Recent history suggests that a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza would be as subject to internal political, sectarian, and ideological conflict as the teetering, or already collapsed, states that make up much of the Middle East. Lawrence Solomon advocates a new approach based on negotiations with Palestinian leaders who actually represent the interests of their own communities:
Yasir Arafat never [succeeded in forging] a united people—most Palestinians only grudgingly accepted the rule of his Palestinian Authority (PA), and some never did. Few Palestinians identify chiefly with a national identity; their loyalty instead is clan-based—[a loyalty] to the tight-knit group of extended families that share the same ancestry, based on the father’s male line, and a preference for marrying within the clan. Palestinians pledge loyalty to their clan in a binding, formal code of honor backed by local militias. An attack on one clan member is an attack on all members.
Clan-based systems of governance do not lend themselves to nation states. Little surprise, then, that after Arafat died, civil war broke out and Gaza broke off from the West Bank to form its own statelet. To make dicier still the notion of a coherent Palestinian nation whose people share common values, Gaza is theocratic, run by Hamas, a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, while the West Bank is largely secular. . . .
Without foreign funds, the PA would not only be unable to fund its continued support for terrorists, it would be unable to maintain itself in power by dispensing patronage to its supporters, and it would be unable to maintain its claim to being the sole representative of the Palestinian people. The weaker the Palestinian Authority becomes, the stronger the clans become in relation, allowing them to reassert their authority, and thus appoint legitimate representatives to negotiate a settlement with the Israelis.
[Working with clan leaders rather than the PA] could form the basis for lasting self-government determined organically by the Arabs of Palestine, unlike a single Arab state based on the pretense of a unified Palestinian people. No other governance model—at least none with a chance of surviving long—is remotely plausible.
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