Why it’s metaphysically impossible for “Palestine” to be a state.
The PeaceMatrix™, Part 16
Why it’s metaphysically impossible for “Palestine” to be a state.
By Daniel Ben Abraham
The 146 countries that now recognize a “state of Palestine” do so for a number of skewed and distorted understandings. In reality, a state of “Palestine” is metaphysically impossible.
Why?
When God said that the land would belong to the Jewish people, in the Torah (FN1 - Exodus 3:8), the Bible (FN2 - Chronicles 6:5-6), and even the Quran (FN3 - Qur'an 5:20-21, Qur'an 17:104), this is why:
In sum, because nationhood requires a unified, independent, and constructive collective consciousness that the Palestinians lack.
Under international law, the requirements of a nation-state were laid out in the Montevideo Convention (1933) and include a permanent population, a defined territory, a government with a monopoly of control over the people, and the capacity to conduct international relations. However, the true requirements unfortunately differ greatly from reality.
Put aside for a moment the fact that the U.N. Charter Art. 4 requires members to be “peace-loving states” and Palestinians are led by genocidal terrorist groups who have brought suicide bombing to the world.
There are a number metaphysical prerequisites to a group of people becoming a “nation.” Of course, Israel was not a nation until we received the Torah at Mt. Sinai.
The first requirement is, the people must have a united identity. The Palestinians don’t have that. They don’t agree on who they are, because most of their grandparents are Egyptian, Jordanian, and from all over the Arab world. Most flooded in during the early 1900s when Jews began creating jobs in the Holy Land, and the “Palestinians” whose both grandparents were present before the 1920’s are a very small minority. Even Arafat was Egyptian. Not only is this not exactly a permanent population, but we don’t know how many Palestinians would leave if they could because the Arab world vehemently refuses to allow any in.
Also part of a united identity, the collective consciousness must agree on their territory and borders. The Palestinians, however, cannot agree on what is their own territory and what is not, nor where their borders are. About half want to conquer the state of Israel, and about half want to live side-by-side in peace with Israel. They have no internal unity on what they want, because with the risk of expanding borders comes the risk of losing more land. But as a people, they are completely divided on whether or not to risk their current territory in order to possess more land “from the river to the sea”. The fundamental purpose of where they are to exist which defines their meaning of “nationhood “ is completely divided.
A nation also needs an accepted system of governance with a monopoly of control over the population, but the Palestinians neither have their own fixed governance, nor the ability to create nor control one. Because their ideological politics are more focused on destroying Israel than on their own self-governance and prosperity, they will always be subject to rule by Hamas, Hezbollah, Fatah, or any other extremist group who incites the most aggressive amongst them to take up an expansionist cause. Their rational goal disunity makes them prone to be led by any ideological terrorist group who is most aggressive. Right now Hamas has more popularity than even the Palestinian Authority, regardless how much suffering they bring to individual Palestinian lives. Thus, they are people with a faulty ideology, at the whim of those who would make their lives the least constructive, the most destructive, and cause the most suffering for them and others around them.
Not only do they have no unity of ideology, nor ability to control their ideology, they also don’t have independence of their ideology. The “Palestinian cause“ is the continuation of the broader Arab cause of destroying the state of Israel which ignited in 1948 when Israel declared independence. PLO leader Zahir Muhsein said, “The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the State of Israel… Palestinian identity would be emphasized for political reasons.” Palestinians haven’t wanted their own state, because they didn’t declare one before ‘48, they didn’t declare one between ‘48 and ‘67, and they didn’t build one from 2005 to 2023 in Gaza when they had the opportunity to do so. They made no collective effort towards a state despite years of unobstructed opportunities. Nor did Arabs make Jerusalem the Capitol of any Arab state even while under Islamic rule for centuries, because their true capitol is Mecca.
Since the Palestinian cause is really this broader Arab cause in disguise as obvious from their flag, the Arab world doesn’t care so much if the Palestinians have a state, but much more in the destruction of the Jewish state. Up to 89% of 480 million Arabs across 16 countries do not want recognition of Israel. The broader Arab world agrees on destroying Israel, but cannot agree on what would come next after that. Even if Palestinians could accept borders (which was the problem until now), they couldn't maintain them going forward because their ideology is expansionist toward all of Israel, and beyond. Even if the Palestinians did conquer Israel, extremists among them would only then seek to become a caliphate that controls Jordan, Egypt, and Lebanon, as the ideology changes goals to continue expanding, because "Palestinian" is not their true identity.
Even their would-be name, "Palestinians”, is completely separate from the people and culture, because it was chosen for political reasons. The name “Palestine” isn’t even an Arabic word. While Palestinians are Arab and Muslim, the name, “Palestine” is neither Arab nor Muslim. It derives from “Phillistines” - Greek sailors who sailed to the coast of Israel thousands of years ago who are neither Arab nor Muslim. So why would a population that is 99% Arab and Muslim form and maintain a state named after Greek sailors who were neither Arab nor Muslim?
If that were not enough, the Jewish people are arguably the most constructive, creative, and optimistic people on the face of the Earth, and Israel is one of the happiest countries. We Jews wandered through the desert for 40 years, and when one of us stepped in manure and was stung by a bee, we cheered for joy that we've found the land of milk and honey. Putting us next to virtually any other group will cause resentment and bitterness as is inherent human nature. (At least, without an overriding ideology of acceptance of the mysteries of Jewishness.) The main reason some of the people in Jordan and Egypt and Lebanon and other places can tolerate Israel is because the Palestinians are continuing the “struggle” to conquer Israel on their behalf.
With this dynamic, even if you created a “state “, it would just be used as a stepping stone to better attack Israel, because with no diversity of opinion, the more aggressive ideology will always control. Thus, even a well-intended call for a two-state solution in Judea, Samaria, and East Jerusalem, whether the speaker knows it or not, is a call toward ultimately the right to arm and populate those Arab areas for better attacking Israel. Since the two causes, a peaceful state, and conquering Israel, run down the center of the heart of near-every Palestinian, it is almost impossible for the international community to help the first cause without helping the second.
These are key factors of Palestinian collective unconscious, far more powerful than reason, logic, and conscious rational human willpower. One individual can learn to not be jealous, hateful, or resentful, or to improve their own individual life. But as a unipolar collective, the collective will always channel political power to the most emotionally-charged aspects in a conflict, and thus can self-sustain such conflict regardless the conscious will of even the majority.
Sadly, for the Palestinians, they have no culture of diversity of opinion, freedom of speech, separation of church and state, rule of law, nor even compromise, and significant outside influence from the broader Arab world, so changing their ideology from these inherent problems is virtually impossible.
In any election, Palestinians would vote in the most extremist group, even in their individual disinterest.
Any candidates who run in opposition would be killed.
With any imposed moderate government, an extremist group would sooner or later overthrow it by violent means because they would have the population’s support.
Any neutral organizations or third parties involved in governance or management, like the U.N. or even the Saudis, will be corrupted by and beholden to the same ideology or collapse in time.
Without an ideology craving diversity of opinion, and a political process within the Palestinian culture dividing the ideology between different options to improve the lives of the people, they have nowhere to direct their natural human in-group versus out-group polarization except at Israel. Any system created to provide a diversity of ideological viewpoint, which exists nowhere else in the Arab world either, would be torn down by the ideology. This is why every effort to allow even some Palestinians to vote with their feet and leave is blocked by the Arab world's embargo on refugees in the name of the "cause".
Even removing instigators like Iran’s leadership, who likewise gain politically from opposing Israel, would improve, but not completely solve the situation for these reasons.
While many Palestinians can be fine people individually, every outside recognition of a Palestinian “State” is a manufactured and artificially affixed set of values onto a group whose collective ideology is not based on those values. It doesn’t matter even if the United Nations, and the entire world falsely affixes such values. It doesn’t matter if the whole world adopts their tragic values out of sympathy. All Palestinians can do in reality, metaphysically, based on who they are as a collective unconscious far more powerful than even their own free will, unless a smarter metaphysical solution is implemented, is suffer and cause conflict until they cause a world war, or leave. Only if so many Palestinians are allowed to and do leave that the Palestinian "cause" of conquering Israel is abandoned in the collective psyche, can the remaining ones accept Israel and live in peace with her.
Thus, I clarify, that a Palestinian state is metaphysically impossible a) with the current ideology of the Palestinian people, and b) in the proposed locations in Israel including Judea, Samaria, Gaza, or East Jerusalem.
This is what the scriptures of all major Abrahamic faiths understand.
Footnotes:
Exodus 3:8: “I have come down to rescue them from the Egyptians and to bring them out of that land to a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey, the region of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.”
2 Chronicles 6:5-6: "Since the day that I brought my people out of the land of Egypt, I chose no city in all the tribes of Israel in which to build a house, that my name might be there, and I chose no man as prince over my people Israel; but I have chosen Jerusalem that my name may be there and I have chosen David to be over my people Israel."
"And [remember] when Moses said to his people: 'O my people, call in remembrance the favour of God unto you, when he produced prophets among you, made you kings, and gave to you what He had not given to any other among the peoples. O my people, enter the Holy Land which God has assigned unto you, and turn not back ignominiously, for then will ye be overthrown, to your own ruin.'" [Qur'an 5:20-21] “And thereafter We [Allah] said to the Children of Israel: 'Dwell securely in the Promised Land” [Qur'an 17:104]