Swan: Do you believe that the Palestinians are capable of governing themselves without Israeli interference?Mondoweiss wrote, "For many watching the interview, the entire portion on Palestine and the peace process featured what seemed like one insult after the other."
Kushner: I think that’s a very good question. I think that that’s one that we’ll have to see. The hope is is that they, over time, can become capable of governing …
Swan: They being the Palestinians.
Kushner: The Palestinians. I think there are some things that the current Palestinian government has done well, and there are some things that are lacking. And I do think that in order for the area to be investable, for investors to come in and want to invest in different industries and infrastructure and create jobs, you do need to have a fair judicial system, freedom of press, freedom of expression, tolerance for all religions, and so …
Swan: Can they have freedom from any Israeli government or military interference?
Kushner: I think that it’s a high bar.
RT summarized the outrage:
His remarks elicited scorn from Twitter users, especially from Palestinian figures. “One of the painful things to listen to is Jared Kushner pretending that he knows – or cares – what the ‘Palestinian people’ want,” wrote Palestinian-American professor Shibley Telhami.This is what happens when you don't have the ability to think and when your life is built around looking for reasons to be outraged.
“The Palestinian people don’t need half a man to decide if they are capable of governing themselves,” wrote US-based Palestinian analyst Mohammad Oweis, in a tweet dripping with rage. “We have seen enough sh*t like him since 1948,” he said, a reference to the year the State of Israel was founded.
Matt Duss, a foreign policy adviser for US Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, argued that Kushner’s comments unwittingly revealed that he views Palestinians through a prejudicial lens. “This is the racist subtext of so much conservative pro-Israel advocacy, but Jared is too inexperienced to know it’s supposed to stay subtext,” tweeted Duss.
Some progressive Jewish pundits likewise slammed Kushner for his remarks, also attributing to him anti-Palestinian prejudice. “Democrats and Jewish leaders should be calling out Kushner's egregious racism. Can you imagine the outrage if someone suggested Jews couldn't govern themselves?” tweeted Max Berger, co-founder of the liberal US Jewish activist group If Not Now. “Why is it okay to say that about Palestinians? Because Islamophobia is extremely powerful in the US,” Berger opined.
Of course it would be outrageous to suggest that Jews couldn't govern themselves - but they have proven that they can. And Palestinians have proven that they cannot.
Jews built an entire parallel government, on their own, under the British Mandate. They built the institutions not only of a military, legal system, legislative branch but also cultural institutions, newspapers that competed with each other and that criticized the government freely. They did all this in a relatively short time, without international aid or Western consultants or hundreds of NGOs. They created tens of thousands of jobs (for Arabs and Jews) and didn't whine that it was too hard.
Compare that to what the Palestinians have built in 25 years since Oslo.
They live under a dictatorship. Mahmoud Abbas controls everything. The function of the weekly cabinet meetings, according to its own website, is apparently to declare the days that the government will take off.
Palestinian newspapers hardly ever talk about trials - because their court system is a joke. They build beautiful courthouses but there are few court cases since 2000. Most legal cases are dealt with by informal "tribal" judges or tribunals rather than trusting the state courts, even for murder cases.
Here's the award winning and utterly useless Tulkarem courthouse, built with Canadian money.
Palestinian can't even agree who their leader is. They remain split between Hamas and Fatah for ten years and cannot agree to hold elections.
Their top priority, in their own words, is paying terrorists and their families. Just last week the "prime minister" said that while employees will get 60% of their salaries, terrorists and their families will receive 100%.
The Palestinians have not shown the ability to govern themselves effectively. Period.
This is hardly a controversial position.
The real question is, why? The World Bank and dozens of NGOs and the UN and the EU and, up until this year, the US have been pouring in money and resources and consultants to help build a state that whose leaders seem to be not at all interested in governing.
The reason for this is not stated out loud too much for fear of insulting Palestinians, but the truth is:
Their real strategy is not the creation of a strong, independent state, but the destruction of one.
Arafat's phased plan of 1974 - to grab whatever land they can and use it as a base to get more land and political power until Israel is destroyed - is still the unspoken but clear goal.
Nothing that Arafat did after Oslo, or that Abbas does now, is inconsistent with the 1974 plan.
This is what they teach their kids. In 2014, a poll of Palestinians showed that 60% felt that the five year national goal was not to be an independent state but to destroy Israel. In fact, the very purpose of a state is to be a stage towards "liberating all of Palestine." (That's why everyone misreads the polls where Palestinians say they want a two state solution. They mean that as a stage towards destroying Israel, not a permanent solution.)
This is why they didn't accept any peace plan that would end the conflict and have rejected peace over and over again.
This is why they keep the refugee issue alive.
This is why they insist on Jerusalem as a huge part of their history and heritage when in fact it was a slum under Muslim rule and they only want it to take it away from Jews.
And this is why they want to keep their own people stateless and miserable - to keep the anger aimed at Israel rather than do anything constructive.
This is why there are "refugee camps" under PA and Hamas rule, whose residents are not even considered citizens of the PA!
The primary job of a government is to protect the citizens. Real leaders care about their people. Palestinian leaders don't - unless the people are terrorists or related to terrorists, or friends of people in high places.
This is the truth that everyone is too frightened to say out loud because no one wants to piss them off.
But the only way to move forward is with the truth.
And to stop treating them like spoiled children, which is exactly how the world relates to Palestinians today.
When they are expected to act like adults, then maybe things can change. That is not how the EU and the UN treat them. They allow the Palestinian leaders to act like entitled brats, who deserve money and land simply because they say so. Abbas is proud of his refusal to negotiate or compromise and the world, frightened of another terror spree like the 1970s, goes along with the delusion that he is a leader.
Coddling Palestinians and turning a blind eye to their behavior is the worst thing to do. Yet that is how the world treats them.
Never in history has the entire international community spent so much money and time and resources to create a state. That state is not even close to being functional. It is past time to pretend that pointing this out is an insult and to start treating Palestinians like they are responsible adults who need to do the work themselves.
So far, they have shown no ability nor interest in doing that.
(based on a Twitter thread I created yesterday)