Palestinian history is a kind of tragedy: formally offered a state at least five times (in 1937 by the Peel Commission, in 1947 by the UN, in July 2000 by Israel at Camp David, in December 2000 by the Clinton Parameters, and in 2003 by the Quartet’s Road Map), the Palestinians rejected it five times, always continuing to “fight” for a state they could have had by simply stopping their fight.
Assuming a state was what they wanted. But the history of the many attempts to give Palestinians the state they say they wanted may be coming to an end, as Gaza is turned into an Islamic enclave and the weak remnant of the ancien regime is kept on life support by an international community that thinks Mahmoud Abbas is the hope for peace (just as it previously thought Arafat was).
Ed Lasky reminds us how inconsistent both the words and actions of Abbas have been with any real movement toward acceptance of Israel. Earlier this year, Abbas re-iterated that the “right of return” was “non-negotiable.” He personifies a Nebech strategy that generates unending financial support but never actually requires the dismantlement of any terrorist infrastructure.
David Singer reminds us that “the Palestinians” were a relatively recent historical construct, and he provides some useful lessons from the first partition effort by the 1937 Peel Commission. It is not too late to apply those lessons to the history that is unfolding now.
Bret Stephens captures another aspect of Palestinian history-as-tragedy: all of the Palestinians’ actions eventually came back to haunt them:
Arafat learned from the "international community" that no one would look too closely at where its foreign aid was spent. But a reputation for theft has been the undoing of Fatah.
Arafat thought he could harness the religious power of "martyrdom" to his political ends. But at the core of every suicide bombing is an act of self-destruction, and a nation that celebrates the former inevitably courts the latter.
Above all, Arafat equated territory with power. But what the experience of an unoccupied Gaza Strip has shown is the Palestinians’ unfitness for political sovereignty. . . . Nothing has so completely soured the world on the idea of a Palestinian state as the experience of it.
Bret Stephens’ conclusion is the same as that of Marty Peretz in “Last Act” (“This is the end of Palestine, the bitter end”):
What does this mean for the future? . . . . " Palestine," as we know it today, will revert to what it was — shadowland between Israel and its neighbors — and Palestinians, as we know them today, will revert to who they were: Arabs. . . .
[T]he dream that was Palestine is finally dead.
Still, as Anne Lieberman notes, fools rush in, ignoring what history has now demonstrated multiple times is a farce, if not a theater of the absurd. Those seeking a legacy should look elsewhere. While they try to organize a sixth formal offer, Iran is close to a nuclear weapon that will really change history.