PALESTINE: THE SPITE STATE

Advice to European diplomats: Curb your enthusiasm.

European diplomats seem to think that terrorism is pret-tay, pret-tay, pret-tay good!

In the TV show Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David (the character, if not the actor) opens a coffee shop — Latte Larry’s — next door to another coffee shop — Mocha Joe’s — because he goes into a fit of pique (of course) over Joe’s wobbly tables.

He opens Latte Larry’s with the sole purpose of undermining Joe out of nothing but spite.

It’s a “spite store.”

Everything about Latte Larry’s is self-absorbed and narcissistic, like Larry himself.

I was reminded of the fictional spite store when I saw the BBC coverage yesterday of the current European mania for recognizing the “State of Palestine.”

Last week, Ireland, Spain and Norway announced they would join a long list of countries that have recognized, or intend to recognize, the “State of Palestine.”

Of course, this is largely irrelevant. Palestinian independence will come through bilateral negotiations leading to a two-state solution — or it won’t come at all.

The world can condemn Israel all it wants. Presidents, prime ministers and UN ambassadors can shriek and make up false claims of “genocide,” “ethnic cleansing” and “waxy yellow buildup” but that won’t free Palestine.

Until the world unanimously demands that Palestinians put down their arms and negotiate in good faith, there will be no Palestinian state.

The Palestinians are the only ones who can make peace because they are the only ones making war. The sooner the world and the Palestinians accept this reality, the sooner there will be peace and a Palestinian state. Until then: No peace? No Palestine!

Of course, European diplomats (among others) keep barking up the wrong tree. Why address the real underlying issues preventing Palestinian statehood when we can do what the ancestors of today’s Eurodiplomats have always done: Blame the Jews.

Misplacing blame for the conflict, including the current war, is the M.O. of diplomats, parliaments and bien-pensants worldwide. They keep barking “Free Palestine” while encouraging the Palestinian intransigence, violence and terror that ensure Palestinian self-determination becomes less and less viable. Nothing exemplifies the rewarding of violence more than these diplomatic moves.

An anonymous Arab diplomat summed up perfectly the motivation behind the spate of spite “recognitions.” Get this:

“It reflects European frustration with the Israeli government’s refusal to listen,” said “one Arab diplomat” quoted by the BBC. (I’ll just leave aside why this “one Arab diplomat,” who was saying nothing particularly controversial in the larger scheme of Arab “diplomacy” went unnamed by one of the world’s leading media outlets. Seems weird. But anyways.)

So … when diplomats are unhappy about bilateral or multilateral relations now, the default is to take the most wildly inappropriate, injudicious, rash step imaginable? No quiet negotiations through back channels? No reasoning democracy-to-democracy? No incremental pressures (appropriate or otherwise, depending on one’s perspective)?

Nope. Just a lashing out in the most unimaginably undiplomatic manner a diplomat could imagine. An act of utter spite.

According to that same BBC report, 139 countries have recognized a Palestinian state.

A gobsmacking 139 countries believe that a kleptocratic authoritarian regime that demonstrates nothing Western observers would recognize as comprehensive human rights (the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank) and a blood-soaked terror regime (Hamas in the Gaza Strip) deserve to be welcomed into the family of nations. No questions asked. No demands. No expectations.

This was madness before October 7. Since then, it is an unmitigated endorsement of rape, beheadings, human immolation, kidnappings and mass murder.

There’s more to it, though …

Anyone with any knowledge of history will see the multifaceted, jaw-dropping irony.

A majority of United Nations member-states voted for Palestinian statehood in 1947.

The Palestinians and the entire Arab world said, nah. They’d rather fight to the death than live next to self-determined Jews.

This — this — is the root of the conflict. Not borders, not settlements, not refugees, not the status of Jerusalem. Those are details that can be resolved in good faith negotiations. There have never been good faith negotiations because, even when the Palestinians pretended to be negotiating, they were actually planning the Second Intifada and proceeding with Arafat’s “staged strategy.”

Refusing to coexist 1947–48, the Palestinians never prepared for self-government and the Arab world reared up at the moment an Arab and a Jewish state were to be born and attempted to eradicate the new Jewish state and annihilate its citizens.

Not much has changed.

The world pretends the Palestinian and Arab positions have changed.

Have they, though?

Well, we could argue. Some evidence suggests it has. Some evidence suggests it hasn’t.

Think about that … There remains enough evidence that reasonable people might conclude that, within the Palestinian and broader Arab body politic, including among its political, religious, cultural, educational and popular voices, a significant strain remains committed to eliminating the Jewish state and annihilating its citizens.

Is this a majoritarian position?

At this point, does that really matter?

Until the Palestinians and the Arab world prove to Israel that no one — not a single mainstream voice in the Palestinian or Arab world — advocates or plans the destruction of Israel and the annihilation of its citizens, you can “recognize” Palestine all you want. It will never become a state.

No peace? No Palestine!

Especially ironic in this whole dystopic mess is that the world seems overwhelmingly willing to grant statehood and recognition to Palestine — which has demonstrated precisely no capacity to govern itself — while in 1947 (the blink of an eye in historical terms) it was touch-and-go whether the UN would pass the Partition Resolution creating the State of Israel.

The Zionists had built a proto-state that was ready to govern — indeed, despite constant barrages and attempts at annihilation, Israelis have built one of the most successful states ever formed — but at the UN General Assembly on November 29, 1947, the world dithered and, until the final votes were counted, it remained to be seen whether Israel would be recognized by the world.

Fast-forward 76 years. The Palestinians still have not come close to the (comparatively) simple commitment to govern themselves and coexist with their neighbours as a member of the community of nations. Given 30 years of varying degrees of self-government, they have, conversely, demonstrated their inability to manage their own affairs. All evidence is that an independent Palestine tomorrow would make today’s mess look like paradise in retrospect.

Even so, the world piles on, one after another, abandoning all reason and ignoring every scrap of evidence that the road Palestine (and the world’s approach to it) is on leads to disaster.

Why?

Spite.

And this is the best the greatest diplomatic minds of the current age can conceive?

Maybe they should curb their enthusiasm.