THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XIII, Issue # 232, September 15, 2011
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
WHERE IS THE PALESTINIAN BEN-GURION?
By Dr. Efraim Karsh
PALESTINIAN LEADERS' REJECTION OF A TWO-STATE SOLUTION TO THE ISRAELI-ARAB CONFLICT:
PALESTINIANS SEEKING UNITED NATIONS RECOGNITION OF PALESTINIAN STATEHOOD & APPLYING PRESSURE FOR A
COMPLETE ISRAELI WITHDRAWAL FROM THE PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES, WITHOUT A PEACE AGREEMENT, OR, INDEED,
ANY QUID PRO QUO -- CONTINUING PALESTINIAN ARAB REJECTION OF A NEGOTIATED SETTLEMENT & LAYING THE
DIPLOMATIC GROUNDWORK FOR RENEWAL OF THE ASSAULT ON THE STATE OF ISRAEL -- WHAT PALESTINIAN LEADERS
ENVISAGE: DESTRUCTION OF THE JEWISH STATE, ARAB OCCUPATION OF THE TOTALITY OF ISRAEL & PALESTINE,
& THE PERMANENT DEPARTURE OF VIRTUALLY ALL JEWS FROM THE AREA -- ARAB-ADMINISTERED ETHNIC CLEANSING
OF JEWS
FULL STORY:
Sixty-four years after partitioning Palestine into two independent states – one Jewish, the other Arab – the UN General
Assembly is set again to vote on the same issue. While this time around Palestinian leaders appear to be preaching
compromise, closer scrutiny reveals this to be a tactical, rather than a strategic, change of heart, stemming from the
different circumstances of the two votes and aimed at disguising their lingering unwillingness (or perhaps inability) to
live with a two-state solution.
In 1947, prior to the first UN General Assembly vote, Palestinian leaders rejected any form of Jewish self-determination
in Palestine. Hajj Amin Husseini, their most prominent leader from the early 1920s to the late 1940s, upheld that "there
is no place in Palestine for two races." All areas conquered by the Arabs during the 1948 war were cleansed of Jews.
These days the Palestinians can hardly ask the UN to dismantle one of its longest standing member-states and to expel
its citizens.
Yet, by seeking international recognition of their statehood and pressure for a complete Israeli withdrawal without a
peace agreement, or, indeed, any quid pro quo, they are continuing their predecessors' rejection of a negotiated
settlement and laying the diplomatic groundwork for the renewal of the assault on the Jewish state.
The PLO's hallowed National Covenant envisages the permanent departure of most Jews from Israel. PLO Chairman
Yasser Arafat's phased strategy of June, 1974, which was never disowned, stipulates that any territory gained through
diplomacy would merely be a springboard for the "complete liberation of Palestine." At the negotiating table during the
Oslo years, the PLO's most adamant demand was for the subversion of Israel's demographic composition by forcing it
to accept the socalled "right of return" and allow refugees of the 1948 war, and their descendants, to return to territory
that is now part of the State of Israel. At the moment, Jews presently constitute about 80 percent of Israel's seven
million strong population; by 2020, nearly one in four Israelis will be Arab, owing to this sector's far higher birth rate.
Were millions of Palestinians to be resettled within Israel, it would soon cease to be a majority Jewish state and
everybody knows it.
TO PRESENT the "right of return" as a nonnegotiable demand is not to negotiate at all, particularly when Palestinian
leaders themselves refuse to accept alien minorities as part of a peace settlement: In June, Palestinian Authority (PA)
President Mahmoud Abbas told the Arab League that the future Palestinian state should be free of Israelis (that is
Jews, since virtually no other Israelis live in the West Bank). He reiterated this vision of a Judenrein Palestine last
month, telling a delegation of visiting members of Congress that "I am seeking a Palestinian state in the West Bank
and Gaza Strip, with Jerusalem as its capital, empty of settlements."
Like Husseini, Arafat was far more interested in destroying the Jewish national cause than in leading his own people
to statehood. As far back as 1978, he told his close friend and collaborator, Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, that
the Palestinians lacked the traditions, unity, and discipline to have a successful state. He was right. It was the
Palestinians' lack of communal solidarity – the willingness to subordinate personal interest to the collective good –
that accounted for their collapse and dispersion during the 1948 war. The subsequent physical separation of the
various parts of the Palestinian Diaspora and longstanding cleavages between West Bankers and Gazans prevented
the crystallization of a cohesive national identity.
Sadly, Arafat had no intention of redressing this predicament. Given control of the Palestinian population in the West
Bank and Gaza as part of the Oslo process, he made his bleak prognosis a self-fulfilling prophecy, establishing an
oppressive and corrupt regime in the worst tradition of Arab dictatorships, while launching the most destructive
confrontation between Israelis and Palestinians since the 1948 war.
In the process, he destroyed the fragile civil society and relatively productive economy that had developed in the
interim.
Two years ago, in a bold departure from this destructive path, PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad embarked on the first
state-building effort in Palestinian history, one that has had some successes. However, while he recently pronounced
his initiative a mission accomplished amid the diplomatic buildup to the UN vote, he knows better. Abbas's Presidency,
and, by extension, Fayyad's own Premiership, remain unconstitutional. Not only because Abbas defied Hamas's
landslide victory in the January, 2006, parliamentary elections by establishing an alternative government headed by
Fayyad, but also because his own Presidency expired in January, 2009.
Fayyad barely challenged the corrupt and dysfunctional system established by Arafat.
The two groups dominating Palestinian life, the PLO and Hamas, remain armed groups (and active practitioners of
terrorism) rather than political parties – an assured recipe for a failed state. (The Oslo Accords charged the PA with
dismantling all armed groups in the West Bank and Gaza, but Arafat never bothered to comply.) Even if Abbas were to
genuinely commit himself to reform after the attainment of statehood, his tenuous authority would continue to be
defied by Hamas, which has not only transformed the Gaza Strip into a an Islamist micro-state, but also wields
considerable power and influence in the West Bank.
WHATEVER THE UN vote may achieve, it will not be a step toward Palestinian statehood.
Contrary to the received wisdom, Israel was established, not by a UN General Assembly resolution, but through the
unwavering determination of the Zionist leadership, or rather David Ben-Gurion, shortly to become Israel's first Prime
Minister, in the face of mounting international skepticism regarding partition (in March, 1948, the US administration
effectively backed down from the idea) and doubts about the new state's ability to fend off both Palestinian violence
and a pan-Arab attempt to abort it at birth.
In doing so, Ben-Gurion could rely on an extraordinarily resilient and vibrant national community, armed with an
unwavering sense of purpose and an extensive network of political, social, and economic institutions built over
decades of pre-state national development.
In this respect, eighteen years after being given the chance to establish their own state free of Israel's occupation, and
despite the billions of dollars in international aid poured into this effort, the Palestinians have barely made it out of the
gate. One can only hope that the international community will at long last pressure Palestinian leaders to own up to
their obligations and opt for a true build-up of civil society that will ensure their constituents a decent and peaceful
existence, rather than seek illusionary shortcuts and intensified conflict with Israel.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Israel, Arabs, & the Islamic Middle East -- The Israeli-Arab Conflict;
Israeli Politics, Government, & Public Policy -- Public Issues & Controversies;
The State of Israel in War & Peace -- Israel's Role in International Relations;
Israeli Military Defense & National Security -- The Israeli Economy
The Middle East -- Arabs, Arab States, & Their Regional Neighbors
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
Islamism & Jihadism -- Radical Islam & Islamic Terrorism
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
International Politics & World Disorder:
War, Peace, & Geopolitics in the Real World:
Foreign Affairs & U.S. National Security
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
U.S. National Security Strategy
Dr. Efraim Karsh is Director of the Middle East Forum, Editor of the Middle East Quarterly, and Research
Professor in the Department of Middle East and Mediterranean Studies at King's College, University of London, U.K.,
and author of many books, including Palestine Betrayed (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2010)
and Islamic Imperialism: A History (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2007). A graduate in Arabic
and Modern Middle East History from Hebrew University in Jerusalem and holding the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in
International Relations from Tel Aviv University, Dr. Karsh has held academic posts at Harvard University, Columbia
University, the Sorbonne, the London School of Economics, Helsinki University, the International Institute for
Strategic Studies in London, the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies in Washington, D.C., and the Jaffee
Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University.
Founder and Editor of the scholarly journal Israel Affairs, Dr. Karsh has written extensively on Middle East
politics, Soviet foreign policy, and European affairs. A regular media commentator, he has appeared on U.K. and U.S.
television and radio and contributed articles to leading newspapers in Britain and the U.S.A., among them the Wall
Street Journal, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Daily Telegraph, and The
Times (of London).
The foregoing article by Dr. Efraim Karsh was originally published in the The Jerusalem Post, September 15, 2011,
and can be found on the Internet website maintained by the Middle East Forum, a foreign policy think tank which seeks
to define and promote American interests in the Middle East, defining U.S. interests to include fighting radical Islam,
working for Palestinian Arab acceptance of the State of Israel, improving the management of U.S. efforts to promote
constitutional democracy in the Middle East, reducing America's energy dependence on the Middle East, more robustly
asserting U.S. interests vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia, and countering the Iranian threat.
(URL: http://www.meforum.org/3042/palestinian- ben-gurion)
Republished with Permission of the Middle East Forum
Reprinted from the Middle East Forum News
mefnews@meforum.org (MEF NEWS)
September 15, 2011
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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