Who Really Denied Statehood to the Palestinian People?

by Alan M. Dershowitz • January 12, 2025 at 5:00 am

Israel agreed to Palestinian statehood in 1937-1938, 1947-1948, 1967, 2000-2001, and 2007. In each case, it was the Palestinian leadership that refused to agree to the two-state solution....
The Jews accepted the [1937] Peel partition plan, while the Arabs categorically rejected it, demanding that all of Palestine be placed under Arab control and that most of the Jewish population of Palestine be "transferred" — ethnically cleansed — out of the country...
The Jewish leadership [in 1948] declared statehood in the area allocated to it by the UN. The Arab leadership responded by declaring a genocidal war against the new state of the Jewish people. They did not want a Palestinian state. And they wanted there to be no Jewish state.
No one, therefore, should believe that it was Israel that has made the Palestinian people stateless. It was the Palestinians themselves... The current anti-Israel protesters in the West are not calling for a Palestinian state living in peace alongside Israel. They, like the failed Palestinian leadership, just wants to end Israel's existence. It is not going to happen. Until the Palestinians recognize this reality, they will be denying themselves any possibility of statehood.

In 1937, the Jews accepted the partition plan of the Peel Commission, while the Arabs categorically rejected it, demanding that all of Palestine be placed under Arab control and that most of the Jewish population of Palestine be "transferred" — ethnically cleansed — out of the country. Pictured: Lord William Peel (right) and Sir Horace Rumbold (left) leave the British War Cemetery on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem in 1936, as part of their work on the Peel Commission. (Image source: Library of Congress)

One of the most pervasive myths of the Palestinian protest movement is that Israel has denied statehood to the Palestinian people. To the contrary, Israel agreed to Palestinian statehood in 1937-1938, 1947-1948, 1967, 2000-2001, and 2007. In each case, it was the Palestinian leadership that refused to agree to the two-state solution that would have created a Palestinian state, alongside a state for Jewish inhabitants.

In 1937 – in the midst of the terrorist revolt inspired by Adolf Hitler's ally, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem – the British published the Palestine Royal Commission Report (also known as the Peel Commission Report).

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Iran: Fitting Pieces of the Wrong-existent Puzzle

by Amir Taheri • January 12, 2025 at 4:00 am

Henry Kissinger took a walk up the garden path with his naïve understanding of détente that implied equivalence between the Soviet Union and the "Free World" led by the United States, and arguably helped prolong the life of the Evil Empire.
[T]he question that Obama and Kerry didn't tackle was why the mullahs might want to build a bomb and that, if they did, what they might do with it.
Here is what ["Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenei] says: "The assumption that the country's problems can be solved through talks or even relations with America, is a manifest error. America has fundamental problems with the very nature of our regime.... In other words, they want us to become an ordinary country, something that a system created by Imam Khomeini can never be!"
Accept Iran on its own terms, warts and all, and do not fall for the fetishistic diplomatic claptrap peddled by Obama, Malley and Kerry.

(Image source: iStock)

As they prepare to leave office, some members of the Biden administration are penning op-eds and making speeches to advise the incoming Trump team on a range of issues. The gist of their message is simple: Do what we tried to do but failed!

One such issue is the perennial headache that Iran has caused eight US presidents over almost half a century.

One outgoing official, Richard Nephew, who headed the Iran desk in the National Security Council, calls for "dialogue and negotiations" with the enthusiasm of a street urchin looking at a candy store's window.

His enthusiasm has found an echo among the new presidential team in Tehran. Muhammad Reza Aref, who has self-upgraded to "Vice President" for President Masoud Pezeshkian, writes: "We are keen on dialogue and negotiations," and adds that diplomacy provides the key to all problems

(He is an assistant to president as there is no vice-presidential post in the Khomeinist system.)

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