Palestine’s Anti-Constitution

By Seth Mandel

Friday, February 13, 2026

 

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s constitution-writing committee has produced a draft of what would theoretically be the basic-law document of the State of Palestine. The document is a major blow to anyone’s hopes of a two-state solution, dwindling as those hopes already were. The “Palestine” “Constitution,” as currently envisioned, seems to be Abbas’s way of burning everything down behind him.

 

In Princeton Professor Zaid Al-Ali’s English translation of the document, there is no mention of Jews or Israel. Reporting confirms the same is true of the Arabic original.

 

It’s not that other religions are excluded—there are specific mentions of the rights of Christians, for example. But the State of Palestine declares itself judenrein.

 

Are there other problems with the text? Sure, plenty. For example, it endorses the “right of return” for descendants of Arabs displaced in 1948, by which it means their return to Israel. That is, it is the principle of the State of Palestine that Palestinians go elsewhere.

 

The obvious reason for this is that a state that grants citizenship to descendants of the displaced would thereby end the “refugee crisis.” Solving problems is not in the interest of the State of Palestine, so there will be no State of Palestine.

 

There’s plenty more, but there’s no reason to go into it. To get caught up in other details is a mistake because the discussion should go no further beyond its status as judenrein. The Palestinians are “asking” for a genocidal state, one that is committed to the erasure of all Jews within its borders and also all the Jews in the one Jewish nation beyond its borders.

 

The original Hamas charter, it’s worth noting, was straightforward in its “struggle against the Jews.” The Palestinian Authority’s own proposed constitution doesn’t mention Jews at all. This is the problem when dealing with each of the Palestinian national movement’s leaders in its century-old existence: Jews are either excluded entirely or they are mentioned only as the object of a genocidal raison d’etre. To these Palestinian nationalists, Jews either don’t exist or else they must be made to not exist.

 

This should take some of the pressure off of Israel. After all, if the Palestinians don’t want self-determination then it shouldn’t be forced on them. This document is an anti-constitution—it is intended to prevent the need for a Palestinian constitution in perpetuity.

 

No one should be surprised by this: Israel tried to give the Palestinians their own state multiple times, and each time the Palestinians responded with outrage and violence. The world cannot make the Palestinian leadership want a state.

 

But outside of whether the Palestinians want this state, the world should also ask itself whether it wants this Palestinian state—not some theoretical state that European leaders imagine, but this state that is on offer.

 

As the Jerusalem Post reports:

 

Article XXIV described how the state would ‘work to provide protection and care for the families of martyrs, wounded, and prisoners, and those released from the occupation prisons and the victims of genocide.’

 

This article is drafted into the constitution, appearing to formalize the continuation of the PA’s controversial ‘pay-for-slay’ policy, which provides financial stipends to families of convicted terrorists and terror suspects.

 

In addition to the grotesque display of bloodlust here, this should also be taken as a slap in the face to the “State of Palestine’s” biggest boosters.

 

“The ‘pay for slay’ has ended,” crowed French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot in September. When it was reported two months later that the Palestinians had merely hidden such payments, French President Emmanuel Macron was right back at square one, pleading with Mahmoud Abbas to end what Macron had been fooled into believing had already ended.

 

Macron then offered France’s help in writing the Palestinian constitution. The Palestinians went forward without such input and came up with a constitution that enshrines pay-for-slay. How many times will France allow itself to be humiliated this way?

 

A few months ago Keir Starmer, who is somehow still the prime minister of the United Kingdom, was reported to “insist that the Palestinian Authority ends its ‘pay to slay’ policy of handing out stipends to the families of ‘martyrs’ killed or detained for attacks on Israelis,” according to the Telegraph. This would be required “before any two-state solution is finalized.”

 

Isn’t this all getting so very tiresome? Those who want a Palestinian state are either going to have to convince the Palestinians to want one too, or move on with their lives.