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Some Questions about a Palestinian State

[Forbes] Daniel Doron - Should not the establishment of a Palestinian state - which the Europeans so strongly promote - adhere to the European Union's 1993 Copenhagen Political Criteria for new members, which states, "Membership criteria require that the candidate country must have achieved stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, rule of law, human rights, and respect for and protection of minorities"? Clearly a Palestinian Authority state will not even remotely meet such criteria. What moral justification is there, then, for forcing a vulnerable Israel, threatened by an irredentist Palestinian state, to help establish it when a powerful EU refuses to take much smaller risks in the case of Turkey? Until Oslo, relatively free economic interaction between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs resulted in spectacular economic growth in the West Bank and Gaza. This created an informal peace process that greatly improved Arab life and promoted a Palestinian civil society committed to peace. The argument that the Arabs seek the restoration of "stolen Palestinian lands" is sheer fabrication. The area of the former British Mandate of Palestine was for centuries under the Ottomans an empty, deserted land. It was so desolate that a national Palestinian Arab state never existed there. Only after Jewish pioneers, in the second half of the nineteenth century, miraculously revived it did the Arabs start identifying themselves as Palestinians. The claim that "illegal settlements" are an obstacle to peace is absurd too. Jewish settlements occupy less than 4% of the West Bank territory, mostly constructed on deserted government land. The reason the Arabs want them removed is that their radical leadership cannot tolerate any Jews living among them. The writer is president of the Israel Center for Social and Economic Progress.
2009-05-22 06:00:00
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