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Time for a Palestinian Reckoning

(Foreign Affairs) Hussein Agha and Ahmad Samih Khalidi - The one-time pan-Arab call for a united front against Israel has given way to normalization. Palestinian diplomacy has failed massively. It takes exceptional talent to transform an almost complete consensus among Arabs and Muslims on the future of Palestine and Jerusalem into just another matter on a packed Arab agenda. The PLO's one-time virtue was that it gave the Palestinians a voice. Yet it has not adjusted its form and mission to meet the goal of statehood. In both construction and function, it is beyond reform. To move forward, a substantial recalibration of Palestinian aspirations is essential. In the last two decades, Palestinian leaders developed a culture of dependency, an expectation of external salvation rather than self-reliance. This sapped their will to build their society and stymied their willingness to explore new thinking. Foreign supporters have become exasperated with Palestinian conduct, which has been marked by nagging, complaining, sulking, and a sense of entitlement. The PLO's default position is to appeal to international law, one of the more enduring delusions of the Palestinian leadership. In reality, international law has not been a dependable friend to the Palestinians (from the Balfour Declaration in 1917 to the UN Partition Plan in 1947 to UN Security Council Resolution 242 in 1967). International law has not helped solve conflicts in Crimea, Cyprus, Kashmir, Kosovo, or Nagorno-Karabakh. The prospects of securing "hard" Palestinian sovereignty, based on 19th-century notions of the nation-state, with full and complete control over land, borders, and resources, are remote. Harsh as this conclusion may seem, the Palestinians' choice may be between clinging to the self-defeating chimera of hard sovereignty and adopting softer versions, as in the case of member states of the European Union. The Palestinians need a new approach - one founded on recalibrated aspirations. Hussein Agha is a Senior Associate at St. Antony's College, University of Oxford, and has been involved in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations for more than three decades. Ahmad Samih Khalidi is a Senior Associate at St. Antony's College and was involved in post-Oslo Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
2021-02-18 00:00:00
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