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Everyone from James Baker to Condoleezza Rice to EU leaders continues to argue in favor of a Palestinian state – as if all the problems in the ME would disappear if one materialized. Caroline Glick comments:
And so it is that as statesmen and activists worldwide loudly proclaim their commitment to establishing the sovereign State of Palestine, they miss the fact that Palestine exists. And it is a nightmare.
She is, of course, correct. The Israelis unilaterally and with great pain (recall the often violent removal of Israeli settlers from their homes by the IDF) left Gaza in the Summer of 2005. Since then, the Palestinians have had freedom to run their own affairs.
Glick describes the result:
In the State of Palestine 88 percent of the public feels insecure. Perhaps the other 12 percent are members of the multitude of regular and irregular militias. For in the State of Palestine the ratio of police/militiamen/men-under-arms to civilians is higher than in any other country on earth.
In the State of Palestine, two-year-olds are killed and no one cares. Children are woken up in the middle of the night and murdered in front of their parents. Worshipers in mosques are gunned down by terrorists who attend competing mosques. And no one cares. No international human rights groups publish reports calling for an end to the slaughter. No UN body condemns anyone or sends a fact-finding mission to investigate the murders.
In the State of Palestine, women are stripped naked and forced to march in the streets to humiliate their husbands. Ambulances are stopped on the way to hospitals and wounded are shot in cold blood. Terrorists enter operating rooms in hospitals and unplug patients from life-support machines.
In the State of Palestine, people are kidnapped from their homes in broad daylight and in front of the television cameras. This is the case because the kidnappers themselves are cameramen. Indeed, their commanders often run television stations. And because terror commanders run television stations in the State of Palestine, it should not be surprising that they bomb the competition's television stations.
Those on the Left (and Pat Buchanan) would argue that this is all because of the Israeli “occupation.” But wait, Israel left Gaza. Oh, never mind ... it’s because Israel and the US have cut off Palestinian funds (welfare). Hold on …
As Ibrahim Gambari, the UN under-secretary-general for political affairs, noted last Thursday, official Western aid to the Palestinians, not including Arab and Iranian support for Hamas and Fatah, increased by 10 percent in 2006 over 2005, and stood at $1.2 billion.
The Palestinians, who receive more aid per capita than any people on earth, are needy not because they lack funds. They are poor because they prefer poverty, violence and war to prosperity, peace and moderation. So it is that 57 percent of Palestinians support terror attacks against Israel.
So to those who lobby for a “two state solution,” you’ve already got one. The problem is, one of the states (remember, 57 percent of the populace support terror attacks against Israel) has no intention of building a future, no desire for peaceful coexistence, no mandate but violence, no vision except a warped sense of victimhood and a delusional sense that the world owes them an existence.
Glick concludes:
The hordes of political leaders mindlessly squawking about "visions" and "two-state solutions" should know: This is Palestine. Enter at your own risk.
Unfortunately, the world’s political leaders are not at risk, but the other party —Israel—who might someday have to live with this delusional vision truly is.