A Palestinian State: A "Peaceful" Path To Endless War

Western countries are clearly increasingly fed up with Israel. The United States excepted, they increasingly believe the UN and other NGOs beholden to Hamas that Israel is the second coming of Nazi Germany or at least horrifically indifferent to civilian lives in the Gaza Strip, facts be damned.

But this puts them in a bind, because Israel's enemy is Hamas, a terrorist group that not only carried out the horrific massacre of October 7 and continues to hold at least 20 living hostages and 30 bodies, but also one which remains entirely unrepentant and even determined to commit such massacres over and over.

So they are now reaching for a 1990s solution for a 2025 problem: bring in the "moderate" pro-terrorists who will "deal" with the problem of Hamas and ensure a terrorism-free Palestinian state that will live side by side with Israel in peace and prosperity.

But we are not living in the 1990s. We live in 2025 - after the Second Intifada, after the Hamas victory in parliamentary elections in 2006 and their violent anti-PA coup in 2007, after October 7, and after multiple failed efforts to get the Palestinian Authority to reform.

We know from multiple polls that Hamas remains broadly popular or electorally viable not just in what is called the West Bank but also the Gaza Strip. A democratic Palestinian state will always and forever be one election away from being won by Hamas, as it was in 2006.

The idea that laws banning Hamas will prevent such an eventuality is delusional: all Hamas needs do is run under a different banner, pretend to be peaceful, and then shed their costume once in power.

The idea that Hamas or other parties seeking Israel's destruction would "moderate" once in power was tested in the Gaza Strip and found to simply be false. Hamas willingly took what could have been a flourishing effective Palestinian state and sacrificed it all to try and destroy Israel. There is no reason to think, based on their own words, that they would not try again.

The idea that the Palestinian Authority, with its substantial armed forces and formal promises to avoid terrorism, will keep this all in check under dictatorial circumstances is naivete unbecoming of anyone who was an adult this century.

The PA was in charge of Gaza in 2006. They were easily routed in 2007. Even in the West Bank, where they ostensibly hold more sway, no or at least few serious defense observers think they would last a day against a coup without significant and ongoing IDF efforts - which would not be possible in a world where it is sovereign Palestinian territory.

All this is without getting into the fact that while the PA at least formally swears off terrorism - even while paying for terrorists and their families out of their budget, encouraging terrorism in their schoolbooks, and admiring past terrorists - it, too, has not given up on the idea of destroying the State of Israel, albeit with diplomacy more than arms.

Thus, there was not a single round of negotiation between Israel and the PA in which the PA did not demand that Israel be flooded with millions of descendants of refugees from 1948, effectively ending Israel's identity as a Jewish nation state and making it the second State of Palestine.

Under current conditions, a Palestinian state would be a recipe for endless war: between Fatah and Hamas and between the IDF and any number of terrorist attempts, refugee "return" mobbings, or even mass armed invasions a la October 7 - only this time with the Palestinian state having all the resources of a state, including sovereignty over territory, automatic tax revenues, and so on. It would be the current situation on steroids, likely with much heavier casualties and more headaches. It would not resolve anything.

The situation right now is definitely frustrating. Most Israelis find it frustrating. But as the west is going to find out, bad "solutions" that sound good on television can and will only make things worse on the ground, for both Israelis and Palestinians.