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The World Faces Many Tragedies. The Lack of a Palestinian State Ranks Low on the List

(Los Angeles Times) James Kirchick - Few regional conflicts attract more diplomatic energy, media coverage and attention on the part of human rights activists than that between Israel and the Palestinians. Figures on all sides of this intractable dispute endow it with an awesome significance demanding our utmost concern. By investing the Palestinian cause with such monumental importance, politicians and polemicists mistake a regional quarrel for a global struggle. As the so-called "Arab Spring" demonstrated, what really motivates the Arab masses are not Israeli settlements in the West Bank but the daily indignities of their own lives, blame for which lies with their rulers, not the Jews. And as for those rulers, Shia Iran's growing assertiveness on a variety of fronts - a nuclear program on the threshold of weaponization, suborning the genocidal Assad regime, fueling the ruinous war in Yemen - has led the Sunni Arab states to reach a historic realignment with the nation they used to lambaste as "the Zionist entity." The amount of global resources heaped upon the Palestinians appears wholly disproportionate when contrasted to the measly efforts expended upon other stateless peoples, like the Tibetans and Kurds. That the Palestinians lack a state is a tragedy, but it is a tragedy largely of their own making. More than once have they been presented with the opportunity to create a sovereign country alongside Israel; each and every time they responded with violence. On the long and growing list of world problems, the absence of a Palestinian state ranks somewhere between the conflicts over Transnistria and Western Sahara, neither of which you are likely to read about on newspaper front pages.
2019-05-27 00:00:00
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