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A State's Viability Depends on the Quality of Governance, Not Terrain

(Jerusalem Post) Bret Stephens - A Washington Post op-ed warned that the planned settlement between Jerusalem and Ma'aleh Adumim would render a Palestinian state an impossibility. Why impossible? According to author Daniel Seidemann, "the plan will create a critical mass of facts on the ground that will render nearly impossible the creation of a sustainable Palestinian state with any semblance of geographical integrity." The idea that a country requires geographical integrity is an odd one: Hawaii is no less "viable" as a state than, say, Maryland, despite the fact that Hawaii is separated from the mainland by many thousand kilometers (and is itself not territorially contiguous). As it is, a Palestinian state consisting of Gaza and the West Bank was never going to have geographical integrity anyway, even if Israel withdrew fully to the June 1967 lines. In fact, the entire issue of a Palestinian state's territorial viability is bogus - a substitute way of justifying why Palestinians won't settle for less than X-amount of territory. A country's viability, or "sustainability," is chiefly a function of the quality of governance, not the extent of terrain. Following any pullout from Gaza and the West Bank, Palestine will likely continue to be a Third World kleptocracy, or worse, whether they achieve 50% of their stated territorial demands, or 100% of them, or more. The writer, who has been editor of the Jerusalem Post since March 2002, is leaving to join the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal.
2004-09-09 00:00:00
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