she implied support for an independent Palestine<\/a>; the White House\u2019s repudiation was immediate and unequivocal.<\/p>\nIn 2000, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak broke the final taboos, offering the PLO a state and parts of Jerusalem. Arafat responded by launching a terror war. Barak and Clinton sweetened the offer. Arafat was clear: He preferred war.<\/p>\n
Any rational observer would have seen Arafat\u2019s rejection as the end of the game. But as Arafat foresaw, Oslo\u2019s inversion of oppressed and oppressor hopelessly warped global public opinion. The 21st century has enshrined Arafat\u2019s fabrications while challenging Jewish history. It ignores the character of leadership and culture, bestowing honors upon Arab terror movements while defaming Israel\u2019s liberal democracy. It vilifies those \u2014 like George W. Bush and Benjamin Netanyahu \u2014 who would condition statehood on evidence of a willingness to coexist. No longer a stratagem for peace, \u201cPalestinian\u201d statehood has become an entitlement.<\/p>\n
But 21st-century events have demolished the broader myth system on which \u201cPalestinian\u201d peoplehood rests. Iraq and Syria have followed the Lebanese path. As those multi-ethnic European constructs collapsed, their citizens quickly shed the state-based identities they had been assigned in favor of the ethnic- or faith-based identities that had defined their families for centuries. They fight \u2014 and die \u2014 as Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds, Alawites, Druze and Christians.<\/p>\n
That collapse is hardly coincidental \u2014 and it is highly relevant. There have never been distinct Iraqi, Syrian, Lebanese \u2014 or Palestinian \u2014 nations. Having all but purged their once-vibrant Christian minority, today\u2019s \u201cPalestinians\u201d are merely Sunni Arabs whose patrilineal ancestors resided west of the Jordan River during the final two years of the Mandate for Palestine. A new state affirming misguided labels that European imperialists imposed upon the indigenous peoples of the Middle East cannot possibly help stabilize the troubled region.<\/p>\n
The clear alternative is a return to the pre-Oslo reliance on responsible state actors \u2013 i.e., Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Israel — to provide citizenship and opportunity to the stateless Arabs. The sooner Israel stops paying lip service to the \u201ctwo-state\u201d lie, the sooner it can leave behind its self-inflicted wounds. The primary objections to this have always been that a, the world will condemn Israel, and b, those countries won\u2019t comply. Both are absurd. The world condemns Israel freely already, and the United States can ensure those countries are incentivized to comply.<\/p>\n
To achieve the stability the region so desperately needs, the Arab states must reintegrate nearly 20 million displaced or stateless Arabs chafing beneath artificial Syrian, Iraqi, Lebanese or Palestinian labels. Far from laying this issue at Israel\u2019s feet, any \u201csolution\u201d to the Arab-Israeli conflict must arise within that regional context. The international community should treat Arab refugees like it treats other refugees — humanely rather than as political pawns and cannon fodder. Integrating them into communities with whom they claim ethnic and cultural kinship is the best way to help refugees build new lives.<\/p>\n
The myths of \u201cPalestinian peoplehood\u201d and a \u201ctwo-state solution\u201d have impeded peace, stability, security, development, regional integration and justice. Arab terrorists lauded as martyrs and freedom fighters murder and maim Jews. Jew-haters treating Arabs as expendable rob millions of educational and economic opportunities, basic dignity and decent lives. The American Jewish community tears itself apart. College students from Christian and Jewish Zionist homes find themselves supporting an Israel defamed across campus as an oppressor. And in living memory of the Holocaust and of the miraculous return of Jews to their indigenous Jewish homeland, the United Nations \u2013 supported by an outgoing American president \u2013 denies the Jews\u2019 connection to Judea and demands their ethnic cleansing. All in the service of a lie.<\/p>\n
Reality-based plans have languished in the face of Oslo\u2019s persistent myths. All start from two key principles: Israeli sovereignty must continue within secure borders, and the Arab states must assume primary responsibility for the welfare of Arab refugees. These principles are grounded in history, morality and law, in Jewish security and Arab development, and in the critical goal of regional stability.<\/p>\n
What has worked around the world will work in the Middle East if the Arabs allow it to work. The Arabs will allow it only if pushed. President Donald Trump, for the first time in history, has begun to push in the right direction.<\/p>\n
(Jeff Ballabon is CEO of B2 Strategic, a senior fellow at the American Conservative Union’s Center for Statesmanship and Diplomacy, and an adviser to Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. Bruce Abramson is the president of Informationism, Inc., vice president and director of policy at the Iron Dome Alliance, and a senior fellow at the London Center for Policy Research.) <\/em><\/p>\n
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