“A sore evil under the sun.” King Solomon may well be foretelling the cock-and-bull morality play, “Recognizing Palestine” coming to Manhattan’s Turtle Bay theater of the absurd.

Heads of state curling their toes to give Israel payback for perpetually blocking to free Palestine from the occupation. They’ll tolerate no precondition, not even Israel offering a sop if Hamas releases all hostages, dead or alive. That would be enough to accuse the Netanyahu government of obstructive tactics.

“When the time comes we can get the Arab nations to join us for the final blow against Israel.”

In short, Israel’s critics are at the end of a short fuse. They seemingly believe that Oct 7 made Israelis retreat into a bubble of trauma from which they can’t stop obsessing about their own survival. Not a shred of empathy for the Palestinians in Gaza, or for that matter for governments on the brink, such as Emmanuel Macron’s or Keir Starmer’s. They too are struggling to survive. Netanyahu, throw in the towel, damn it! Recognize Palestine.

Instead what did “Bibi” and his warring cabinet do? They called time up on futile and circuitous bargaining for hostages through Qatar and, smack bang on its home soil, targeted Hamas figureheads in Giorgio Armani suits.

The titular head of the titular Palestinians, Abu Mazen (the nickname of Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian Authority), observed developments and made a savvy calculation. Arafat’s successor for life is not only a chronic snake but a sloth.

There’ll come a day when statehood will drop into his lap without him lifting a finger. He need only sit tight until the biggest allies of Israel trip over themselves to serve Palestine on a platter.

“The message is clear: what you need to do to get your state recognized is nothing. No reform, no institution building, no democracy, no defeat of terrorist groups, no competent government. All of that will happen magically in the Palestinian state once it comes into existence. The use of brutal and inhuman violence will bring some nice rewards, while Israel’s reactions will bring it punishment — for it is crystal clear that without the October 7 attacks Macron, Starmer, Albanese, and Carney would not today be recognizing this imaginary state.”

In somber terms Israel is about to be saddled with something worse than the dreaded two-state solution. It will be a crude prototype. It will horribly embody the notorious ‘Three No’s’ in the Khartoum Resolution passed by the Arab League after defeat in the 6-Day War:

“No peace with Israel. No recognition of Israel. No negotiations with Israel.”

In 1967 today’s turncoat allies of Israel were babes in arms. They know nothing about “Three No’s.” Abu Mazen however does. As befits a three-headed god of Fatah, the PLO and the Palestinian Authority, he neither slumbers nor sleeps.

He allows his mask of moderation to drop from time to time. When talking in Arabic. Weeks before Oct 7, August 2023 to be exact, the gluttonous god, for the edification of Fatah, revised the Holocaust.

They say that Hitler killed the Jews because they were Jews and that Europe hated the Jews because they were Jews. Not true. It was clearly explained that [the Europeans] fought them because of their social role, and not their religion. Even Karl Marx said it was not true. He said that the enmity was not directed at Judaism as a religion but to Judaism for its social role. The [Europeans] fought against these people because of their role in society, which had to do with usury, money, and so on and so forth. Everybody knows that during World War I, Hitler was a sergeant. He said that he fought the Jews because they were dealing with usury and money. In his view, they were engaged in sabotage, and this is why he hated them.

This drove the late Martin Indyk, Obama’s former Israel Ambassador, to despair. How many know that the peace process offers a good career? Indyk’s had gone up in smoke. “How could someone who has treated me as a personal friend for three decades at the same time harbor such hateful views of my people?” he said.

Law Professor, Eugene Kontorovich was aghast at the American’s naivety.

“I don’t understand how someone who helped establish the two-state solution policy and defend it for three decades can be such a fool! Abbas wrote his dissertation denying the Holocaust, but he smiles at Martin Indyk and everything is good?”

But of course the left lacks self-awareness. Shortly after being gobsmacked, Indyk re-entered the ring to box Israeli ears for not loving the Pals as they love themselves.

“Israelis of all political views are coexisting in the same bubble of trauma, insecurity, fear, and worry. It makes them all incapable of hearing anybody or anything else. They are largely oblivious to the suffering of the Palestinians and seemingly uncaring about the rift with the United States, Israel’s only reliable friend in this crisis.”

Where political bias is a blinder, history is the educator. To leaders about to recognize Palestine there is no better educational guidance than, “Go to history oh sluggard. Consider her ways and be wise.”

The ways of Palestine history point where? British Prime Minister Kier Starmer knows nothing about partition plans going back to 1937, and cares about them even less, though during the week he’ll be partitioning Israelis and Palestinians. Back in the days no such collectives existed. Arab nationalists co-existed with Palestinian Jews. If time matters, that’s a big difference. Even 10 years later, at the time of the UN Partition Plan in 1947, the Palestinian people were 21 years away from being born.

What the hell — so what if a state planned for Arabs back in the days is not the same as the Palestine which France, Britain, Australia, Canada, Belgium, et al. are about to pull out of a hat. Humor them. Go to history, oh sluggard…

Attend the class of 47/48. Those are the years of the UN Partition Plan and aftermath. The plan was abandoned when Arab states tried to abort the Jewish state by invading it. But think. What would have happened had Israel lost and the Arabs won the 1948 War of Independence? What flag would flutter today outside the UN?

Those who put up their hands for the flag of Palestine are wrong. The lesson of 47/48 is that territory captured by the victorious Arab armies would not have been handed over to Arabs living in Palestine. Not at all. It would have been apportioned to the Arab invaders: Transjordan, Syria, Egypt, and Lebanon. Google all you like, but not a single Arab leader looked upon the Palestinian Arabs as a distinct people deserving a state to call their own. The pro-Arab British agreed, before turning off the lights on the Mandate.

In Palestine Betrayed, Professor Efraim Karsh quotes a British official to this effect.

“It does not appear that Arab Palestine will be an entity, but rather that the Arab countries will each claim a portion in return for their assistance [in the war against Israel].”

In Karsh’s book the British High Commissioner, Sir Alan Cunningham, tells his Colonial Secretary: “The most likely arrangement seems to be Eastern Galilee to Syria, Samaria and Hebron to Abdallah (of Transjordan), and the south to Egypt.”

Arab nationalists agreed, Karsh points out. Philip Hitti described their view to an Anglo-American commission in 1946. “There is no such thing as Palestine in history, absolutely not.”

So much for a mandatory class which delusional leaders of today can’t afford to miss.

And when Gaza and the West Bank fell to Egypt and Jordan in the course of that war? Were the spoils given over to local Arabs? They decidedly were not. The British, with their antisemitism and all, had their grubby fingers on the pulse.

Now proceed to the class of ’64. Remember at this time Israel is not the occupier of the West Bank and Gaza; Jordan and Egypt still are. And Palestinian Arabs feel more than comfortable with that arrangement. We know because they stated so in writing, in the National Covenant of the PLO dated May 28, 1964:

“This organization does not exercise any regional sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, in the Gaza Strip or the Himmah area.”

The PLO felt as happy as the day it was born. We like it that Judea, Samaria, East Jerusalem, and Gaza are ruled by Arab states. Leave them be.

Most people have attended the great class of ’67.  What was the takeaway lesson from this vintage year? The Six-Day War had ended in a stunning victory for Israel, and the UN Security Council passed Resolution 242. Land for peace would be the cornerstone of Arab-Israeli dialogue from there on. What land was that? Our ears prick. Was the UN preparing the ground for a Palestinian state? Quite impossible. It would be a perfect case of putting the cart before the horse. Plan for a nation state before the nation exists? Funny. Had we attended the class of ’68 we’d know that the Palestinians were a year away from seeing the light of day.

The UN Security Council knew so. Hence the territories it required Israel to evacuate would be  returned to the pre-1967 Arab occupiers, namely Egypt and Jordan. Sure, UN resolution 242 spoke of the need “for achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem.” Again our ears prick. Who were these problem refugees? Yes, they were Palestinian Arabs. But they were also a larger group of 850,000 Jews expelled from Arab states during and after the 1948 war. The international community agreed.

Western powers turned up offended noses at the idea of Palestinian statehood. As did the Arab supporting Soviets. Even the Arab world recoiled at the idea of a Palestinian state. Karsh relates how the Hashemite rulers of Jordan viewed it as a mortal threat to their own kingdom. The Saudis saw it as a possible source of extremism and instability. Pan-Arab nationalists were as adamantly opposed. They had their own designs on the land. In ’74, Syrian President Hafez al Assad openly referred to Palestine as “not only a part of the Arab homeland but a basic part of southern Syria.”

Poor Palestinians. What did they want? If no one fancied giving them a state, perhaps they fancied one.

Not at all. For a crucial class, attend Zahir Muhsein’s, the head of the PLO Military Department and a member of the PLO Executive.

In reality, today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct Palestinian people to oppose Zionism. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.

Why gape, unless you bunked the class of 48/50 given by Karsh.

“The collapse and dispersion of Palestinian society following the 1948 defeat prevented the crystallization of a national identity. Host Arab regimes actively colluded in discouraging it. Upon occupying the West Bank, King Abdallah of Jordan moved quickly to erase all traces of Palestinian identity.”

What about the people of Gaza? If no one gave them a second thought what did they want? We don’t rightly know. If they wanted to be citizens of Egypt the occupying power, it was most likely the furthest thing on Egypt’s mind.

So we come to the critical class of ’93. What did the Oslo Accords intend by paving the way for a Palestinian Authority? Did it presage a state of Palestine? Oslo contained nothing about a Palestinian state being the goal. The signatories allowed for a self-governing entity and no more. Yes the international community seemed to expect that the accords would evolve into a full-blown Palestine. How this expectation became a right and a demand is obvious. Realpolitik stepped in where a binding agreement feared to tread. And not far behind came treachery.

“Since we cannot defeat Israel in war, we do this in stages. We take any and every territory that we can of Palestine, and establish a sovereignty there, and we use it as a springboard to take more. When the time comes we can get the Arab nations to join us for the final blow against Israel.”

Yasser Arafat spoke these words on Jordanian TV on September 13, 1993, the same day he signed the Oslo Accords with Israel and shook hands on the White House Lawn.

The PLO never wanted two-states for two people. If it did then Arafat would not have signed inconclusive accords. Yet that is what he did. He never ever held out for a state of Palestine.

The PLO charter calls not for Israel to be a neighbor but for Israel to be eradicated. “The moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.”

We ignore history at our peril. Arafat, a native of Egypt, could not have been dreaming of Palestine for Palestinians. His dream was more grandiose, and for Israel more nightmarish. “When the time comes we can get the Arab nations to join us for the final blow against Israel.” Arafat was winking at the leaders of Egypt and Jordan and Lebanon and Syria, and who knows who else he was winking at while shaking hands on the deal.

Who will scramble to occupy Palestine we don’t rightly know. We do know that foreign leaders about to impose it on Israel bunked a history class or three.

READ MORE from Steven Apfel:

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