Once again, the Palestinians cannot be trusted
Palestinians have again made fools of Western powers that have recognized "Palestine," as well as those who, despite Palestinian recalcitrance, persist in advocating for a Palestinian state.
On Oct. 10, Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas again broke his word, having long promised multiple Western nations that he would hold elections and enact necessary reforms as a condition for their recognizing a state of "Palestine."
In fact, Abbas' vow to hold elections is just one of many the Palestinians have broken. Abbas also earned recognition of "Palestine" by vowing to improve governance, reform school curricula that incite children to murder Jews and end the pay-for-slay program that rewards terrorists for killing Jews. Yet he has reneged on all these commitments.
Furthermore, despite multiple major offers by Israel and the United States to help Palestinians achieve statehood, plus tens of billions of dollars poured into the PA by Western and Gulf nations, Abbas has failed to lead his people either to liberation or prosperity. Rather, he's squandered every opportunity for statehood and every dollar meant to create a viable economy.
Unfortunately, the problem of "freeing Palestine" runs far deeper than elections, which, if held now, would lead immediately to a Hamas takeover and destroy any hope of democracy. Even if the Palestinians magically cured rampant corruption, implemented the rule of law, created a viable economy and effected other institutional reforms, their problems would remain.
Palestinians' greatest obstacle to liberation is Palestinianism — the monomaniacal obsession with hating Jews and violently destroying the Jewish state. Until that debilitating pathology is cured, the Palestinians will be incapable of statehood.
This is a task to which Abbas is manifestly unsuited. His legacy will instead be corruption, diplomatic duplicity, a strategy of incessant terror, financial failure and betrayal of all nations sworn to help the Palestinians.
• • •
Above all, Abbas failed to heal Palestinians of Palestinianism. He not only allowed Jew hatred to fester for more than two decades; he nurtured it. Abbas' eventual departure will be no loss to Palestinian self-determination. He demonstrates almost daily the Palestinians' incapability of launching, let alone managing, an independent state.
Until benefactors hold Abbas and other Palestinian leaders accountable for their compulsive hatred of Jews and Israel, as well as their broken promises, Palestinians will never be free.
Fact is, if the Palestinians held elections now, Hamas would likely win. The terror group would doubtless seize power again, institute sharia law, impose autocratic rule and launch attacks on Israel from Ramallah — just 10 miles from Jerusalem — and Nablus.
As helpful as democracy could theoretically be in freeing Palestine, the existential threat — both to Palestinians and Israel — of holding elections makes them impossible today. That's what Abbas knows, but his Western allies naively ignore. Until other reforms are made, Palestinian "democracy" would be a nightmare worse than the current one.
They haven't revised their educational curriculum so Palestinian children aren't encouraged to murder Jews. They haven't ended "pay-for-slay," by which terrorists and their families are granted generous monthly payments for killing Jews, nor have they kept their commitments to demilitarize.
The Palestinians haven't fulfilled these commitments because they contravene Palestinianism, their governing philosophy. They can't end payments for murdering Jews; it's a contradiction. Nor can Palestinianism exist if Palestinians surrender the arms they need to carry out this mission. Western nations don't understand that Palestinianism blocks any path to peace with Israel.
• • •
Abbas and his predecessor, Yasser Arafat, have refused four major offers of statehood since 2000 because they would not live alongside a Jewish state.
Palestinians have also been given plenty of funding to build a vibrant economy — more than $55 billion since the start of the Oslo peace process in the early 1990s.
Yet nearly one in three Palestinians in PA territory and three out of four in Gaza have no job. One in three Palestinians lives in poverty. The reason? Building viable state institutions and a prosperous economy isn't a priority for Palestinian leaders. Indeed, killing Jews and destroying Israel are their only priorities.
Hence, polls show half of Palestinians reject a two-state solution. Palestinians also continue insisting on a "right of return" (to Israel!) that would inundate the Jewish state with nearly 6 million descendants of Palestinian refugees, negating Israel's Jewish majority and, therefore, Israel itself. They also refuse to acknowledge Jews' millennia-old history in "Palestine."
Instead, they sell the false narrative that Jews are colonial oppressors — an ahistorical fiction that many Westerners have accepted. In short, Palestinians refuse to allow the Jewish people self-determination in their indigenous homeland.
• • •
Whether you're a thoughtful liberal, like so many Western diplomats, arguing "reasonably" for a two-state solution, or a screaming, car-burning radical who demands "Free Palestine now!" you're failing to recognize an intractable Middle East reality.
Yes, of course, Palestinians need elections, rule of law and a viable economy. But Palestinian society is going nowhere — and certainly not toward statehood — until it sheds its fixation on destroying Israel.
Instead of a pathological focus on avenging themselves on the "invading Jews," Palestinians need a new vision — one of hope, nation-building, peace and prosperity. We Westerners take this for granted. That's what people want, right?
No. Palestinians are consumed by a single-minded obsession with cleansing the Land of Israel of its Jews. Neither elections, nor rule of law, nor women's rights, nor an influx of high-tech jobs will cure this social sickness. That will require a revolution in thinking — first on the part of Western nations, then on the part of Palestinian leaders.
Until the West stops contributing uncritically (and foolishly) to the doomed Palestinian cause, Palestinianism will never die, and Palestine will never be free.
James Sinkinson is president of Facts and Logic About the Middle East (FLAME).
