You don’t have to wonder what an independent Palestinian state would look like. All you have to do is observe what the Palestinian Arabs are doing right now in their self-rule regime in Judea-Samaria and in their all-but-name state in Gaza. News reports from earlier this month offer three revealing glimpses.
Two Tuesdays ago, Palestinian Arab terrorists threw firebombs into a cherry tree orchard in Kibbutz Kfar Etzion, setting it on fire. The kibbutz is not occupying or oppressing anybody. The cherry trees were not harming anyone. No matter. They were owned by Jews; therefore, they must be destroyed.
Imagine how much more havoc these agricultural terrorists would wreak if they could find shelter within the protection of a sovereign state called “Palestine.”
Earlier this year, 200 cherry trees in Kfar Etzion were uprooted and destroyed; dozens of Israeli-owned vineyards were badly damaged by Palestinian attackers in Shiloh and Hebron; and Arab assailants uprooted a vineyard at an Israeli town in the Jordan Valley. In addition, 50 trees were recently uprooted in the community of Nokdim. These trees were planted just weeks ago in memory of Ori Ansbacher, who was raped and murdered by a Palestinian Arab terrorist in February.
Of course, most of us have never heard of all these attacks; the international news media didn’t consider them newsworthy. But if it ignores such stories today, you can be sure it will ignore them once “Palestine” comes into being. The media will form a protective cordon around the new state and will publish nothing that could suggest that Israeli counter-measures may be justified.
If Israel ever does take counter-measures and pursues such agricultural terrorists across the border into “Palestine,” the media – and J Street and the UN – will howl about how Israel is “violating the sovereignty of another country.”
Here’s another story: On Friday two weeks ago, two Palestinian boats were caught off the coast of Gaza trying to smuggle in 24 barrels of fiberglass, which Hamas uses to manufacture missiles – you know, the kind of missiles it fires at kindergartens in Sderot and nursing homes in Ashkelon.
Israel’s critics are always complaining about Israeli restrictions on the size of the fishing zone permitted in the Mediterranean near Gaza. Israel periodically expands the zone as a good-will gesture. Hamas then exploits and abuses Israel’s generosity. And the foreign critics suddenly fall silent.
Drop those restrictions, turn Gaza into a fully sovereign state – as part of a Palestinian state in Judea-Samaria – and the first thing that will happen is that Palestinian boats will bring in weapons, explosives to make bombs, concrete to make terror tunnels, and anything else that “Palestine” desires.
There was yet another revealing glimpse the other week of the nature of a future “Palestine.” It turns out that members of the Palestinian Authority cabinet secretly voted to give themselves a 67 percent salary increase and various other perks and payouts. PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas – now in the 13th year of his four-year term – overruled a 2004 law in order to authorize the raises. Public pressure from the UN caused the PA to postpone the raises.
We are constantly inundated with claims that the PA is on the verge of economic collapse. Just the other week, The New York Times published a major feature story alleging that the PA may soon collapse – and violence will therefore ensue – because Israel is withholding revenue that the PA was using to pay terrorists.
Don’t count on the Times or other major news outlets to give equal space to the corrupt pocket-lining practices of the PA leadership. That would remind the public that a Palestinian state would be as corrupt and authoritarian as all the other regimes governing the Arab world – and that news might impede the crusade to create “Palestine.”