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Source: https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-905388
Why Is There No Palestinian State?
(Jerusalem Post) Michael Freund - There has never been a Palestinian state in all of history. There was never an independent Palestinian Arab country with its own government, army, currency, or capital. The word "Palestine" does not appear in the Hebrew Bible, the Christian New Testament, or the Koran. In the modern era, Palestinian Arab statehood was repeatedly put within reach and repeatedly rejected beginning in 1937. In 1947, the UN proposed dividing British Mandatory Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab. The Jewish leadership said yes, and the Arab leadership said no. From 1948 to 1967, Jordan controlled Judea and Samaria, while Egypt controlled Gaza. Yet no Palestinian state was created during those years. In 1993, Israel decided to test a different path. Israel recognized the PLO, withdrew from Palestinian population centers, and helped establish the Palestinian Authority, expecting negotiations to lead to a permanent settlement. In July 2000, at Camp David under U.S. President Bill Clinton's auspices, Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered Yasser Arafat far-reaching territorial concessions, including in Jerusalem. Arafat rejected the deal. What followed was the Second Intifada. Israeli buses, restaurants, and cafes were attacked by Palestinian terrorists. In 2005, Israel withdrew its soldiers and uprooted every Jewish community from Gaza - in a test of what Israeli withdrawal could produce. Hamas seized control and turned Gaza into a terrorist fortress. Rockets were fired at Israeli towns. Terror tunnels were dug under the border. On Oct. 7, 2023, 18 years after Israel had left Gaza, it became the launching pad for the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. If Israel were really the main reason there is no Palestinian state, then the periods when Israel was absent should have produced one - from 1948 to 1967 in Judea and Samaria and Gaza, and in the years following Israel's 2005 withdrawal from Gaza. They did not. Territory surrendered by Israel was used to prepare and launch the Oct. 7 massacre. A Palestinian state under present conditions would be a gamble with millions of Israeli lives. After Oct. 7, why should Israel be expected to ignore every lesson of the past and take the same risk again?