Tawbah For Two Views On Why No Palestine? – OpEd

Why There Never Will Be a Palestinian State according to Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, who served as White House deputy national security advisor, where he supervised U.S. policy in the Middle East explains: Why, after almost 80 years of efforts to partition the Holy Land, has a Palestinian state never been created? What is unique about the struggle for a “Palestine” state that has doomed it?

The UN General Assembly voted in November 1947 to create two new states, one Arab and one Jewish. The Jews said yes and the Arabs said no. The essence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains in 2025 what it was in 1947: the Arabs said no.

As Daniel Pipes has written: “What’s so striking is that the Palestinians have retained this genocidal impulse for such a long period. I would argue, as an historian, that this is unique. No other people have ever retained that kind of hostility for such a length of time.”

The problem is not the technical challenge of delineating borders or some diplomatic failing, that if solved will lead to Palestinian statehood. The problem is that Palestinian nationalism is fundamentally about destroying the Jewish state, not building a Palestinian one.

In his famous Bar-Ilan speech of 2009, Benjamin Netanyahu said: “The root of the conflict was and remains that which has been repeated for over 90 years – the profound objection by the hard core of Palestinians to the right of the Jewish people to its own country in the Land of Israel.”

State-building is not a Palestinian priority, and the absence of a state is not the cause of the conflict. A Palestinian state will fail to meet Palestinian aspirations since it will still have to exist alongside Israel. Why would the violence not continue (or increase) across the border of an independent Palestine, as it did across the border from the West Bank and from Gaza?

Hussein Agha and Robert Malley, who have written a book about their decades of efforts to promote Palestinian statehood, said: “October 7 was neither uniquely Hamas nor distinctively Islamist. It was Palestinian through and through….There is no denying that Palestinians largely embraced the events of October 7 because they spoke to their most profound feelings. October 7 was Palestinian to the core.” Will Palestinian society ever abandon support for violence and terrorism?

As a Rabbi I can.see a different outcome. If most Christian Arabs had seen Zionism as a religious movement based on the Divine teachings of the Biblical Prophets; and explained this to their Muslim neighbors; as a sign of the coming independence for all Mid East communities (including the Kurds) the Muslims might have seen Zionists as distant cousins returning from a very long exile; rather than exploitive European colonists. 

Then “many nations will come and say, “Come and let’s go up to the mountain of the LORD And to the house of the God of Prophet Jacob, So that (God) may teach us about His ways, And that we may walk in His paths.” For from Zion Torah will be broadcast, And the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.” (Misha 4:2) 

If the rulers of the Ottoman Empire had taken advantage of the Zionist leader Theodore Herzl’s offer of massive investments into the Ottoman Empire by European Jews like the French and British Rothschilds in return for expanded Jewish settlements in Palestine, the Ottomans would not have joined World War 1, and the Arabs would have fought the Turks for independence. So then as Prophet Zephaniah (3:9 ) declared: “For then I will restore pure lips to (all monotheists) the peoples, that all may call upon the name of the LORD and serve Him shoulder to shoulder.” 

If the Christian, Jewish and Muslim nationalists in Bagdad, Damascus, and Jerusalem had to fight the Ottoman Turks for independence; there would have no British Mcahon-Hussein letters, nor any Balfour Declaration or British Mandate. European and American Jewish Zionists would have supported the Arabs and Zionists against the Turks; and an independent Jewish Allied state might have become the outcome. Ali Maher Pasha, an Egyptian prime minister and chief adviser to King Farouk said, “in a better atmosphere they (the Zionists) might be able to advance further, not by force, but with Arab goodwill.”

But by 1939 Nationalistic secular politics had made even Arab government rivals; and Hajj Amin Husseini had already poisoned the possibility that Arabs could have offered their well respected traditional welcome of guests, to their cousins who were desperate to return home.

The earlier Ben-Gurion’s meetings with George Antonius and Muse Alami would more likely have led to a more peaceful outcome for both sides. Millions of European Jews would not have died in the Nazi holocaust; and millions of Palestinians would not be living in refugee camps. 

The Great Revolt period was between 1936 and 1939, when several thousand Palestinians living under the British Mandate rose up violently against a growing Jewish population and the Brits who were in charge. About 500 Jews, 250 British servicemen and at least 5-8,000 Arabs died; of whom at least 1,500 fell at the hands of fellow Arabs.

In the wake of the violence, Britain’s “Peel Commission” proposed partitioning the mandate into Jewish and Arab states, while placing major limits on Jewish immigration. Most Zionists, led by David Ben-Gurion and Chaim Weizmann, felt forced to accept the proposal because of the Nazi danger. 

Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, grand mufti of Jerusalem and de facto leader of the Palestinian community, rejected the idea and called for jihad. He later went to Nazi Germany. The Palestinians emerged from the revolt weakened politically, economically and militarily. Since then more than 100-200,000 lives have been lost.However, they did accomplish their goal of substantially slowing the growth of the Jewish populations. 

If  the Palestinians had accepted  Britain’s “Peel Commission” proposal partitioning the mandate into Jewish and Arab states, hundreds of thousands of European Jews could have been rescued and brought to the Jewish state in the years preceding the Nazi’s Final Solution.

And the failure of the revolt set the stage for what the Palestinians would call the Nakba (catastrophe) when they lost the next anti-Zionist war in 1948. 

What would have happened if the religious leaders of Palestine had followed the Qur’an statement that “We made the people who were considered weak (the Jews) to inherit the eastern part of the land (Jordan) and the western part thereof (Israel) which we have blessed. And the fair Word of your Lord was fulfilled for the Children of Israel, because of their endurance.  And We completely destroyed all the great works and buildings which Pharaoh and his people erected.” (Qur’an 7:137)

This verse is clear that the land was meant for Jews by using the phrase ‘the people who were considered weak’. Most of the interpreters perceive that this phrase refers to the Children of Israel (Al-Razi, Al-Shawkani; Al-Tabari; Al-Zamakhshari). In fact, although it seems implicit at the beginning, the meaning is directly made understood from the later part of the same verse which mentions ‘Children of Israel’ in relation to ‘Pharaoh’.

And Prophet Solomon built a Temple in Jerusalem that, unlike the Ka’ba, would allow both Jews and non-Jews to pray at the two places where Prophets Abraham, Ishmael and Issac were tested by God: “Moreover, concerning a foreigner, who is not of Your people Israel, but has come from a far country for Your name’s sake (for they will hear of Your great name and Your strong hand and Your outstretched arm), when he comes and prays toward this temple, hear in heaven Your dwelling place, and do according to all for which the foreigner calls to You.” (1Kings 8:41-43)

The Nakba (catastrophe), the displacement of Palestinians during the 1948 establishment of the State of Israel and the War of Independence, could have been totally avoided if the Palestinian leadership had accepted the UN two state solution. 

Indeed, if the Palestinian leadership had accepted the British 1937 two state solution; millions of Jews would have been able to escape the Holocaust (catastrophe). Hopefully, the Palestinians will someday not make an all or nothing mistake again.

Israeli Zionists agreed to Palestinian statehood in 1937-1938, 1947-1948, 1967, 2000-2001, and 2007. In each case, the Palestinian leadership refused to agree to the two-state solution that would have created a Palestinian state alongside a state for Jewish inhabitants.

The majority of Israelis no longer see two states as a viable path to peace, not because of ideology, but sadly because of bitter experience. And the majority of Palestinians will no longer see Iran or any of the Arab States as coming to their rescue in another war.

If we all can live up to the ideal of following the will of God we will help fulfill the 2700 year old vision of Prophet Isaiah: “On that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria. The Assyrians will go to Egypt, and the Egyptians to Assyria. The Egyptians and Assyrians will worship together. On that day Israel  will join a three-party alliance with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing upon the heart. The LORD of Hosts will bless them saying, “Blessed be Egypt My people, Assyria My handiwork, and Israel My inheritance.”…(Isaiah 19:23-5)