Why do the losers get to define the terms of victory?

A New York Times op-ed by Robert Wright shows how the world has swallowed a Palestinian Arab lie -hook, line and sinker:

If there is no two-state solution, Israel can either (a) give Palestinians in the occupied territories the vote and watch as the Arab birth rate turns Israeli Jews into a minority; or (b) keep denying the vote to Arabs it has ruled for decades, thus incurring charges of apartheid, moving toward pariah status among nations, continuing to give propaganda fuel to regional troublemakers and raising the chances of disastrous war.

...Every day, settlement construction — especially in East Jerusalem — makes it harder to imagine two-state borders that would leave Palestinians with the minimal dignity necessary for lasting peace.

That word, "dignity," is the linchpin.

When Germany and Japan were defeated in World War II, no one said that the resulting, greatly reduced powers they had were too few to maintain the "dignity" of the vanquished and that they should be given more - or else there would be a threat of no "lasting peace." Peace was dependent on limiting their powers.

How did this concept of "dignity" for the losing side become a sine qua non for peace? In larger terms, why do a people and their leaders who have consistently worked towards the destruction of Israel deserve the dignity that they demand as a minimal starting point towards a reward of a state?

Palestinian Arabs did not accept any partition plan before 1948; they did not agitate for a "dignified" state when Jordan and Egypt controlled the territories, they universally supported Saddam Hussein against the allies, even recent polls show that they support terror attacks against Jews in Israel and argue that there is a legal obligation for "resistance" - so why, exactly, is their definition of "dignity" being accepted as a legitimate demand?

Beyond that, why does the party that has lost every single war get to define the terms of victory?

If there is to be a two-state solution, it must be a viable state - not a "dignified" state. Dignity is an elastic concept, with no objective definition, and the arbitrary definitions being bandied about by Palestinian Arabs have zero basis in reality. Not one person has ever yet explained why Jerusalem must be a part of a Palestinian state. Not only that, but the Palestinian Arabs discount the very real rights of the Jews who live in Judea and Samaria: while Arabs in Jerusalem can easily accept Israeli citizenship, Jews across the Green Line cannot be expected live in safety in a Palestinian Arab state - yet the demand that hundreds of thousands of Jews can be forced out of their homes is considered acceptable but a Jewish Jerusalem is not. This is not logical nor is there any real basis for such a demand.

The only reason people like Wright insist that Jerusalem must be divided and that Jews cannot live in the historic heartland of Israel is because Palestinian Arabs demand it. What is not explained by anybody is why they have the right to demand such a thing.

If the goal is a state, they can have one and they could have had one for decades. If the goal is a "dignified" state, then they are being given the unilateral right to define Israel to be a state without defensible borders and without real access to religious and historic sites that are unquestionably Jewish.

Which means that the world has accepted that Palestinian Arabs, consistent supporters of the wrong side in every single war and whose "moderate" leaders demand to this very day the demographic destruction of Israel, have more of a right to dignity than the Jewish nation does to dignity and security.

People have to start realizing that Palestinian Arab demands do not equal rights, and that a Palestinian Arab state cannot and should not be defined in a way that deprives the Jewish state and people of their own competing rights. Insistence is not the same as reality, but the world has confused the two for way too long.