The foreign policy establishment likes to blame Israel for the lack of a Palestinian state, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. The fault lies with the Palestinians for refusing to accept any peace deals.
David Brog, executive director of the Maccabee Task Force, explains in PragerU’s latest video that the record clearly suggests that Israel has repeatedly bent over backward to offer land to the Palestinians, but the Palestinians have always rebuffed such offers.
In 1936, the Peel Commission offered a deal in which 80% of the area where most of Israel stands today would go to the Arabs, and 20% to the Jews in order to end the Arabs’ violent rebellion. The Jews agreed to the deal, but the Arabs did not; their rebellion continued.
The United Nations offered yet another two-state solution in 1947; the Jews agreed but the Arabs rejected it, and launched a war against the newly formed state of Israel.
In the aftermath of the 1967 war, Israel considered offering “the West Bank to Jordan and Gaza to Egypt in exchange for peace,” or give the land to the Palestinians for peace. Instead, the Arab League gathered in Sudan and declared: “No peace with Israel. No recognition of Israel. No negotiations with Israel.”
Additionally, Israel offered a swath of land to the Palestinians in 2000 and 2008; Palestine again rejected both offers. The former was met with a wave of suicide bombings from the Palestinians. Israel also handed over Gaza to the Palestinians, resulting in the terror organization, Hamas, running the region and bombarding Israel with rockets.
Time and time again, Israel has offered peace to the Palestinians, but the Palestinians continually reject these offers.
“If you’re interested in peace in the Middle East, maybe the answer is not to pressure Israel to make yet another offer of a state to the Palestinians,” Brog said. “Maybe the answer is to pressure the Palestinians to finally accept the existence of a Jewish State.”
