The current virtue-signalling frenzy by French president Emile Macron and others – like London Mayor Sadiq Khan – to call for the recognition of a Palestinian state is, to say the least, bizarre. The Palestinians do not want a state alongside Israel, they want a state instead of Israel. One of the slogans you are likely to see or hear on any pro-Palestinian march is a satirical take on Donald Trump’s pledge to “make America great again” rendered as “Make Israel Palestine Again”. Satirical it may be, but the intention is deadly serious.
This new slogan sits comfortably against one of the oldest: “from the river to the sea”. Quite simply, there is no serious support for a “Two State Solution” among the Palestinian Arabs. If there were, they would not have turned a state down on multiple occasions when detailed and workable proposals were before them.
Certainly Hamas – the only force relevant to the conflict today – has categorically rejected the two-state solution and has made it clear they would not exchange the recognition of a Palestinian state for a permanent peace. If a Palestinian state were declared you can be certain that the first thing Hamas would do is draw it into a fresh conflict with Israel and the consequences would be the extension of the destruction of the war in Gaza, not the containment of it.
There will be another consequence.
If France, the UK, and other western countries push to “recognize a Palestinian” state it will create the impression that Hamas’s purpose on Oct 7th was in furtherance of this aim. This will legitimize the false notion that the Palestinians have always been pushing for a state – which ‘evil Israel’ has thus far denied them – and that their terrorism was only to pressure Israel and the world to give them their own state. This is of course the inverse of the truth, but truth bends easily to ‘narrative’ in the modern world. Certainly it has duped an alarming number of young people in the Western World.
It will not “reward” – as some have suggested – Hamas for Oct 7th, it will be worse. It retroactively legitimize the savage barbarity of that day by creating a false narrative around the attack’s aims and objectives.
More to the point, when Oct 7th is discussed in the future, some academic or pundit, or audience member on Question Time, will snap, “Well, we may disagree with their methods, but we can’t deny that it worked! Palestinians finally have a state, and it is tragic that they were pushed to such extremes to achieve this.” [Audience applause].
The French certainly seem to be acting from a version of this view. Macron’s advisor, Ofer Bronchtein, has said that he believes that Oct 7th would not have happened had there been a Palestinian State. This is not only historically illiterate, it is ignorant of the immediate past. In 2020, President Trump offered to broker a peace deal based on Palestinian Statehood, which included all of Gaza and land-swaps, plus $50 billion in investment. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas called it a slap in the face.
As we now know, the two-state offer was irrelevant to Hamas as they were already planning a new round of rocket attacks which culminated in the 2021 Gaza war, and, following that, they proceeded directly to set the groundwork for of the Oct 7th attacks.
Macron, in his naiveté, seems to want to circumvent the Palestinian Authority’s ability to say “no” and torpedo whatever two-state proposal is put before them. Where do the French and their backers – which may include the UK – imagine the borders will be? Wherever they are, they will not satisfy either party and will simply stoke new tensions. And what about Hamas? If this move by Macron is calculated to end the hostilities in Gaza before Hamas have been destroyed or forced to surrender, will this new Palestinian State – which necessarily will include Gaza – be able to absorb Hamas?
Or, will it spark a Palestinian civil war as Hamas tries to wrestle this new state away from Fatah and other factions so that it can be drafted into the fight for its unwavering ambition: the destruction of the State of Israel and the genocide of the Jews?
This reckless move is not the beginning of a new Palestine, it may be the end of Palestine. Hamas will see to that.
