The first Palestinian state, commonly called Jordan, was carved out of the Palestine Mandate and equipped with a refugee Saudi royal family. Today Jordan exists mainly under the protection of the U.S. and Israel, and the majority of its population of Palestinian Arabs supports Osama bin Laden at a higher percentage than do the citizens of Pakistan.
But Jordan is practically heaven on earth compared to the Second Palestinian State the Obama administration is determined to inflict on Israel.
Currently ruled by mutually hostile armed gangs loyal to either the Fatah or Hamas terrorist groups, Palestine 2.0 has already been a failed state-in-the-making for over a decade. Every attempt at foreign investment has failed. The ruins of industrial zones, greenhouses and even a casino dot the landscape. Palestinian Christians from overseas who returned to build up the economy fled quickly in the face of relentless shakedowns, kidnappings and militia gangs masquerading as law enforcement.
For 17 years, Israel, America and just about every interested party has tried to build a Palestinian state. They provided weapons and training to build a modern Palestinian police force. They sent advisers and a fortune in economic aid. Billions in funds from the EU, the U.S. and various do-gooders were used to fund the lavish lifestyles of Yasir Arafat and his henchmen.
If the Palestinian Arabs really wanted a state (a second state) in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, they could have had it before 1967, when those territories were in Arab hands. But the PLO back then called not for a Palestinian state but simply the destruction of Israel. As Bill Clinton discovered to his chagrin, Arafat did not actually want a state and was not interested in accepting an Israeli offer that gave him nearly everything he said he desired.
For 17 years now, the same tired soap opera has been playing in the region’s one theater. First, the world’s statesmen and diplomats descend on Israel, crying that the only hope for the region’s stability is a Palestinian state. Next, Israeli diplomats arrive with a generous territorial offer, counterbalanced by a second clause that asks that there be no more terrorism. That second clause is immediately ignored by everyone in the room.
Then the Palestinian Authority diplomats arrive demanding twice as much land, the elimination of Israeli border security, half of Israel’s capital, contiguous borders that would cut Israel in half, the ethnic cleansing of all Jews from territories relinquished by Israel, and the return of the “refugees” – code for unlimited immigration from the proposed Palestinian state into Israel.
The Israelis make a counteroffer. The statesmen and diplomats accuse Israel of rejecting peace. The Palestinian Arabs begin carrying out terrorist attacks again (assuming they even bothered to stop during the negotiations). Israel bombs the terrorists. The statesmen and diplomats accuse Israel of perpetuating the cycle of violence and urge everyone to go back to the negotiating table. By the time that happens a year later, the Palestinians have doubled their demands, and the “Cycle of Peacemaking” repeats itself all over again.
Palestinian nationalism has always been a crock, a transparently phony justification for terrorism. Palestine was never a country or a state. It was the name given by the Roman occupation forces to a region they were administering, a region far larger than modern day Israel. There was never an Arab Palestinian king or ruler until Arafat.
The Palestine Mandate in the 20th century was used to create two states – an Arab state, Jordan, and a smaller Jewish state, Israel. Now the drive is on to create Palestine 2.0, despite the obvious fact that the Palestinian Arabs have done everything possible to prevent it from coming into being. Nearly two decades of terrorism have turned the endless rounds of peace negotiations into a joke. Half the Palestinian Authority is now ruled by the Iranian-backed Hamas terrorist group, which insists it will never recognize or accept permanent peace with Israel.
The State of Israel was essentially in place well before the Holocaust in the form of an embryonic country of farmers who drained the swamps, businessmen who set up shops, journalists who printed newspapers, and soldiers who trained to protect and defend their homeland.