Jonathan Keiler has a letter in the July/August issue of The Atlantic exploring what to make of the Palestinians’ failure to achieve statehood since 1948:
It is certainly not for want of money, arms, or international political sympathy and support, which the Palestinians have reaped to an extraordinary extent. (What would a Kurdish nationalist give for a mere slice of the Palestinian pie?)
Nor is it for want of territory. The Palestinians were offered half of the Palestinian Mandate in 1948 but refused it; and Arabs controlled the West Bank and
Now Palestinians completely control
The common explanation is that the Palestinians want a state encompassing the entire former Palestinian Mandate. But a more likely explanation is that the Palestinian national movement is not and has never been a national movement in the ordinary sense of the term. It was for a long time the vanguard of the Arab nationalist movement and is today the front line of aggressive Islamism. The establishment of a state is not the goal.
See also “The Palestinians’ Historic Opportunity” (July 21, 2005) (“In any event, the only penalty for missing an ‘historic opportunity’ is always . . . another ‘historic opportunity’.”); and “Palestinians Miss Umpteenth Straight Opportunity” (December 1, 2006) (“They keep missing their ‘opportunity’ because it is not the opportunity they seek”).