During his March 7, 2024 State of the Union Address, President Joe Biden bragged about “leading international efforts to get more humanitarian assistance into Gaza,” and called for the creation of a temporary offshore pier. Elizabeth Samson, an international lawyer and the Henry Jackson Society’s star fellow, called the pier plan “politically cynical” and “misguided.” “At face value, this latest objective seems like a virtuous humanitarian effort,” she explained, “But upon closer examination it is damaging on many levels, to Israel, the Palestinians, and ultimately the U.S. as well.”
She is right.
First, Biden’s cynicism is reprehensible. In 2019, I walked through the streets of Mosul and Raqqa after their liberation from the Islamic State. Their destruction was incredible, the result not of Islamic State occupation but of U.S.-directed urban warfare. If Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal for liberating Gaza from an Islamist terrorist group, then so are Biden, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, each of whom held key positions during the Obama administration’s fight against the Islamic State.
Second, to demand a ceasefire and channel humanitarian aid to a region in which Hamas could use aid workers as human shields would be akin to providing the Islamic State with new fodder for beheading videos in order to win Michigan’s 15 Electoral College votes. Should the international community cut Hamas out of humanitarian delivery, Hamas would strike at the pier and blame Israel. The pier’s destruction would create a new USS Liberty incident to fuel antisemitic conspiracies for future decades.
If Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal for liberating Gaza from an Islamist terrorist group, then so are Biden, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, each of whom held key positions during the Obama administration’s fight against the Islamic State.
Third, short of allowing Israel to defeat Hamas, the White House will hand victory to Hamas and its Iranian and Turkish backers.
Biden, however, goes even further. “As we look to the future, the only real solution is a two-state solution. ... There is no other path that guarantees Israel’s security and democracy. There is no other path that guarantees Palestinians can live with peace and dignity.”
Israel does not object to a two-state solution; rather, it insists Palestinians acknowledge Israel’s Jewish nature so there is no sleight-of-hand: A Palestinian state next to an Israel that is also Palestinian, as Iranians and Palestinian rejectionists explain.
Why Does Palestinian Political Culture Fail?
Granting Palestinian independence now, however, would validate decades-long Palestinian cynicism and mismanagement. To recognize Palestinian aspirations absent reform of their malignant political culture would hold Palestinians to a lower political standard than other peoples seeking independence.
Consider: The 88-year-old Palestinian Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is now in the 20th year of his four-year presidential term. Most other dictatorships—Russia, Iran, China, Azerbaijan, Venezuela—stage-manage elections to claim popular legitimacy, but Palestinian politicians do not even pretend to care about legitimacy.
Five years ago, I explored what constituted legitimacy in the Arab world. Consensus eludes, but terror and violence never provide solid foundations for state legitimacy. For this reason, Palestinian political culture is more dysfunctional than that of any other Arab states.
To recognize Palestinian aspirations absent reform of their malignant political culture would hold Palestinians to a lower political standard than other peoples seeking independence.
There are other reasons why Palestinians are unique in dysfunction. The Palestinians alone accept permanent refugee status. The analogy that Jews, too, accepted permanent refugee status for nearly 1900 years after the Roman Emperor Titus sacked Jerusalem falls short since Jews eventually accepted citizenship of the countries in which they resided. That Palestinians do not demand citizenship in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other countries reflects the prioritization of permanent victimhood over proactivity. The United Nations and international community are at fault for allowing Palestinians to perpetuate misery and weaponize it against Jews in lieu of any real strategy.
This does not discount historical reasons for poor governance. Palestinians transitioned seamlessly from Israeli rule to terrorist rule. The Clinton administration peace team squandered the best hope for peace when, prior to the Oslo Accords, they bypassed grassroots Palestinian activists who spoke Hebrew and understood Israel in favor of rehabilitating Yasser Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from their Tunisia exile on the theory it would be easier to deal with a dictator. Neither the PLO nor Hamas prioritized governance over militancy. As a result, not only does Palestinian administration lack capacity, but also generations of Palestinians who grew up under PLO or Hamas rule know little about governance. The PLO and Hamas may be rivals, but they unite to encourage the most educated and capable Palestinians to flee rather than contribute meaningfully to governance.
Palestinians receive more aid on a per capita basis than any other people do but, without fail, they squander it. The international community’s willingness to subsidize failure and protect Palestinian leaders from accountability for their own decisions suggests subtle prejudice: The world must save Palestinians because they cannot be responsible for themselves.
Are Palestinians to Blame for Their Failure?
Palestinians embrace lack of agency in a manner that other state aspirants do not. Somaliland peacefully develops its own state and economy, attracting investment rather than international handouts, in order to build its case for international recognition of its independence. Had Somaliland leaders instead sought post-genocide to transform themselves into a museum exhibit of destruction by Somali dictators Siad Barre’s Darood clan, generations of Isaaq clan members would today live in poverty rather than be the Horn of Africa’s top entrepreneurs.
To confuse diplomacy with sloganeering betrays the Palestinians at a time when an honest assessment of their leaders’ mistakes could mean the difference between life and death.
Likewise, it would be easy for Syrian Kurds to blame both Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for failure to meet aspirations but, instead, they created the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. They rejected violence against Turkey and Syria to focus instead on developing schools, universities, and factories.
By using Israel as a readymade excuse for all failures, however, Palestinians have never identified, let alone rectified, their own mistakes, or shown their will to build up themselves trumps their desire to destroy their rivals.
Biden may believe he can transform crisis into statecraft, but ignoring the deficits of Palestinian governance or the malignancy of Palestinian political culture is a recipe not only for state failure, but also for future civil and transnational war. To confuse diplomacy with sloganeering betrays the Palestinians at a time when an honest assessment of their leaders’ mistakes could mean the difference between life and death.
