Today is the first anniversary of October 7, 2023, the day Hamas terrorists committed the worst massacre against the Jewish people since the Holocaust, the day 1,200 people, men, women, children and babies, were slaughtered just for being Jewish or being in proximity to Jews, the day 250 people, from elderly Holocaust survivors to babies too young to begin to walk or talk, were abducted and taken to the dark tunnels Hamas built underneath Gaza, the day everything changed.
Amazingly, for many outside of Israel, nothing at all changed. The mass murder at the Nova music festival, the families slaughtered in their homes, the babies burned in ovens, the hostages held for a full year without a single visit from the Red Cross or even proof of life, ultimately meant nothing to those who think they know better than the Israelis. All of the atrocities gleefully filmed by the savages who worship death are little more than a footnote to those who think they can dictate to Israel how it should respond.
For many in Israel, time froze on October 7, 2023. But in left-wing circles in the US, Europe, and the UN, time remains frozen not in October 2023, but in October 1993, one month after the Oslo Accords were signed 31 years ago. US President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, who is running for President, her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, European Union Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell, the G7, and the UN continue to call for a ‘Two-State Solution’ to the Arab-Israeli conflict even as they call for a ceasefire that would put Hamas in control of any such Palestinian State.
In her debate with Donald Trump less than a month ago, Harris stated, “This war must end. It must end immediately, and the way it will end is we need a ceasefire deal and we need the hostages out,” adding, “we must chart a course for a Two-State Solution.”
Exactly one month ago, Tim Walz said while visiting Michigan, “Getting a ceasefire with the return of the hostages and then moving towards a sustainable Two-State Solution is the only way forward.”
The idea that the solution to this century-long conflict is just to have Israelis and Jews withdraw from their homeland and put Mahmoud Abbas in charge of his own Judenrein State is simply idiotic at this point, after the 2nd Intifada, the Disengagement from Gaza, and October 7. It is a mode of thinking that is decades out of date and belongs in the same dustbin of history as the Y2K scare and Blockbuster video rental stores.
It appears that the obvious needs to be stated: There will never, ever be a Palestinian state if the current situation is allowed to continue.
There will never be a Palestinian state if Hamas is allowed to continue to rule Gaza thanks to the very ceasefire demanded by Harris, Walz, Borrell, and others who demand the creation of a Palestinian state at the same time. Such a move would be suicidal for Israel and lead to increased terrorism across the world. It would ensure that no moderate force capable of anything other than killing Jews ever comes to govern the Palestinian Arabs in the foreseeable future.
The demands for an immediate ceasefire and a Palestinian state are mutually exclusive unless your only goal is to create a terrorist state that only exists to dispatch murderers to kill Jews and oppress the people it rules.
While Hamas is the most obvious obstacle to the Two-State Solution, it is far from the only one or even the most difficult to overcome.
There will never be a Palestinian state as long as the Palestinian Authority insists on the ‘right of return.’ This is the demand that the descendants of the Arab refugees from Israel’s War of Independence be absorbed not by the new Palestinian state created for them, but by the neighboring Israeli state. In fact, tens to hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs would leave the Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, and relocate to Israel. ‘Leaders’ who insist that their state will not take in refugees and that their state will be depopulated once it is created are not serious about leading or having a state.
Similarly, there will never be a Palestinian state as long as UNRWA continues to exist in its current form. UNRWA has become part of the problem, not only in its direct connections to Hamas and employment of many terrorists, but in its infantilization of the Palestinians and treatment of them as permanent refugees. It is an organization whose primary function is to teach each successive generation that they are not where they belong and that they must return to a specific place where their great-grandparents may have once lived even if it ruins their lives, their children’s lives, and their grandchildren’s lives. Rather than prepare them for statehood, UNRWA teaches them to hate and prepares them for a lifetime of acting and being treated like small children incapable of taking any responsibility for taking care of themselves.
There will never be a Palestinian state as long as the Palestinian Authority’s ‘pay for slay’ policy continues to exist. An entity that continues to pay millions upon millions of dollars to people who murder Jews because it places a high value on the murder of Jews is not an entity that is ready to or even capable of making peace. It is an evil entity that is unworthy of being rewarded with self-determination or given any responsibility.
There will never be a Palestinian state as long as Mahmoud Abbas lives. For all the honor and red-carpet treatment Abbas receives around the world, he has proven himself time and again to be incapable of being a statesmanlike leader, a man of peace, or anything more than a corrupt, Jew-hating terrorist in a suit. The man who continues to spout Holocaust denial, to deny the Jewish connection to the holiest site in Judaism, to use Jewish visits to their holiest site to incite murder, the man who insists that paying baby killers is more important than creating a functional economy or government, the man who to this day refuses to condemn the Hamas butchers for October 7, the man who is in the 19th year of a four-year term in office, the man who is despised by the very people he rules for his blatant corruption, will never be the leader of a state. He is not even capable of running the Palestinian Authority without Israel’s protection and untold billions in international aid that spares him from having to do any of the actual work of leading or governing.
There will never be a Palestinian state as long as Palestinian Arab society and culture continues to begin and end with hating Jews and loving to kill Jews. Hamas remains deeply popular in the Palestinian Authority despite the devastation it has wrought in Gaza precisely because genocidal Jew-hatred is the norm. Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas have spent generations teaching their people to hate and kill Jews, that there is no greater deed one can aspire to than to kill as many Jews as possible.
A society that worships death, a culture that values only killing and destruction, is incapable of self-governance or of living in peace with any of its neighbors. Breaking this generational brainwashing will take many years if the effort to do so started today. As long as no one, not Joe Biden, not Kamala Harris, not Antonio Guterres, and not Josep Borrell, will even begin to deal with the problem of educating the Palestinian Arabs not to grow up thinking people who kill Jewish babies are greater heroes than Superman – that Superman is a villain if he ever saves a single Jewish child – there will be no peace and no Palestinian state.
Finally, there will be no Palestinian state as long as the Ayatollah’s regime in Iran continues to exist. Iran, which has undermined and all-but destroyed Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Lebanon, continues to create chaos and instability throughout the region. It is the primary funder, arms supplier, and master of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and more terrorists. As long as this evil regime is allowed to persist, it will continue to flood the region, and any prospective Palestinian state, with weapons and explosives, with funds for the next Yahya Sinwar and Hassan Nasrallah, turning it into just another terrorist proxy for Khamenei and the IRGC. When Iran is ruled by its people and not by Khamenei and his thugs, one of the greatest obstacles to both peace and a Palestinian state will be no more.
Ironically, it is Israel that is doing more to create the conditions by which a Palestinian state could come into being than those who are demanding such a state be created right now. By destroying Hamas and Hezbollah, weakening Iran, and demonstrating that there is nothing to be gained and everything to be lost by attacking the Jewish State and the Jewish people, Israel is creating a situation in which the Palestinians can finally realize the folly of endless war and stop being used as tools by the likes of Khamenei and Erdogan for their dark ambitions.
Stopping Israel’s fights against Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran now would end any hope for progress on any of those fronts, ensuring that the dream of a Palestinian state remains a distant dream that would only be a nightmare for everyone in the Middle East if it was actually created.
Many things have to happen for the Two State Solution or a Palestinian state to become even a remote possibility. The Palestinian Arabs must reform their entire culture to no longer be inherently genocidal. They must have actual leaders who have the maturity to lead and work and are not 80-year-old teenagers living off the credit cards of the world who blame everyone but themselves for the problems they cause. The official policy of supporting mass murder must end forever if there is ever to be any form of peace. And those outside forces like the Iranian regime that flood the region with weapons and death must be removed from the picture entirely.
Until all of these things happen, it does not matter how much Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Josep Borrell, or anyone else talks about the need for a Palestinian state. It will not come into being in a year, not in ten years, and not in a century.
If in a millennium, the current situation persists, if in the year 3024, the Palestinian Authority continues to pay terrorists who murder Jews and teach its people only to kill, if Hamas continues to rule and launch attacks from Gaza, if Iran continues to use proxies to attack anyone who resists its goals of regional and world-domination, there will no Palestinian state and no chance of creating one even in the 31st Century.
As long as world leaders and politicians insist on creating a Palestinian state where the only possibility is for it to be a failed state and proxy for the Ayatollahs like Lebanon, constantly at war with its neighbors, with no functioning economy or society beyond what it receives in international aid, as long as they insist that a Palestinian state that would be incapable of living in peace is the only way to achieve peace rather than the consequence or reward for achieving peace, there will never be a Palestinian state.
Gary Willigis a veteran member of the Arutz Sheva news staff.