Many European states—Ireland, Norway, and Spain, for example—cast previous diplomatic agreements aside to grant unilateral recognition of Palestinian statehood. So, too, did most countries in the United Nations General Assembly when they voted to grant the “State of Palestine” membership.
The Palestinians are effective. While the Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank number at most five million, over decades of spectacular terrorism and adept public relations they have kept their quest for statehood at the forefront of international diplomatic conversation.
[Palestinians] have kept their quest for statehood at the forefront of international diplomatic conversation.
Many other peoples, however, also seek statehood. There are approximately 35 million Igbo in Nigeria—and many more in the diaspora—who seek the recognition of Biafra. They have weathered real genocide—not public relations hyperbole—between 1967 and 1970, and the Nigerian government again seeks to crush the Igbo culturally and repress the Christians for ideological reasons.
There are between 30 million and 45 million Kurds spread across Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. Those in Syria now face extermination at the hands of the Turkish army while much of the world is silent.
The Uyghurs in China—all 12 million of them—face industrial-scale persecution and live in a network of concentration camps.
Even Somaliland’s population of six million is greater than that of the Palestinians.
Many proponents of Palestinian statehood dismiss such reality by citing “Whataboutism.” Just because others are deserving, the argument goes, does not mean the world should ignore Palestinian aspirations or fail to address them first. That is essentially a straw man argument, though.
The real problem with prioritizing Palestinian statehood is that Palestinians are not ready. The issue is not Israel, but rather, the lack of unity among Palestinians. Hamas seized control over the Gaza Strip at the point of a gun, torturing and executing Fatah politicians and officials who did not have the foresight to flee. That internal putsch was merely a dry run for what happens in the West Bank when the 89-year-old Palestinian chairman Mahmoud Abbas dies.
It is immoral to rush independence if state failure is inevitable.
Other countries that have won independence absent a modicum of unity have become epicenters of human suffering. East Timor won independence on May 20, 2002. Within four years, violence grew so bad that international peacekeepers had to return. Kosovo became independent on February 17, 2008, yet the lack of rule-of-law basically transformed the state into a criminal enterprise. South Sudan gained independence on July 9, 2011. Within two and a half years, the country was in full-blown civil war, killing 400,000. The Iraqi Kurds have never missed an opportunity to prioritize internecine political battles over national aspirations.
It is immoral to rush independence if state failure is inevitable. Instead, the United States and other countries should embrace those aspirants like Somaliland that demonstrate capacity and good governance. Somaliland, after all, was the first country in the world—even though unrecognized—that secured its elections with biometric iris scans, and it has had multiple peaceful transfers of power.
If the world demonstrates to those seeking independence that the only way forward is through accountability for their own action and rule of law, then that standard will present a road map rather than signaling to terrorists that violence trumps all. If Palestinians ever want statehood, they must be more like Somaliland and less like South Sudan.
