WhatsappWhat do you get when you massacre more than 1,000 people? Apparently, a country.
(JNS) What do you get when you massacre more than 1,000 people, rape, torture, behead and kidnap every Jewish, Christian or non-Arab in sight? International diplomatic recognition.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has reportedly begun conducting a review of options for recognizing a “Palestinian” state after the war. The U.S. State Department has claimed that there are no policy changes, but that may be yet more diplomatic doubletalk.
U.K. Foreign Secretary David Cameron, brought in after British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak ousted Minister Suella Braverman for speaking out against the pro-Hamas rallies, published an op-ed calling for a “pause” in the fighting, exchanging Israeli hostages for captured Hamas terrorists, and providing “safe passage” to “key Hamas leaders” and “the people responsible for Oct. 7” to leave Gaza. After that, he announced that his government might recognize an Islamic terror state.
“We—with allies—will look at the issue of recognizing a Palestinian state, including at the United Nations,” he claimed. “That could be one of the things that helps to make this process irreversible.”
Why the urgent need for the “irreversible” recognition of a terror state?
According to Cameron, “we must give the people of the West Bank and Gaza the political perspective of a credible route to a Palestinian state and a new future.”
The “people” in question have already been polled on what they want from the future.
A poll found that 74% of Palestinians supported the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7 and a majority “extremely” supported them. Only 12% were against. Some 83% of those in the West Bank, under the Palestinian Authority and the immediate beneficiaries of statehood, supported the crimes.
A whopping 98% in Gaza and the West Bank said they felt “pride” as “Palestinians” over the war. 74% expected the fighting to end with the defeat of Israeli forces in Gaza. Only 17% supported a two-state solution while 77.7% wanted to destroy Israel and replace it with a “Palestinian” state.
This is what supporting the “Palestinian people” with a “Palestinian state” really means.
Former U.K. Minister Theresa Villiers who, unlike Cameron, had backed Brexit, warned that “accelerating unilateral recognition of Palestinian state would be to reward Hamas’ atrocities.”
And that’s exactly right.
The only reason any of this is being discussed is the Oct. 7 Hamas attack. Recognizing a terror state after one of the worst acts of terror in history will retroactively validate everything.
Hamas will be able to claim victory, and so will the “Palestinians” who took part in it, cheered it and supported it.
The Palestinian Authority, on which the hopes for a Palestinian state depend, is just as bad.
Despite Blinken’s best efforts, Mahmoud Abbas, the PLO leader who serves as the official “president” of the P.A., refused to disavow the Oct. 7 attacks. Instead, the PLO, Fatah and other elements of the ruling regime in charge of the West Bank have praised it and others, like the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, even bragged about taking part in the attacks.
A video from the P.A. features “terrorists wearing Fatah’s yellow armbands firing Kalashnikov rifles at a kibbutz” and “a Fatah terrorist stamping on the head of a murdered Israeli” as the group boasts that “we had a prominent and clear role” on Oct. 7.
The 88-year-old Abbas was elected to a four-year term in 2005. There have been no elections since, and he has functioned as a glorified dictator subsidized by our foreign aid. His likely successors, including the imprisoned leader of a terror group who is ahead in the polls, all praised the Hamas terrorist attacks.
Democratic elections in a “Palestinian” state would mean being ruled by Hamas. The Islamic terror group won the 2006 legislative elections and took over Gaza. It’s why there have been no elections since. Current polls show that if there were to be democratic elections, Hamas would easily win.
U.S. President Joe Biden claimed that “the vast majority of Palestinians are not Hamas. Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people.” But the vast majority of them want Hamas to head or form part of a unity coalition of Islamic terrorist groups running a “Palestinian” state.
The only P.A. candidate who could beat Hamas is Marwan Barghouti, the grandfather of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, currently serving several life sentences in Israel prison, who responded to Oct. 7 by urging a total war against Israel. Hamas has demanded Barghouti’s release as part of any “terrorists-for-hostages” trade with Israel.
Recognizing a “Palestinian” state means either recognizing the P.A.’s terror dictatorship in the West Bank or Hamas. Either way, an Islamic terrorist group will run the place, eliminate any opposition and launch more terrorist attacks against Israel than anyone else.
But diplomats who were blindsided by the Oct. 7 attacks are fighting to take control of the situation and the narrative by offering up the same old failed policies. They claim that Oct. 7 was caused by a failure to negotiate; instead, it had been brought about by endless negotiations.
Before the Oct. 7 assault, U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan had an article in Foreign Affairs magazine touting how negotiations with Hamas have led to quiet in Gaza. After the Hamas invasion, the online version had that edited out and only the print copies remain.
The roots of the Oct. 7 attack lie in the 1992 pressure campaign to force Israel to take back the Hamas terror leaders it had deported, followed by the Oslo Accord deals with Arafat and the PLO, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s insistence on democratic elections that brought Hamas to power, Obama’s Arab Spring that empowered the Muslim Brotherhood parent organization of Hamas to win democratic elections, including in neighboring Egypt, which provided a vital outlet of support for Hamas, and then the Iran nuclear deal that funded the state sponsor of Hamas that led Iran to expand its operations and ambitions around the region.
The addiction to diplomacy, nation-building, accords and agreements led fatally to Oct. 7.
Israel had resisted allowing Hamas to take part in elections only to face pressure from Rice.
“Whenever you have 80% of the Palestinian people turn out in a free and fair election, one that is free of violence, it has to be a cause for hope,” she argued after Hamas won the 2005 elections.
In 2007, a year after Hamas seized control of Gaza, Rice declared: “Frankly, it’s time for the establishment of a Palestinian state.”
No matter how often the same approach fails, the diplomats never admit they were wrong.
To be a modern-day diplomat is to ignorantly blame a lack of diplomacy and negotiations for everything and to promise that they can fix everything. Diplomats have been telling us for generations that a “Palestinian state” would be the solution to all of the problems in the region, but ever since the Oslo Accords, life in Israel and the Middle East has become much more violent.
There’s a limit to how much damage generals can do, but not diplomats.
Compare the damage from the Iraq war to the fallout from the Arab Spring, which didn’t just set one country on fire but led to brutal and enduring civil wars in Yemen, Syria and Libya, while causing serious harm in Egypt, Tunisia and many other countries across the region.
Oct. 7 was not the result of a military process but a diplomatic one, in which the Biden administration and several Israeli governments had negotiated temporary quiet with Hamas.
Diplomats can’t afford to allow the impression that there is a military solution to terrorism—or to much of anything else. And so they’re rushing to impose their diplomatic solution that would empower terrorists because that is all that diplomacy with terrorists ever accomplishes.
Since Oslo, diplomacy has consistently proved the flip side of the Roman si vis pacem, para bellum—“if you would have peace, prepare for war.”
Despite all the promises, the Oslo Accords and other peace negotiations never ended the violence because the Islamic terrorists quickly realized that violence was their best leverage. Negotiations soon fell by the wayside as P.A. terrorists focused on direct or indirect proxy terrorism. Hamas then took up the slack by promising to turn the violence on or off in exchange for money and political power. Recognizing a “Palestinian” state after Oct. 7 would validate terrorism as the ultimate strategy yet again and would ensure more such attacks.
The push for a “Palestinian” state after Oct. 7 not only rewards the atrocities of that day but encourages the Arab Muslim “Palestinian” settlers living in the West Bank and Gaza to repeat them.
What do you get when you massacre more than 1,000 people— and rape, torture, behead and kidnap every Jewish, Christian or non-Arab in sight? The answer should not be your own country.
