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Gaza Illustrates Palestinian Statehood
(Commentary) Jonathan S. Tobin - With all the talk about the need to create a Palestinian state for the sake of justice or even to assure that Israel remains a Jewish state, Gaza provides a daily clinic on the consequences of more Israeli territorial withdrawals. Gaza is for all intents and purposes already an independent Palestinian state in all but name. When Israel withdrew every last soldier or settler from Gaza in 2005, there was hope that it would provide a chance for the Palestinians to show that they truly could govern themselves. But from the first day after the withdrawal - when mobs burned abandoned synagogues and tore down the greenhouses that had been given to the Palestinians to use - what has happened in Gaza is an illustration of what the world could expect if an independent Palestinian state ever actually comes to pass. So long as violent groups dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish state dominate the political culture of the Palestinians, the prospect of the West Bank becoming another Gaza makes the high-flown rhetoric about the two-state solution look naive at best. Anyone who wants to know why Israelis are skeptical about a Palestinian state in the West Bank need only look at Gaza.