During the UN partition negotiations in 1947, the Arab side said they wanted a single Arab state. When that didn't fly, they said they wanted am Arab state that would protect Jewish rights. And when the partition vote passed, within hours, Arabs attacked Jews on the streets, showing how much they would have respected those Jewish rights.
Meanwhile, as I reported this morning, the Arab states had no interest in a Palestinian Arab state - they were planning to divide up Palestine as soon as they could after the British left.
And also, as always, the Palestinians themselves want their "refugees" not to help build their state - but to "return" to what they consider a criminal, apartheid, racist state.
Of course, these same Arab states didn't say a word about an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza when they controlled those areas.
If the goal of Palestine is to have an independent state for Palestinian Arabs, why didn't they do it then? If the goal is to give Palestinians rights, then why do Arab states not give them rights today? Why did they pivot between the ideas of a Palestinian state and none, and back again in 1968?
If we take the Arabs and Palestinians at their word, none of this makes sense. Their claims as to what they want - independence, freedom, justice - do not fit with their actions. Especially since they have rejected every plan that would have given them exactly that.
There is only one consistent thread that explains all of this - the unifying theory of Arab attitudes towards Israel. And that is antisemitism.
The goal has never been to build a Palestinian state. Even the Palestinians don't want that. They have had more time between Oslo and today than the Zionists had between the Mandate and 1948 to build the functioning apparatus of a state - and unlike the Zionists, they have had lots of aid and EU consultants to do exactly that. Yet today their government is a joke, a dictatorship under the control of one person, with institutions that are corrupt or incompetent. It is all window dressing, not a serious attempt at building a real government.
Two recent cartoons in Felesteen illustrate a great truth, especially on the 75th anniversary of the UN Partition resolution.
"Palestine" is not meant to be a state, and it never was. It is meant to be a weapon, a means to end the Jewish state. That's what it was in 1947 and that's what it is today.
That's how Palestinian leaders look at it. That's how Jordan and Egypt and Syria still look at it.
