Labour’s expected manifesto pledge to recognise a Palestinian state is a gift to Jihad and a perverse reward for Hamas’s October 7th pogrom, says Jake Wallis Simons in the Telegraph. But do the Palestinians actually want a state alongside Israel, he asks.
Recent polls have revealed that a majority of the Palestinian population asked, both on the West Bank and in Gaza, believe that the October 7th atrocities were a good idea. There could be no clearer illustration that creating a Palestinian state would be Jewish suicide. This week, however, Labour is reportedly set to launch a manifesto committing to recognition of such a state over the heads of the Israelis.
To mainstream voters, it makes little sense. People understand instinctively that rewarding the worst pogroms since the Holocaust with a push for Palestinian self-determination is an example – to put it mildly – of rewarding bad behaviour. …
The last time such a unilateral move was attempted was by Israel itself, which withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and handed the keys to the Palestinians. We all know how that ended: the creation of an enclave in which every public service, every civilian building, every resource and aid donation, every aspect of infrastructure was bent towards the cult of death, with Tehran pulling many of the strings. …
Palestinian leaders have repeatedly shown no interest in a peaceful state of their own alongside Israel. Instead, the likes of Hamas wish for a country as a replacement for Israel.
In 1947, the Arab League rejected a UN proposal that would have created a Palestinian state alongside the nascent Israel. This rejectionism was repeated on many subsequent occasions, most vividly in 2008. On that occasion, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered them 94% of the West Bank, with 6% of Israeli land to make up the difference; East Jerusalem as their capital; the Old City of Jerusalem handed over to the international community; a tunnel connecting the West Bank and Gaza; and a thousand Palestinian refugees accepted into Israel annually for five years, with financial compensation for the rest. In turning this offer down, Mahmoud Abbas revealed a central truth. He did not want what the West so desperately wanted him to want.
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