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Dear Palestinians: Statehood Is Not a Right

(Newsweek) Dan Perry - I categorically favor Israel not controlling millions of Palestinians by force, and I wish for my Palestinian friends to be happy and fulfilled. But the idea of an inalienable Palestinian right to nation-state status is wobbly at best, and may be damaging to all sides. The Holy Land is small, with an average width until the Jordan River of about 50 miles. Cramming two countries in there is hard; a pullout by Israel from the West Bank would leave it 12 miles wide at the narrowest point. That would be dicey even if your region wasn't overflowing with jihadism. The effort to begin with Gaza has failed colossally. After the massacre of 1,200 Israelis which Hamas staged 16 months ago, I don't know how you convince Israel to try it again in the West Bank. The Palestinians failed to prepare for statehood in any mature way. The Palestinian Authority is corrupt, ineffectual and undemocratic. Hamas in Gaza has run a satanical mafia state, indoctrinating the youth for barbarism. Given this history, any Israeli government of the foreseeable future would demand that a Palestinian state be demilitarized. The Palestinians will reject this. Meanwhile, telling the Palestinians that national self-determination is a natural right of all peoples is a lie. There are over 10,000 identifiable ethnic, linguistic, cultural, and religious groups in the world, many of them far more distinctive than the Palestinians, who are scarcely different from Sunni Lebanese or Syrians. Indeed, until the creation of Israel there was no reference to a Palestinian people, any more than there was a Jordanian people. Plenty of groups have strong national identities, long histories, and often overwhelming cases for self-rule, yet remain stateless: the Kurds are a distinct ethnic group of 35-40 million. The Tibetans were annexed by China in 1951. There are many indigenous groups in Latin America. In Spain there are the Basques and Catalans. The Palestinians have repeatedly undermined their own case. They have refused multiple offers that would have given them a foothold for sovereignty, and clung to implausible goals such as a full return to land that has been Israel for more than 75 years. The writer is a former Middle East editor and Europe/Africa editor of the Associated Press.
2025-02-13 00:00:00
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