[American Thinker] The Biden administration thinks that a reformed Palestinian Authority (PA) could run a post-war Gaza Strip at peace with Israel.
But that ignores several inconvenient facts:
1) The latest poll of Palestinian public opinion shows that the PA is deeply unpopular.
2) The same poll shows that 72% of respondents supported the massacre of October 7. But somehow a new Palestinian state in Gaza would embrace coexisting with Israel?
3) The PA has an abysmal track record of corruption and was too weak to prevent a Hamas-led coup in Gaza, less than two years after Israel’s withdrawal. So why would the PA perform any better this next time?
4) The Gaza Strip has one of the highest population densities in the world and the problem will only get worse, thanks to an estimated population growth rate of 4% (among the highest in the world). A 2018 study by Mario Coccia found that "terrorism thrives ... with high growth rates of population combined with collective identity factors and low socioeconomic development."
5) The plan to create a post-war Palestinian state in Gaza would establish an unthinkable precedent with far-reaching consequences for global security: terrorist movements can now rape and behead their way to statehood.
6) There is no Arab or other power with the popularity, authority, and morality to educate for coexistence and to ensure that all reconstruction funds rebuild Gaza as Singapore instead of Somalia.
Yet the international community — including the U.S., EU, and U.N. — still clings to the delusional idea that if they just pressure Israel into accepting a future Palestinian state in Gaza, that the impoverished, overcrowded, and radicalized territory will suddenly flourish. |