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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/14/opinion/what-a-free-palestine-means-in-practice.html
What a "Free Palestine" Means in Practice
(New York Times) Bret Stephens - Imagine that the campus protesters got their wish tomorrow: The creation of a "Free Palestine." Israeli leaders have repeatedly offered the creation of a Palestinian state - offers Arafat and Abbas rejected. Palestinians have had a measure of self-rule in the West Bank since 1994. Israel evacuated its civilians and soldiers from Gaza in 2005. How much freedom have Palestinians enjoyed since then? When Abbas was elected in 2005, it was for a four-year term. He is now in the 20th year of his four-year term. When Hamas won the 2006 legislative elections, it didn't just defeat its political rivals in Fatah. It overthrew the Palestinian Authority completely in Gaza after a brief civil war and followed it up with a killing, torture and terror spree that eliminated all political opposition. Would an independent Palestinian state, living alongside Israel, improve its internal governance? Not if Hamas took control - which it almost certainly would if it isn't utterly defeated in the current war. What the campus protesters happily envisage as a utopian, post-Zionist state would under Hamas be one in which Jews were killed, exiled, and prosecuted.