Martin Sherman's View on Statehood for the Pals.

Failing the test of history

Merit is no qualification for freedom…. Freedom is enjoyed when you are so well armed, or so turbulent, or inhabit a country so thorny that the expense of your neighbour's occupying you is greater than the profit.
T. E. Lawrence to the Editor of The Times July 22, 1920


This quote from a letter written by "Lawrence of Arabia" almost a century ago, setting out a case for the political independence for the Arabs in the Middle East, has current relevance in assessing the flurry of statements over the last few years - particularly from senior US politicians - that "the Palestinians deserve a state of their own."



...the Palestinians have undermined – indeed invalidated – their claim to statehood by even the more lenient and clearly measurable empirical criterion set out by Lawrence above. For the Palestinians' ongoing failure to achieve statehood reflects the converse – but necessary - corollary of the practical yardstick he stipulates.

If success in achieving statehood is the sole criterion by which to judge whether such statehood is indeed deserved, then surely it follows that the reverse is true: Failure to achieve statehood is the ultimate indicator in determining that it is not.



And the Palestinian failure has been undeniably staggering. In fact a strong case can be made for the claim that, in the history of modern national independence movements, none have enjoyed conditions more conducive to success, and yet achieved such miserable results, than that of the Palestinians.

...the Palestinians have not managed to produce any semblance of a sustainable society. The Palestinian leadership has done nothing but bring about a repressive and regressive interim regime that provided little but the pillage of the Palestinian people and the squander of the vast amount of resources provided by donor nations.

Nearly a decade and a half after the Oslo Agreements, the Palestinians have shown the world that they simply cannot "cut it." All they have been able to establish was both tenuous and dysfunctional, from a corrupt kleptocracy to a tyrannical theocracy – both now sliding into abysmal anarchy and chronic chaos accompanied by fratricidal fury.

...Clearly then, the time has come for the international community to recognize that rather than a coherent, cohesive national entity, the Palestinians comprise an amorphous amalgam of clans, gangs and bands whose overriding aspiration to not to establish a state for their own people but to dismantle a state of another people.

Clearly the time has come to remove the issue of Palestinian statehood from the international agenda – for the Palestinians themselves have shown that they are patently incapable of maintaining such statehood...

Accordingly, the time has come challenge the validity of the conventional wisdom which holds unquestioningly that "the Palestinians deserve a state of their own.” Not because of any objections raised by the opponents of such a state, but because the Palestinians themselves have manifestly failed the test of history.

(Yes, I know Martin well but his opinions are his own)