The Palestinian Authority’s president has devoted years to stunts ostensibly aimed at gaining recognition of a Palestinian state, the latest of which is his new plan to sue Britain for issuing the Balfour declaration in 1917. But, Benny Avni writes, he has shown little interest in actually creating such a state:
Abbas has already raised a Palestinian flag at Manhattan’s First Avenue UN headquarters and received blessings for a Palestinian state in places like Geneva, Sweden, Mauritania, and the back pages of U.S. party platforms. Yet he has proved completely useless in creating a state on the West Bank.
And his attempt to pretend that the last century of history—in which Jews created an independent and thriving state—never happened raises suspicions that Abbas never really was all that comfortable with the existence of Israel on lands Arabs consider their own. . . .
So all those who get so exercised about how the two-state solution is represented in American party platforms had better relax. America, Britain, Europe, and even Israel won’t prevent Palestinians from peacefully living and thriving in an independent state. As they always have, only Palestinians will.
As for that other side of the vaunted two-state solution: [Abbas] can’t turn back the clock to 1917, or any other time in history. So Israel will continue to flourish, with or without Palestine by its side.
Read more on New York Post: http://nypost.com/2016/07/27/why-palestinians-are-on-the-verge-of-civil-war/