By Victor Davis Hanson
Thursday, January 11, 2018
President Trump set off another Twitter firestorm last
week when he hinted that he may be considering cutting off hundreds of millions
of dollars in annual U.S. aid to the Palestinians. Trump was angered over
Palestinian unwillingness to engage in peace talks with Israel after the Trump
administration announced the move of the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
Given that the U.S. channels its Palestinian aid through
third-party United Nations organizations, it’s unclear how much money Trump is
talking about it. But in total it may exceed $700 million per year, according
to reports.
A decade ago, the U.S. row with the Palestinian Authority
would have been major news. But not now.
Why?
The entire Middle East has radically changed — and along
with it the role and image of the Palestinians.
First, the U.S. is now one of the largest producers of
fossil-fuel energy in the world. America is immune from the sort of Arab oil
embargo that in 1973–74 paralyzed the U.S. economy as punishment for American
support of Israel. Even Israel, thanks to new offshore oil and natural-gas
discoveries, is self-sufficient in energy and immune from Arab cutoffs.
Second, the Middle East is split into all sorts of
factions. Iran seeks to spread radical Shiite theocracy throughout Iraq and
Syria and into the Persian Gulf states — and is the greatest supporter of
Palestinian armed resistance. The so-called “moderate” Sunni autocracies
despise Iran. Understandably, most Arab countries fear the specter of a nuclear
Iran far more than they do the reality of a democratic and nuclear Israel.
A third player — radical Islamic terrorism — has turned
against the Arab status quo as well as the West. Because Palestinian
organizations such as Hamas had flirted with Iran and its appendages (such as
the terrorists of Hezbollah), they have become less useful to the Arab
establishment. The terrorist bloodlettings perpetrated by groups such as the
Islamic State and al-Qaeda have discredited terror as a legitimate means to an
end in the eyes of the Arab world, despite previous support for Palestinian
terrorists.
Third, the world itself may have passed the Palestinian
issue by.
Israel was founded in 1948. Palestinian rhetoric that
they would push the Jews into the sea is by now stale. There have been seven
decades of failed intifadas and suicide-bombing campaigns, along with
full-scale Arab–Israeli wars.
Equally futile were endless “peace processes,” “peace
initiatives,” “road maps,” and “multiparty talks,” plus Middle East
“conferences,” “summits,” and “memoranda” all over the world, from Madrid and
Oslo to Camp David.
In the meantime, most other “refugees” the world over
have long ago moved on. Around the time Israel was created, some 13 million
German speakers were ethnically cleansed from East Prussia and Eastern Europe.
The word “Prussia” no longer exists as a geographical or national label. Seven
decades later, the grandchildren of refugees do not replay World War II.
“Prussians” do not talk about reclaiming their ancestral homelands in
present-day Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. German-speaking youth do
not demand a “right of return” to their grandparents’ homes to the east.
Fourth, the Palestinians have never been able to craft a
successful, transparent, consensual government. After 30 years of waiting, the
world has mostly given up on their rhetoric of self-government and reform on
the West Bank.
Since the Palestinian proclamation of independence in
1988, there have been only two “presidents”: Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas.
Neither has allowed open and transparent elections. A Palestinian president
gets power by seizing it. He loses it only by dying in office. Over the same
period, Israel has elected seven different prime ministers from a variety of
political parties.
The Palestinian political party Fatah is engaged in a
deadly rivalry with the terrorist-inspired Hamas organization that has run Gaza
for over a decade. The beef is not over democracy, but over which faction will
bury the other.
The Palestinians’ inability to rule the West Bank in
constitutional fashion is why hundreds of thousands of expatriate Palestinians
voice their solidarity from a safe distance while living in North America or
Europe. More than a million Palestinians prefer to stay put in Israel. They are
convinced that they will have more security, freedom, and prosperity in a
democratic state than under dictatorial Palestinian rule a few miles away.
Trump may be rash and unfamiliar with the stagnant Middle
East peace process, but his political instincts are probably correct. Polls
show that less than 20 percent of Americans support the Palestinian cause. Many
U.S. citizens are tired of subsidizing those who claim that they do not like
their benefactors in the United States.
It finally may be time for the Palestinian factions to
fund their own causes and go their own ways.
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