Stephen M. Flatowis President of the Religious Zionists of America (RZA) He is the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995 and the author of A Father’s Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian Terror. Note: The RZA is not affiliated with any American or Israeli political party.
The drive to recognize a Palestinian Arab state is heating up. Over the past year, France has been actively involved in diplomatic efforts to support the creation of a Palestinian Arab state. French officials have engaged in discussions with Palestinian Arab leaders and others, such as Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, even as he harbors no love for the mandarins in Ramallah, is linking recognition of Israel to taking steps to the “two-state solution.”
It cannot be said often enough that recognizing a Palestinian state after October 7 means rewarding Hamas for murdering over 1,000 Israelis and taking 251 as hostages. It also means rewarding the Iranian mullahs and the Qataris who have bankrolled Hamas.
In view of the “quiet war” in Judea and Samaria —the one where Israeli troops battle Molotov, stone throwing, and armed terrorists every day—giving the Palestinian Arabs a state means living with the possibility of another October 7 in Israel’s heartland.
In 2024, the U.S. vetoed a UN Security Council resolution brought at the insistence of the Palestinian Authority. Even though the Biden administration pressed Abbas to not go ahead with the bid for statehood, the administration’s veto came as a shock to the Palestinian Arabs because, after all, it was Biden and then Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s talk about establishing a Palestinian Arab state as part of the planning for the “day after” Israel vanquishes Hamas in Gaza.
In the aftermath of the vote, Abbas told the official Palestinian news agency WAFA that "the hostile [US] positions”… “have generated unprecedented anger among the Palestinian Arabs and the region's populations, potentially pushing the region towards further instability, chaos, and terrorism."
In spite of that statement, then U.S. deputy ambassador Robert Wood told the Security Council that the veto “does not reflect opposition to Palestinian statehood but instead is an acknowledgment that it will only come from direct negotiations between the parties,” and that there are “unresolved questions” on whether Arab so-called Palestine meets the criteria to be considered a state.
While the creation of an Arab Palestinian state now would be dangerous for Israel with an indefensible border being the main reason, a Palestinian state would be bad for America, too.
The Palestinian Arabs have a long record of fomenting regional instability. In 1970, they provoked an armed conflict with King Hussein of Jordan that resulted the deaths of thousands. They instigated a civil war in Lebanon that resulted in the deaths of thousands. It’s only a matter of time before a Palestinian state would stir up turmoil and mayhem throughout the region. That kind of chaos, in such a sensitive region of the world, is the last thing the U.S. needs.
We don’t need another terror-backed proxy in the Mideast. The Palestinian Arabs have always allied themselves with the most extreme and aggressive regimes in the world. First, it was the Soviet Union. Today, it’s Iran, China, Putin’s Russia, and North Korea. How long before a state of “Palestine” invites Iranian or North Korean “volunteers,” and obtains Iranian and North Korean missiles and drones? It would become a proxy-state for the world’s worst rogue regimes. If given control over Gaza, how would an Iranian, Chinese or Russian port there be good for America?
For three decades we have seen from the Palestinian Authority’s practices as to what kind of state it would be. Islam will be the state religion. Elections will be held rarely, if ever. Its president Mahmoud Abbas, is now in the 20th year of a four-year term in office. Critics of the regime will be suppressed. Labor unions will be harassed. Prisoners will be tortured. Christians will be intimidated. Women will be second-class citizens. The Islamist and authoritarian values embodied by the Palestinian state will be the exact opposite of the democratic and pluralistic values that Americans cherish.
A Palestinian state would be an actively anti-American state in word and deed. How do we know? Just look at what the Palestinian Authority has been teaching its people, and especially its children, for the past three decades. The PA’s media and schools portray the United States as racist, colonial, and warmongering. They accuse the U.S. of carrying out the 9/11 attacks, spreading disease and immorality, and conspiring against Islam.
A Palestinian state will promote hatred of America, vote against the U.S. in international forums, and align itself with radical Third World regimes. The world already has plenty of America-hating countries. Why do we need yet another?
One of the more remarkable things about the PA’s behavior has been its habit of taking $500 million from the U.S. every year and then turning around and paying salaries and pensions to terrorists in Israeli prisons and their families, and naming streets, parks, schools, and sports competitions after terrorists who have murdered Americans. If this is how the PA acts now, when it desperately needs U.S. support for its statehood campaign, just imagine how it will act when it has a sovereign state and no longer needs American assistance.
Israel has always been America’s closest friend and most reliable ally. As a matter of principle, and as a matter of strategic wisdom, the United States should always stand by its friends. To set up a Palestinian Arab state along Israel’s borders would pose a grave danger to its one true ally. It would also undermine the confidence of all of America’s allies, and call into doubt the value of America’s promises.
Israel is certainly grateful for US moral and logistical support since October 7th but will never ask the United States to put American soldiers’ boots on the ground. But if a weakened, shrunken Israel is in danger of being overrun by a Palestinian-Iranian-Chinese-Russian-North Korean onslaught, there will be tremendous pressure on the United States to take direct military action rather than see its closest ally destroyed. Thus the U.S. could find itself dragged into an overseas conflict that was entirely preventable.
The American veto of statehood was a good thing. In every conceivable respect, a PalestinianArab state would be bad for America—bad for American values, bad for American interests, and bad for America’s allies.
As for the French, I like U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee’s advice to Macron, “if France is really so determined to see a Palestinian state, I have a suggestion for them - carve out a piece of the French Riviera and create a Palestinian state. They are welcome to do that, but they are not welcome to impose that kind of pressure on a sovereign nation. And I find it revolting that they think they have the right to do such a thing."