What Would a Palestinian State Look Like?
Why do the United States and the European Union continue to underwrite such a ruthless regime? Every revival of the "peace process" comes with billions in grants for the Palestinian Authority, without any steps taken to promote decent governance or end decades of corruption. Most recently, in May 2013, Secretary of State John Kerry announced that the PA would be rewarded for reaching a peace agreement with an additional $4 billion in aid.
In a recent article titled "What to Expect from an Independent Palestinian State," Fred Maroun, an Arab living in Canada, summed it up: "If a Palestinian state is created without correcting [its] destructive practices, it is highly likely that the new Palestinian regime will follow the same pattern already established, and be a hatemongering, corrupt, undemocratic, oppressive, belligerent, and ineffective regime."
Peace can evolve between Israelis and Palestinians, but only once the Palestinians have been freed from the rule of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. It will require time and patience, but it is achievable. It will come when people realize that peace improves their lives, that peace brings prosperity. Alas, the Oslo Accords put an end to what was an informal economic peace process that could have evolved into a political settlement, perhaps in the form, as in Switzerland, of a loose Arab-Israeli federation of independent cantons. The corrupt government begun by Arafat—imposed on the Palestinians by a clueless Israeli leadership—put an end to this promising evolution.
Peace can still be resuscitated, but not while the Palestinian Authority continues to be supported by billions from U.S. and European taxpayers. Only then will decent Palestinians, now terrorized into silence, be able to build a civil society, the basis for a better life and a healthy polity. Such a civil society would negotiate a real and lasting peace with Israel.
A two-state solution, by contrast, would merely take the repressive Palestinian Authority and invest it with the standing of a nation-state. That wouldn't bring peace, but only delay it by another generation.
Michael Oren: Palestinian Celebration of Munich Olympic Massacre Shows They Are Not Ready for Peace
The 2016 Olympics remembered the 11 Israeli athletes massacred by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Munich games, but the Palestinian Authority (PA) is praising the atrocity. The International Olympic Committee erected a memorial in Rio to the slain Israeli sportsmen and honored them at the closing ceremony. Yet on September 5, the anniversary of that horrific event, the official website of Fatah, the organization headed by PA President Mahmoud Abbas, hailed the outrage as an "heroic operation" and “one of the most important actions in modern history.”Khaled Abu Toameh: Abbas to Arab Leaders: Go to Hell!
The Munich Massacre took place on September 5, 1972, when members of Black September, a Palestinian terrorist group closely allied with al-Fatah, infiltrated the Olympic village with explosives and automatic weapons. They took 11 Israeli athletes hostage, brutally beat and tortured them,while shooting two of them to death. The rest they killed with gunfire and grenades when German forces attempted a rescue. A German policeman was also murdered.
And the PA takes pride in that as indeed it does in all acts of terror against Israelis. Recently, after the stabbing and shooting of three Israeli civilians—among them Richard Lakin, an American citizen and devoted peace activist—the PA lauded the Palestinian killers as ”heroic martyrs" who promptly "ascended to heaven.”
Abbas and Fatah leaders in Ramallah claim that Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates (the "Arab Quartet") are using and promoting Abbas's rival, Mohamed Dahlan, in order to facilitate their mission of rapprochement with Israel.
Many Palestinians were surprised to see veteran Palestinian official Ahmed Qurei, a former Palestinian Authority (PA) prime minister and one of the architects of the Oslo Accord, come out in favor of the Arab plan, which basically envisions ousting Abbas from power.
This, and not Israeli policy, is Abbas's true nightmare. After all, he knows that without Israel's presence in the West Bank, his regime would have long fallen into the hands of Hamas or even his political rivals in Fatah.
The "Arab Quartet" plan shows that some Arab countries are indeed fed up with Abbas's failure to lead his people towards a better life. These states, which have long been politically and financially supportive of the Palestinians, have had enough of Abbas's efforts to secure unending power -- at the direct cost of the well-being of his people.