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How's the Palestinian Resistance Going?
(JNS) James Delmore and Walter E. Block - How is the Palestinian resistance going? Is everyone pleased with the results? Has it benefited Palestinian Arabs? After decades of war, the Palestinian people remain stateless and impoverished. Gaza now lies in ruins after the Palestinians regained control of it in 2005. With offers of statehood in 1947, 2000 and 2008 turned down by the Palestinian leadership, the Arab world has largely moved on, normalizing relations with Israel without first securing a Palestinian state. The Palestinians may have won the PR war, but how has that translated into any real accomplishments on the ground? The uncompromising resistance strategy has been one of history's most expensive strategic failures. Since 1993, more than $50 billion in international aid has flowed to the Palestinian cause. The U.S. alone provided UNRWA more than $7.3 billion from 1950 to 2016. Private charities devoted to Palestinian relief collectively raise hundreds of millions more annually. There are now thousands of careers, institutions and funding streams whose existence depends on the Palestinian crisis remaining unresolved. The definition of strategic failure is pursuing the same approach, decade after decade, and watching it produce more destruction, more poverty, more displacement and more death than the alternatives you refused to consider. One definition of mental illness is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different result each time. The strategy of perpetual resistance has produced perpetual suffering.