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The Case Against a Palestinian State: Part 2
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Home » The Case Against a Palestinian State: Part 2
Dr. Raphael BenLevi
Rafael BenlevyDr. Raphael BenLevi 0 comment 15 views

The Case Against a Palestinian State: Part 2

Rafael BenlevyDr. Raphael BenLevi
Rafael Benlevy

Major (res.) BenLevi served for seven years in the IDF Intelligence Branch and in the IAF. Directs the Churchill Program for Strategy, Statecraft and Security at the Argaman Institute. Previously a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Haifa and a lecturer at the IDF Military Command Academy. Authored Cultures of Counterproliferation: The Making of American and Israeli Policy on the Iranian Nuclear Program (Routledge, 2023).

The Case Against a Palestinian State: Part 2

The heinous geopolitical implications of a Palestinian state do not end with the mere destruction of Israel, but spell disaster for the West and the moderate Arab world.

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A Failed Trial Run in Gaza

Facing refusal of the Palestinians to accept generous offers for independence, in 2005, Israel decided to unilaterally withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, essentially creating a trial run for a Palestinian state. Israel wanted nothing more than to see the Strip prosper and become the ‘Singapore of the Middle East’ and Gaza had every opportunity to become one if its people so desired. But alas, you can unilaterally withdrawal, but you cannot then dictate what kind of state the Gazan Palestinians will choose to build. It turns out that the best this society could come up with was a genocidal Islamist terror state.

If the Palestinian Arabs genuinely desired a state to coexist peacefully alongside the Jewish State, the hundred-year-long conflict would never have arisen, and various creative arrangements would have been made in order to live as neighbors and prosper. Israelis were so ecstatic at this prospect in the 1990s that they were willing to import their own terrorist arch-enemy, Yasser Arafat, and grant him everything possible to make the project succeed. But Palestinian Arabs have proven by their words and actions that they do not desire a state coexisting peacefully alongside the Jewish State, and no amount of hoping otherwise will make it so. The Palestinians have agency and must bear responsibility for their poor decisions.

An Existential Threat to Israel

A Palestinian state would not only be a gross distortion of justice but would also constitute an intolerable and existential threat to Israel’s existence. It would swiftly become a Hamas controlled terror state and it is for this reason the PA has not held elections since 2006, as it knows that Hamas has more support among the Arab population of Judea and Samaria than the supposedly moderate Fatah. Such that if elections were held in the PA, Hamas would likely come to control its institutions and we would witness a repeat of the Gaza experiment…

To read the full article, click on the link.

For Part 1 of this essay please see “The Case Against a Palestinian State – Part 1: An Unjust Cause” here.

Published in Times of Israel, January 30, 2025. 

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