The Case Against a Palestinian State: Part 2
For Part 1 of this essay please see “The Case Against a Palestinian State – Part 1: An Unjust Cause” here.
A Failed Trial Run in Gaza
Facing refusal of the Palestinians to accept generous offers for independence, in 2005, Israel decided to unilaterally withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, essentially creating a trial run for a Palestinian state. Israel wanted nothing more than to see the Strip prosper and become the ‘Singapore of the Middle East’ and Gaza had every opportunity to become one if its people so desired. But alas, you can unilaterally withdrawal, but you cannot then dictate what kind of state the Gazan Palestinians will choose to build. It turns out that the best this society could come up with was a genocidal Islamist terror state.
If the Palestinian Arabs genuinely desired a state to coexist peacefully alongside the Jewish State, the hundred-year-long conflict would never have arisen, and various creative arrangements would have been made in order to live as neighbors and prosper. Israelis were so ecstatic at this prospect in the 1990s that they were willing to import their own terrorist arch-enemy, Yasser Arafat, and grant him everything possible to make the project succeed. But Palestinian Arabs have proven by their words and actions that they do not desire a state coexisting peacefully alongside the Jewish State, and no amount of hoping otherwise will make it so. The Palestinians have agency and must bear responsibility for their poor decisions.
An Existential Threat to Israel
A Palestinian state would not only be a gross distortion of justice but would also constitute an intolerable and existential threat to Israel’s existence. It would swiftly become a Hamas controlled terror state and it is for this reason the PA has not held elections since 2006, as it knows that Hamas has more support among the Arab population of Judea and Samaria than the supposedly moderate Fatah. Such that if elections were held in the PA, Hamas would likely come to control its institutions and we would witness a repeat of the Gaza experiment.
To be clear, regarding their ultimate goals the Fatah movement is in essence no different from Hamas. The movement adopts more sophisticated rhetoric and a more diverse toolkit, using both lawfare and exploiting corrupt international institutions, but it is just as committed to opposing Jewish independence, including by violent means when possible. It continues to fund the pay-to-slay where it provides pensions to Jew-killers, whose sums are set in proportion to the number of slaughtered Jews. It is the PLO produced textbooks that were used in Gaza by the Hamas government to educate a generation of genocide supporters.
But why, then, did the October 7th invasion occur from Gaza and not from Judea and Samaria? It’s not for lack of desire, or terrorist cells. The difference is, of course, that Israel holds overall security control in Judea and Samaria, whereas it gave this up in Gaza in 2005. However, whereas Gaza is located at the periphery of Israel’s borders, Judea and Samaria are at its heart, and constitutes highlands which overlook the major population centers. Israel would literally be exposed to an invasion ten times the scale of October 7th, and from advantageous topography. From the hilltops of Samaria, one can view with the naked eye everywhere from the powerplant in Hadera, to the port in Ashdod and the Ben-Gurion international airport in between. The rocket threat from such vantage points would be unimaginably more severe than it has been from the periphery of the country in Gaza. A situation where Hamas controls the central mountain range of Judea and Samaria would pose an existential threat to Israel. A two-state solution would mean the final solution for Israel.
A Regional Geopolitical Disaster
The heinous geopolitical implications of a Palestinian state do not end with the mere destruction of Israel, but spell disaster for the West and the moderate Arab world.
A Palestinian state would undermine the two states who have signed stable peace agreements with Israel, namely Jordan and Egypt. Within the Kingdom of Jordan, there is already competition between Islamist movements and the ruling monarchy. A Hamas controlled state in Judea and Samaria, adjacent to Jordan along its long open border, would be in a highly advantageous position to undermine the status-quo and pro-Western Hashemite monarchy, and foment an Islamist revolution. Even without initiating a full-blown revolution in Jordan, the instability that would result would allow for increased Iranian infiltration of Jordan, similar to that which it still maintains in Iraq and Yemen. Alternatively, the same forces who formed the Islamist regime in Syria would be ecstatic to continue the march from Damascus to Amman and perhaps from there, further south to Riyadh. Either one of these scenarios poses a grave threat not just to Israel but to the moderate and Western-aligned Gulf States.
Furthermore, in Egypt too, the Islamist factions of which the Muslim Brotherhood is the most moderate constitute the main primary political opposition to the pro-Western government led by a-Sisi. A Hamas victory in taking over a Palestinian state would be a tailwind for Islamist factions across Egypt and threaten the continuation of the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt which has been the reason for the lack of major ground wars between Israel and its neighbors for the past 45 years.
But even if Hamas were somehow outlawed from a Palestinian state and it were to be established as continuation of the PLO-run authoritarian government, we should not expect such a state to be an American ally. The population itself is virally anti-American in sentiment. The political leadership itself has recently turned to China as the mediator for the reconciliation between the two rivals for Palestinian power, Fatah and Hamas. In another show of the likely orientation of a PA controlled Palestinian state, in June 2023, PA Chairman Abbas traveled to China to sign a ‘strategic partnership’ agreement. And in August 2024, travelled to Russia to receive President Putin’s reaffirmation of his support for Palestinian statehood. Finally, PA chairman, Abbas issued a statement offering his condolences to Hezbollah over the death of Hassan Nasrallah resulting from “brutal Israeli aggression.”
Taken together, a Palestinian state, whether ruled by Fatah or Hamas, would be born as a failed state both politically and economically and therefore be easy prey for takeover of Islamist movements of the Shia or Sunni variation, undermining America’s allies across the region and aligning itself with America’s greatest adversaries in the region and the world.
The Way Forward: Palestinians Must First Lose in Order to Win
Is perpetual conflict, the only way forward then? Not necessarily. There is a path toward prosperity and peace for both Arabs and Jews of the region, but it requires changing the ways of thinking that have become the default for three decades now.
First, Israel must completely defeat Hamas’ rule in Gaza and then, along with other international actors, undertake a long-term deradicalization process of the population akin to what was done in Germany and Japan following World War Two. Palestinians must internalize that the path of Hamas has brought disaster upon them and the rejection of its ideology must be ingrained in their society’s own narrative. Only following that could we hope to see an alternative leadership arise which could adopt an identity which is both Arab and Muslim but not Islamist, one that embraces tolerance and material prosperity while maintaining its tribal and religious traditions, similar to that promoted by the United Arab Emirates.
This could be the ideological basis for the Arab population in Gaza from which could arise local leaders who would prioritize working with Israel and set up autonomous regional civilian governing institutions. Once this model was successfully implemented in Gaza, it could then be brought into Judea and Samaria as an alternative to the PA. Regional autonomous civilian administrations could be established along tribal identities including the Jericho, Shechem, Hebron regions. This would allow for greater economic integration with Israel and the development of infrastructure for the benefit of all residents of Judea and Samaria.
At the same time, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) must be permanently defunded and disbanded and the descendants of Arabs who lived in pre-state Israel be absorbed into the countries they currently live in. This organization, instead of assisting in improving the lives of these Arabs, has become a tool used by them to perpetuate the conflict, support terrorism and resist Israel’s existence. No other population in the world has the dubitable privilege of inheriting the status of refugee to the coming generations. This is a farce and in order to move beyond the conflict it must end.
Not every political identity in the world exists in a state of full independence. Its time the world and the US in particular stopped rewarding Palestinian terrorism with greater commitment to statehood. It has been tried and found miserably wanting. October 7th was the final act that should demonstrate to the world that Palestinian sovereignty would be a moral and geopolitical disaster. It is both morally reprehensible and against American interests to continue promoting the idea of Palestinian statehood and continuing to do so is the best way to guarantee the continuation of the conflict.
Therefore, it’s time to move on and consider the alternatives. There could yet be a bright future and an end to the hundred-year conflict of the Arabs against the Jews in this region. But this rests on recognizing that the only path to prosperity for Palestinians is to come to terms with the fact that Israel will be the only independent state west of the Jordan river.