Phony Palestinian state declarations are harming Palestinian self-determination
The Palestinian Authority is building a city in the HaMasrek nature reserve in the Judean Desert, May 19, 2024. Credit: Gush Etzion Regional Council.
by James Sinkinson
(FLAME) — Norway, Spain and Ireland have recently recognized the “state” of Palestine. France’s new leftist government is threatening to do the same.
Tragically, such virtue signaling does nothing to help the Palestinian people. It does nothing to advance Palestinian independence. In fact, the biggest obstacle to a Palestinian state is the Palestinians themselves.
But rather than address the fundamental obstacles blocking Palestinian progress, members of the “international community” find it more gratifying to blame Israel. Ironically, Israel and the international community itself have made many serious offers of statehood to the Palestinians, all of which they have summarily rejected.
Instead of accepting peace with Israel and a state of their own, the Palestinians — both those under the Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria and those under Hamas in Gaza — have chosen to maintain a constant war of aggression against Israel, with the hope of ultimately defeating it.
Nowhere is this clearer than in Judea and Samaria, where the Palestinians annually commit some 5,000 attacks on innocent Jews. What’s more, the Palestinians, supported by European Union member states, have also mounted massive illegal building projects in Israeli-controlled territories, blatantly violating the Oslo Accords. Both actions block the path to reconciliation and increased Palestinian independence.
Nonetheless, ironically, the media, the U.S. State Department and the U.N. harp constantly on Israel’s communities in Judea and Samaria as primary obstacles to peace — though they are perfectly legal under international law. They also cite violence by Israeli “settlers,” though such incidents are infrequent and cause little harm compared to Palestinian terrorism against Jews.
Such complaints about Israel serve only to distract from the far greater obstacles to Palestinian liberation, let alone a Palestinian state. Most importantly they encourage Palestinians to believe Israel is blocking their independence, when in fact it is their obsession with destroying the Jewish state.
If members of the international community want to help the Palestinians achieve self-determination, they will focus on advancing practical issues of statehood, such as forming a stable, democratic government, maintaining rule of law, developing a self-sufficient economy and abandoning their strategy of terrorist attacks on Jews.
While 145 UN members currently recognize a Palestinian state, this doesn’t make it so. Most critically, “Palestine” lacks a functioning government. The P.A. is ruled by a dictator, now in the 19th year of his four-year term, whom 80 percent of Palestinians want to resign. The P.A. lost control of Gaza to Hamas in 2007, and to this day has been steadily losing control of its territory in Judea and Samaria.
The Palestinians also lack a self-sustaining economy — they are now completely dependent on foreign aid. One in three Palestinians has no job, with at least the same number living in poverty. The most lucrative occupation in Palestinian-controlled territory is pay-for-slay terrorism — murdering Jews in return for generous monthly stipends from the P.A.
Israel, the U.S. and the U.N. have made many offers of peace and statehood — in 1947, 2000 and 2008. The Palestinians rejected all of them. Why? Because, as they’ve made clear, they don’t want their own country alongside Israel. They want a country in place of Israel. They want the end of the Jewish state, to which Israel obviously will not agree.
The “international community” falsely blames Israeli “settlements” and “settlers” for preventing peace. Last February, U.S. President Joe Biden issued an executive order imposing sanctions on several individual Israelis and Israeli organizations, alleging “high levels of extremist settler violence.” Last week, the G7 released a statement saying, “The government of Israel’s settlement program is inconsistent with international law and counterproductive to the cause of peace.” None of this is true. Israel’s communities in Judea and Samaria are 100 percent legal, nor do their residents inhibit peace.
In international law, an occupation exists when one country illegally controls the territory of another. Judea and Samaria were never legally controlled by another country — certainly not by the Palestinians — thus there is no occupation. Remember, too: This territory is the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people. You cannot “occupy” your own indigenous homeland.
Furthermore, violence by Israeli residents in the territory has decreased by nearly 50%. Between Oct. 7, 2022 and Feb. 24, 2023, authorities recorded 489 incidents of nationalist crime committed by Jews in Judea and Samaria. But a year later, authorities registered only 256 such incidents in the same period.
In contrast, as David Weinberg notes in Israel Hayom, “harassment and vandalism by some angry settlers pales in comparison to more than 5,000 Palestinian bomb, car-ramming, knifing and shooting attacks a year aimed at killing Israeli civilians in Judea and Samaria.”
While slamming Israel for “occupying” Judea and Samaria, the international community ignores the Palestinians’ illegal efforts to take over the territory. The Palestinians are illegally building in Area C of Judea and Samaria, which Israel fully controls per the Oslo Accords. There are now 90,000 illegally built Palestinian homes in Area C.
This illegal construction is designed to change the map of Area C, putting Palestinians in areas that formerly had no Arab presence, physically dividing Israeli communities and encroaching on access routes. While ostensibly an attempt to prevent the partition of Judea and Samaria as part of a prospective two-state solution — in essence, the Palestinians are “colonizing” land they have never owned.
U.N. members who truly want to help the Palestinians achieve self-determination should take the following steps: First, do not reward the Palestinians for atrocities against Israel by recognizing a Palestinian state that lacks the infrastructure or cultural will to exist.
Second, make funding to the Palestinians conditional on reform: Reform of their governmental institutions to weed out corruption and authoritarianism. Reform to their education system and media to eliminate antisemitism and support for terrorism. Reform to security services so they can gain back control of their own territory.
Third, support efforts to create a self-sustaining Palestinian economy, in which gainful employment and adding social value are rewarded, rather than terrorist pay-for-slay “resistance.”
It is the Palestinians themselves, not Israel, who are impeding their self-determination. Their top goal should be building viable state institutions, not conquering the most successful state in the region.
James Sinkinson is president of Facts and Logic About the Middle East (FLAME), which publishes educational messages to correct lies and misperceptions about Israel and its relationship to the United States.
