Terrible mistakes, horrible leaders: Why wasn’t a Palestinian State established between 1948 and 1967 in the West Bank and Gaza, which were controlled by Jordan and Egypt, respectively? There were no settlements, and East Jerusalem was under Arab control. Even if the Palestinian national movement/leadership or Arab nations thought they could supposedly liberate all of Palestine, why wasn’t a provisional Palestinian state declared in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip instead of the Egyptian and Jordanian administrations? Decades later, the aspirations nowadays are to go back to something that the Palestinians could have had over 60 years ago. That this is not regularly evaluated as an epic failure and a disastrous error is truly scandalous. The point isn’t could have, would have, should have; but this trend/tendency unfortunately continues to be a foolish mistake that elements of Palestinian leadership in the Palestinian national project for statehood and self-determination keep making. Take Hamas, for example, which vehemently opposed the Oslo peace process of the 1990s: 30 years later, and after thousands of Palestinian and Israeli casualties, in part due to the group’s terrorism and lack of political vision, Hamas nowadays wants a Palestinian state along parameters that the Palestinian people would have gotten if the group hadn’t interfered with the imperfect yet viable Oslo peace process. Take another example, which is Hamas’s demands for a ceasefire/hostage deal: the group is insisting on the full reconstruction and redevelopment of Gaza to what it was before October 7. Why launch a destructive war that annihilates your people and destroys your territories only to demand that Gaza be back to what it was before you dragged Gazans along with your suicidal adventures? You could have had what you want simply by not launching a war that you knew would be disastrous.
Since 1948, the Palestinians have been repeatedly undermined by multiple players, movements, and ideologies that claimed to care about establishing a Palestinian homeland and an independent nation-state. Nasser’s Pan-Arabism, the PLO’s nationalism, and Hamas’s Islamism have all set the Palestinians back by decades. Imagine how different history would be if a Palestinian state had been quickly declared in the West Bank and Gaza soon after the Arab defeat of 1948. Imagine if instead of letting displaced Palestinians from the Nakba languish in refugee camps as second-class citizens in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan, they were all resettled in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which could have accommodated the 800 thousand refugees. Imagine if, instead of all the useless wars, insurgencies, and militant resistance, those efforts had been focused on building a robustly capable Palestinian state and investing in the development of an economy, state institutions, new urban centers and cities, and world-class education, tourism, health care, and art hubs and systems. Instead of doing that, the PLO went on to act as thugs in Jordan, causing the Black September crisis, and in Lebanon, contributing to the Lebanese Civil War and Israel’s deadly invasion. As if that wasn’t damaging enough, meddling in Arab countries’ affairs became a PLO staple. This includes the infamous decision to back Saddam Hussein’s criminal invasion of Kuwait, which had for decades hosted a large number of Palestinians and had spent huge sums supporting the Palestinian cause. Once again, the goal isn’t to wallow in the mistakes of Palestinian history, but there is a seriously scandalous lack of self-evaluation and self-assessment, opting instead to deny any role, agency, or responsibility and blame everything on Israel and the occupation.
Of course, the Palestinian people have experienced grave injustices at the hands of Israel and due to the Jewish State’s existence coming at the expense of large segments of the Palestinian community. However, the Palestinians are equally victims of incompetent and unskillful leadership, empty slogans, short-sighted decisions, unrealistic expectations, and, most importantly, decades of delusions that are so difficult to challenge and dispel.
The Palestinian people desperately need pragmatic and realistic leaders who courageously tell their people uncomfortable and inconvenient truths: there will no "right of return" to the entirety of historic Palestine; custody over holy sites must be shared; refugees must return to developed Palestinian Territories or be given options to become citizens in their current countries; armed resistance is detrimental/futile and must be abandoned; and Jews have an undeniable connection to the land regardless of how that connection was expressed and how it negatively impacted the Palestinian people. Time is running out for Palestinian leaders to help their people make the most of the land and resources they have and to focus on who they want to be as a people within realistic constraints of today’s shifting and evolving landscape. I am nevertheless hopeful that many Palestinians, particularly in Gaza, are finally realizing that Hamas’s martyrdom is but an illusion and will not bring about a liberated Palestine, concluding that life and peace are the only path forward.
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