both needed to build a state from the ground up. The Jews chose to accept reality and to build a state on land that was available to them. The Arabs chose war because they wanted all the land. And the Palestinians’ bad decisions continued from that point. The situation of Israel kept getting better, and the situation of the Palestinians kept getting worse.

Despite all the bad decisions, however, statehood for the Palestinians may still be a possibility. Prosperity certainly is a possibility. Israelis are very much aware of the fact that the Palestinians are their neighbors and will be their neighbors for a long time. A solution will be found if the Palestinians approach the problem rationally and without violence.

A better future requires the Palestinians to start making better decisions, but this depends completely on them. Their supporters abroad are no help at all because they encourage the delusional narratives since they have no price to pay for it; it seems to be a game for them.

If the Palestinians want a better future, they need to develop a new consciousness and a new national program, and those must be based on facts and acceptance of Jews, not based on fiction and hatred. No one can do this other than them. Their future is in their own hands.