[Wall Street Journal] Bret Stephens - No matter how much diplomatic, military and financial oxygen is pumped into Mahmoud Abbas' Palestinian Authority, it's oxygen flowing to a corpse. Israelis have held on to their state because they were able to develop the political, military and economic institutions that a state requires to survive, beginning with its monopoly on the use of legitimate force. In its nearly 14 years as an autonomous entity, the PA has succeeded in none of that, despite being on the receiving end of unprecedented international goodwill and largesse. What the experience of an unoccupied Gaza Strip has shown is the Palestinians' unfitness for political sovereignty. Nothing has so completely soured the world on the idea of a Palestinian state as the experience of it.
2007-06-26 01:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive