In the wake of Oct. 7—one of the worst one-day massacres of Jews since the Holocaust—members of the international community have offered their take on how to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, combined with grandiose plans to finally bring peace to the Middle East. Namely, that is to reward Hamas with the creation of a contiguous Palestinian state, stretching from Judea and Samaria through the Gaza Strip.
Attempts to implement this “solution” stretch back to the 1937 Peel Commission and include the 1947 U.N. Partition Plan; the 1967 Khartoum Conference; the 1993 Oslo Accords; the 2002 Roadmap for Peace; and the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza.
However, would a Palestinian state be a U.S. ally or enemy?
It is important to explore the following questions: Have the Palestinians behaved as a friend or ally to the United States in the past? How have the Palestinians behaved in their host Arab countries? Have they been a stabilizing influence or a destabilizing influence? What have the Palestinians themselves expressed in terms of their affinity towards Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, as opposed to the so-called more “moderate” Palestinian Authority and Fatah, and what is the real distinction between them? If established, how stable would a P.A. government be?
Here to answer these questions and more is Ambassador Yoram Ettinger.