Hamas celebrated Wednesday as Ireland, Norway, and Spain announced that they would recognize a Palestinian state in the wake of the October 7 terror attacks against Israel, prompting Israel to recall its ambassadors from all three.
The Times of Israel reported that Hamas stated: “We consider this an important step towards affirming our right to our land,” adding that it continued to call “on countries around the world to recognize our legitimate national rights.”
Israeli foreign minister Israel Katz announced that Israel would be recalling its ambassadors from all three countries for consultations, and summoned the ambassadors of all three companies for reprimands — a severe diplomatic step.
Israel has long maintained that the only path to a Palestinian state is through bilateral negotiations to settle issues such as the border and capital of such a state; demilitarization; the settlement of refugee claims; and other disputes.
There is no indication what the structure of a Palestinian state would be — whether it would be a democracy, or a radical Islamist theocracy. Nor is there any guarantee that it would not immediately align with the Iranian regime.
There has never been a Palestinian state. The name “Palestine” was applied by the Roman Empire to what had been called Judea, and to what Jews called Israel, to suppress Jewish connections to the land after a series of failed revolts.
The area was controlled by a succession of empires until the British took control following the First World War and split Palestine into the “mandates” of Transjordan (now Jordan) in the east and Palestine, west of the Jordan River.
In 1947, the United Nations voted to partition the British Mandate of Palestine into two states — one Jewish, and one Arab. The Jewish leaders accepted the plan, and declared independence in 1948; the Arab leaders rejected the plan.
The surrounding Arab states invaded Israel in an attempt to destroy it. Israel won the war, and gained territory. The pattern repeated itself for decades. Palestinian Arabs organized terror attacks against Israel, with the same result.
In the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization agreed to establish the Palestinian Authority. But Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat rejected an agreement in 2000 that would have led to an actual state.
Instead, he launched a new intifada in which over 1,000 Israelis were murdered. Though many Israelis still backed a Palestinian state, public opinion flipped after Palestinians turned Gaza, from which Israel withdrew in 2005, into a terrorist launchpad.
Israel has argued that to recognize a Palestinian state in the wake of the October 7 attacks would be to reward Hamas for terror and to invite more terrorist attacks — not just against Israel, but the West as well.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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