"The other is permanently chained to the past." Islam is living in the 7th-century and unless the so-called "Palestinians" enter the modern world their endless resistance will continue while NOT building a better world for their people who live in squalor by choice.
I think of the flip side being Arab Israelis who are citizens of a COUNTRY they have helped build and have become an essential part of healthcare and hospitality among other areas of Israeli society. Yes, there is prejudice and maybe some legitimate discrimination but they vote in the Knesset, have equal rights and free speech. The average Arab who resides in the State of Israel as a full citizen has on average, the highest standard of living in the Arab world.
Those two words are great and the substack is excellent, but there is another word that separates the two factions. It is JEALOUSY on the part of those who have wasted their lives fighting the successes of not only the Israel of today, but Jews in general. They have been willing to destroy their own lives and that of their children for years because of envy as well as ignorance!
Vanessa, this is one of the most beautiful essays about Israel and her opponents I’ve ever read. It’s another of what I consider “must read “ pieces that have appeared on Substack as you’ve framed the conflict in a way that clarifies basic differences in identities and aspirations of the two sides. It’s an important and irrefutable analysis. I can’t thank you enough.
Vanessa, as you have so clearly explained, ‘independence’ and ‘resistance’ are an excellent choice of words when comparing the path of Israel and the palestinians.
I’d like to add two other contributing factors .. even before 1937, in 1922, Britain gave 78% of the British Mandated Palestine to Transjordan, which became Jordan. These are the very same Arabs of the region, ie palestinian, so some would rightly say, Jordan is the ‘second state’ of any two state solution.
Wars lead to refugees, and from the war of independence in 1948, and from 1967, Arabs found themselves in many different countries. George Deek, from a Jaffa based palestinian Christian family, his family became Israeli, as they did not flee. His cousins that managed to get to Canada became Canadian citizens which was passed to subsequent generations, but any of the Arabs that fled to Lebanon or Syria, have never been allowed to take citizenship or to own land in those countries. They have been badly treated by the like of the UN & UNRWA, and are the only refugees in the world permitted to pass refugee status to subsequent generations. This has compounded their problems, which together with the resistance mentality pursued by their leaders, has only served to intensify their victim mentality.
Thank you for the article. In my view, the Israeli - Palestinian conflict can be summed up as a conflict between those who respect and value freedom and individual rights (Israel) and those who, because they are Islam driven, hate, fear and try to destroy freedom and individual rights (Palestinians). That's why as a non Jew, I support Israel.
Resistance is a more palatable word for Western progressive consumption than jihad. But this is the never ending jihad where, as Hamas leaders have put it, Jewish sovereignty over one square centimeter is too much for Islamist theology. Mohammed massacred and drove out the Jews from Arabia, and Israel was once conquered in his name, so therefore a Jewish state is unacceptable for all time. Non religious people deny that this is a religious war, but it is time to face the truth. Iran and Qatar are the current sponsors of this holy war.
Superb analysis. Unfortunately, creating a successful society of which they could be proud is not in their DNA. It is an example of a negative epigenetic change to a population. It is remarkable that the Palestinians destroyed anything Jewish when Israel left Gaza and then used countless billions to build a subterranean terrorist center instead of creating a paradise on the Mediterranean Sea.
“Imagine a Palestinian national movement whose central slogan was not about return, revenge, resistance, or liberation “from the river to the sea,” but something painfully ordinary: We are going to build the most successful Arab society in the Middle East.“
Absolutely outstanding article; nothing left to say except to ask why „The West“ remains to stand on the side of absolutely negative losers and haters. Perhaps emblematic of present and future of the „Free West“.
Thank you for writing this. It is one of the clearest and most compelling summaries of the conflict’s central tragedy that I have read in some time.
Your distinction between independence and resistance captures something essential. Zionism ultimately succeeded because it learned to convert memory into agency, longing into institutions, and imperfect opportunities into a functioning state. Palestinian nationalism, by contrast, has too often made the preservation of grievance—and the reversal of Jewish sovereignty—more sacred than the difficult, unromantic work of building a viable Palestinian future.
The deepest truth in it is this: no Palestinian strategy centered on undoing 1948 can deliver a decent Palestinian future. Israel is permanent, Jewish self-determination is legitimate, and Palestinian leaders have repeatedly harmed their own people by refusing to say those things unequivocally.
I do have a few caveats. I would hesitate to make this distinction quite as absolute as the essay sometimes does. Palestinian politics has also produced genuine institution-builders and, beginning in 1988 and continuing through Oslo, at least part of the Palestinian national movement formally accepted partition and recognized Israel. Those efforts were compromised by terrorism, incitement, corruption, internal division and a persistent unwillingness to prepare Palestinians emotionally for the permanence of Jewish sovereignty—but they were real.
Likewise, Palestinian rejectionism is not the entire explanation for the absence of a Palestinian state. The catastrophe of 1948, subsequent occupation, Israeli settlement policy, Arab-state interference and the growth of Israeli territorial maximalism are also parts of the history. Recognizing those facts does not excuse Palestinian choices. It makes the tragedy more complete.
I also think the Arab rejection of partition, disastrous though it proved to be, should be understood rather than reduced entirely to hatred of Jews. Palestinian Arabs saw themselves as the country’s majority population and regarded partition as an outside power awarding much of their homeland to a largely immigrant national movement. Their grievance was not imaginary. Their historic failure was responding to that grievance by gambling everything on preventing Jewish sovereignty—and repeatedly sacrificing an achievable future to an irrecoverable past.
So I read this less as a complete history of the conflict than as a devastating diagnosis of one of its central pathologies. Palestinians do not need to forget the Nakba, surrender their identity or abandon their legitimate demand for self-determination. But they do need a national movement capable of treating Israel as a permanent neighbor rather than a temporary injustice.
The real Palestinian revolution will come when building Palestine matters more than reversing Israel. On that central point, I think you are profoundly right.
Palestinian rejectionism is certainly part of the political context in which settlement developed, but it does not absolve Israel of agency over its own policies. Settlements have also been driven by religious conviction, territorial ambition, security doctrine and domestic politics—and some continued expanding during periods when the Palestinian leadership was formally negotiating a two-state settlement.
In any case, I did not argue that settlements caused the conflict. They plainly did not; the conflict and Arab rejection of Jewish sovereignty predate 1967. I argued that settlement policy is one factor making Palestinian statehood more difficult today. Both propositions can be true: Palestinian rejectionism has been disastrous, and Israeli settlement policy is an Israeli choice with consequences of its own.
The Palestinians have forfeited their entitlement to a state on the entire West Bank through their actions. They may still get a state in the future, but that will require a complete reversal in their national culture to one of acceptance of less than they want. The West Bank was never automatically "Palestinian" territory; it became empty of Jews only because Jordan conquered it in 1948 and expelled all he Jews who had not been killed (including those who had lived in Hebron for many hundreds of years). To say that Jews shouldn't live in the heartland of Judea, our historical land to which we have thousands of years of connection, is racist.
If a real, genuine, peaceful, democratic Palestinian state were to be formed, then Jewish towns could be in such a state, just as many Arab Muslim towns are in Israel. If Arabs can be given full civil rights in Israel as they are, why could Jews not remain in a future "Palestine" and be given the same full civil rights? If the answer is that this is not realistic, why not? Because the Palestinian Arabs reject having Jews in their midst, and are oppressive an undemocratic? That answer speaks for itself.
We already had a 2-state solution: Gaza was given full independence when Israel pulled all Israelis out in 2005. It could have been turned into another Singapore, and Israel would have been delighted, and there would be no restrictions on who or what went in or out. Instead, we see what happened. The blame is 100% on the Palestinians for that.
I agree with more of this than you may realize. Palestinian rejectionism has repeatedly cost Palestinians territory, opportunity and Israeli trust. The 2005 withdrawal offered a historic chance to demonstrate that relinquished territory could become a foundation for peaceful development. Hamas instead turned Gaza into an armed, authoritarian enclave and inflicted disaster upon both Israelis and Palestinians. That failure cannot be evaded.
I also fully recognize the Jewish connection to Judea and Samaria, including the destruction of ancient Jewish communities and Jordan’s expulsion of Jews from the territory it conquered in 1948. I have never argued that Jews have no right to live there. In a genuine peace, I would hope Jews could remain under Palestinian sovereignty with equal rights, just as Arab citizens live under Israeli sovereignty.
But that is different from saying every settlement established and supported by the Israeli state is therefore prudent, lawful or conducive to partition. Jewish history establishes an authentic claim and connection; it does not by itself resolve the competing political claims of another population living on the same land.
Nor was Gaza given full independence. Israel removed its settlements and permanent ground presence, but retained control over its airspace, coastline and much of its external access. That does not excuse Hamas’s choices. It simply means that “Israel withdrew” and “Gaza became fully sovereign” are not identical statements.
Finally, peoples do not forfeit their permanent right to self-determination through the crimes or failures of their leaders. They can forfeit opportunities, borders, confidence and political goodwill—and Palestinian leaders have done all four with astonishing consistency. My argument is not that Palestinians are presently prepared for unrestricted sovereignty. It is that Israel’s security and legitimacy are better served by demanding a radically transformed Palestinian national culture than by concluding that no Palestinian national future can ever be legitimate.
You're starting from faulty premises and constructing a logical but completely incorrect story.
First, there's no such thing as "Palestinian nationalism." It's pan-Arab nationalism masquerading as "Palestinianism" because it makes it easier to advance their demands and justify everything they do.
Second, none of them have any desire for statehood, even with the existence of quasi-state institutions. Neither the population nor the rulers aspire to it, because statehood (paradoxically!) would greatly worsen their situation, if not destroy them.
Third, you're completely misidentifying the causes and forms of settlement movements. And you forget that the area where the Palestinian Authority (a quasi-state) now stands is called Judea and Samaria, every kilometer of which contains the memory, artifacts, history, and soul of the Jewish people. You simply ignore this fact, but when it comes to the spiritual connection of East Jerusalem with Islam (no one mentions the "Palestinians"), no one doubts the right of the Arabs to be in this territory (including the State of Israel).
WRONG! “Palestinian” circa 1964! The entire Arab calculus has been to achieve a “Palestinian State” without a Jewish State/Israel! These Arabs can relocate anywhere else including Jordan!! You also forget to mention how these Arab leaders amassed billions of dollars while the ordinary people live in squalor - a bunch of f..ing dimwits!
“A culture of resistance asks: What did they take from us? Who is to blame? How do we make them pay?”
The phenomenon we are dealing with is grievance identity becoming grudge politics becoming revenge policy becoming Harm greater than the original grievance.
Many Jewish opinion pieces use the phrase “Palestinian nationalism.” There are two elements underlying this phrase. The first concerns Realpolitik. It says as most people accept Palestine and Palestinians as legitimate entities and Palestinian nationalism as a legitimate political movement (including Jews, so it must be so); therefore, there can no question about their legitimacy.
The second one follows a more rigorous sociological, historical, and legal approach. It asks whether or not these terms meet the standard definition and legal requirements to constitute what they claim to be.
I would be happy to objectively demonstrate empirically through verifiable evidence and logic that Palestine, Palestinian, and Palestinian nationalism are recent artificial constructs manufactured for propaganda purposes ultimately not to establish a Palestinian state but an Arab nationalist Caliphate whose declared goal is supremacism. Please ask for details.
An error in claim needs to be corrected here. It is “The Palestinian Arab leadership made a different choice . . .” It wasn’t the Palestinian Arab leadership that rejected partition but the Arab League, more specifically the five Arab nations that attacked Israel on May 14, 1948. There was no such thing as a Palestinian Arab leadership.
Regarding “two national movements” viz. Jewish and Palestinian, it needs to be noted that a national movement is based on the existence of a national group. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, a national group is a collection of people who share a distinct identity based on common nationality, country of origin, or national background. A common nationality presupposes a pre-existing country. By none of these standards do the Arabs of Judea, Samaria, and even Gaza qualify as “Palestinian nationals” or even "Palestinians" for that matter. If they don't meet the standards their claim to be a national movement is spurious. Le us just say it is an example of taqiyyah hard at work here.
As the author so astutely observed, "the Palestine Liberation Organization’s original charter explicitly stated that the organization exercised no territorial sovereignty over Judea and Samaria, which was then controlled by Jordan, or Gaza, which was then administered by Egypt."
Ergo no Palestine. Ergo no legitimate Palestinian nationalism.
Sadly what you understand about the conflict is based on lies, mainly told and promoted by the Arab States. In 1947-48 Israel was happy to accept a two state solution, but Jordan, Egypt and Syria wanted the land for themselves. If they had won there was never going to be an independent Palestine. https://jbgptmilitaryhistory.substack.com/p/1948-arab-states-did-not-want-an
"The other is permanently chained to the past." Islam is living in the 7th-century and unless the so-called "Palestinians" enter the modern world their endless resistance will continue while NOT building a better world for their people who live in squalor by choice.
I think of the flip side being Arab Israelis who are citizens of a COUNTRY they have helped build and have become an essential part of healthcare and hospitality among other areas of Israeli society. Yes, there is prejudice and maybe some legitimate discrimination but they vote in the Knesset, have equal rights and free speech. The average Arab who resides in the State of Israel as a full citizen has on average, the highest standard of living in the Arab world.
Brilliant
Those two words are great and the substack is excellent, but there is another word that separates the two factions. It is JEALOUSY on the part of those who have wasted their lives fighting the successes of not only the Israel of today, but Jews in general. They have been willing to destroy their own lives and that of their children for years because of envy as well as ignorance!
Vanessa, this is one of the most beautiful essays about Israel and her opponents I’ve ever read. It’s another of what I consider “must read “ pieces that have appeared on Substack as you’ve framed the conflict in a way that clarifies basic differences in identities and aspirations of the two sides. It’s an important and irrefutable analysis. I can’t thank you enough.
Vanessa, as you have so clearly explained, ‘independence’ and ‘resistance’ are an excellent choice of words when comparing the path of Israel and the palestinians.
I’d like to add two other contributing factors .. even before 1937, in 1922, Britain gave 78% of the British Mandated Palestine to Transjordan, which became Jordan. These are the very same Arabs of the region, ie palestinian, so some would rightly say, Jordan is the ‘second state’ of any two state solution.
Wars lead to refugees, and from the war of independence in 1948, and from 1967, Arabs found themselves in many different countries. George Deek, from a Jaffa based palestinian Christian family, his family became Israeli, as they did not flee. His cousins that managed to get to Canada became Canadian citizens which was passed to subsequent generations, but any of the Arabs that fled to Lebanon or Syria, have never been allowed to take citizenship or to own land in those countries. They have been badly treated by the like of the UN & UNRWA, and are the only refugees in the world permitted to pass refugee status to subsequent generations. This has compounded their problems, which together with the resistance mentality pursued by their leaders, has only served to intensify their victim mentality.
Excellent
Thank you for the article. In my view, the Israeli - Palestinian conflict can be summed up as a conflict between those who respect and value freedom and individual rights (Israel) and those who, because they are Islam driven, hate, fear and try to destroy freedom and individual rights (Palestinians). That's why as a non Jew, I support Israel.
At a press conference on January 18, 2024, Netanyahu said:
“This conflict is not about the lack of a state, a Palestinian state, but about the existence of a state, a Jewish state.”
Resistance is a more palatable word for Western progressive consumption than jihad. But this is the never ending jihad where, as Hamas leaders have put it, Jewish sovereignty over one square centimeter is too much for Islamist theology. Mohammed massacred and drove out the Jews from Arabia, and Israel was once conquered in his name, so therefore a Jewish state is unacceptable for all time. Non religious people deny that this is a religious war, but it is time to face the truth. Iran and Qatar are the current sponsors of this holy war.
Clear, concise,true. You can add intractable victimhood to the Arab side.
"Resistance" also includes "What did our enemies build that we can steal?" Recent rumblings about the crude oil Israel discovered are an example.
Superb analysis. Unfortunately, creating a successful society of which they could be proud is not in their DNA. It is an example of a negative epigenetic change to a population. It is remarkable that the Palestinians destroyed anything Jewish when Israel left Gaza and then used countless billions to build a subterranean terrorist center instead of creating a paradise on the Mediterranean Sea.
Excellent.
“Imagine a Palestinian national movement whose central slogan was not about return, revenge, resistance, or liberation “from the river to the sea,” but something painfully ordinary: We are going to build the most successful Arab society in the Middle East.“
Right on Big Rock Candy Mountain. Lyrics here:
https://genius.com/Harry-mcclintock-big-rock-candy-mountain-lyrics
Absolutely outstanding article; nothing left to say except to ask why „The West“ remains to stand on the side of absolutely negative losers and haters. Perhaps emblematic of present and future of the „Free West“.
Thank you for writing this. It is one of the clearest and most compelling summaries of the conflict’s central tragedy that I have read in some time.
Your distinction between independence and resistance captures something essential. Zionism ultimately succeeded because it learned to convert memory into agency, longing into institutions, and imperfect opportunities into a functioning state. Palestinian nationalism, by contrast, has too often made the preservation of grievance—and the reversal of Jewish sovereignty—more sacred than the difficult, unromantic work of building a viable Palestinian future.
The deepest truth in it is this: no Palestinian strategy centered on undoing 1948 can deliver a decent Palestinian future. Israel is permanent, Jewish self-determination is legitimate, and Palestinian leaders have repeatedly harmed their own people by refusing to say those things unequivocally.
I do have a few caveats. I would hesitate to make this distinction quite as absolute as the essay sometimes does. Palestinian politics has also produced genuine institution-builders and, beginning in 1988 and continuing through Oslo, at least part of the Palestinian national movement formally accepted partition and recognized Israel. Those efforts were compromised by terrorism, incitement, corruption, internal division and a persistent unwillingness to prepare Palestinians emotionally for the permanence of Jewish sovereignty—but they were real.
Likewise, Palestinian rejectionism is not the entire explanation for the absence of a Palestinian state. The catastrophe of 1948, subsequent occupation, Israeli settlement policy, Arab-state interference and the growth of Israeli territorial maximalism are also parts of the history. Recognizing those facts does not excuse Palestinian choices. It makes the tragedy more complete.
I also think the Arab rejection of partition, disastrous though it proved to be, should be understood rather than reduced entirely to hatred of Jews. Palestinian Arabs saw themselves as the country’s majority population and regarded partition as an outside power awarding much of their homeland to a largely immigrant national movement. Their grievance was not imaginary. Their historic failure was responding to that grievance by gambling everything on preventing Jewish sovereignty—and repeatedly sacrificing an achievable future to an irrecoverable past.
So I read this less as a complete history of the conflict than as a devastating diagnosis of one of its central pathologies. Palestinians do not need to forget the Nakba, surrender their identity or abandon their legitimate demand for self-determination. But they do need a national movement capable of treating Israel as a permanent neighbor rather than a temporary injustice.
The real Palestinian revolution will come when building Palestine matters more than reversing Israel. On that central point, I think you are profoundly right.
Israel's settlement policy is the CONSEQUENCE of Palestinian rejectionism, not the cause.
Palestinian rejectionism is certainly part of the political context in which settlement developed, but it does not absolve Israel of agency over its own policies. Settlements have also been driven by religious conviction, territorial ambition, security doctrine and domestic politics—and some continued expanding during periods when the Palestinian leadership was formally negotiating a two-state settlement.
In any case, I did not argue that settlements caused the conflict. They plainly did not; the conflict and Arab rejection of Jewish sovereignty predate 1967. I argued that settlement policy is one factor making Palestinian statehood more difficult today. Both propositions can be true: Palestinian rejectionism has been disastrous, and Israeli settlement policy is an Israeli choice with consequences of its own.
The Palestinians have forfeited their entitlement to a state on the entire West Bank through their actions. They may still get a state in the future, but that will require a complete reversal in their national culture to one of acceptance of less than they want. The West Bank was never automatically "Palestinian" territory; it became empty of Jews only because Jordan conquered it in 1948 and expelled all he Jews who had not been killed (including those who had lived in Hebron for many hundreds of years). To say that Jews shouldn't live in the heartland of Judea, our historical land to which we have thousands of years of connection, is racist.
If a real, genuine, peaceful, democratic Palestinian state were to be formed, then Jewish towns could be in such a state, just as many Arab Muslim towns are in Israel. If Arabs can be given full civil rights in Israel as they are, why could Jews not remain in a future "Palestine" and be given the same full civil rights? If the answer is that this is not realistic, why not? Because the Palestinian Arabs reject having Jews in their midst, and are oppressive an undemocratic? That answer speaks for itself.
We already had a 2-state solution: Gaza was given full independence when Israel pulled all Israelis out in 2005. It could have been turned into another Singapore, and Israel would have been delighted, and there would be no restrictions on who or what went in or out. Instead, we see what happened. The blame is 100% on the Palestinians for that.
I agree with more of this than you may realize. Palestinian rejectionism has repeatedly cost Palestinians territory, opportunity and Israeli trust. The 2005 withdrawal offered a historic chance to demonstrate that relinquished territory could become a foundation for peaceful development. Hamas instead turned Gaza into an armed, authoritarian enclave and inflicted disaster upon both Israelis and Palestinians. That failure cannot be evaded.
I also fully recognize the Jewish connection to Judea and Samaria, including the destruction of ancient Jewish communities and Jordan’s expulsion of Jews from the territory it conquered in 1948. I have never argued that Jews have no right to live there. In a genuine peace, I would hope Jews could remain under Palestinian sovereignty with equal rights, just as Arab citizens live under Israeli sovereignty.
But that is different from saying every settlement established and supported by the Israeli state is therefore prudent, lawful or conducive to partition. Jewish history establishes an authentic claim and connection; it does not by itself resolve the competing political claims of another population living on the same land.
Nor was Gaza given full independence. Israel removed its settlements and permanent ground presence, but retained control over its airspace, coastline and much of its external access. That does not excuse Hamas’s choices. It simply means that “Israel withdrew” and “Gaza became fully sovereign” are not identical statements.
Finally, peoples do not forfeit their permanent right to self-determination through the crimes or failures of their leaders. They can forfeit opportunities, borders, confidence and political goodwill—and Palestinian leaders have done all four with astonishing consistency. My argument is not that Palestinians are presently prepared for unrestricted sovereignty. It is that Israel’s security and legitimacy are better served by demanding a radically transformed Palestinian national culture than by concluding that no Palestinian national future can ever be legitimate.
You're starting from faulty premises and constructing a logical but completely incorrect story.
First, there's no such thing as "Palestinian nationalism." It's pan-Arab nationalism masquerading as "Palestinianism" because it makes it easier to advance their demands and justify everything they do.
Second, none of them have any desire for statehood, even with the existence of quasi-state institutions. Neither the population nor the rulers aspire to it, because statehood (paradoxically!) would greatly worsen their situation, if not destroy them.
Third, you're completely misidentifying the causes and forms of settlement movements. And you forget that the area where the Palestinian Authority (a quasi-state) now stands is called Judea and Samaria, every kilometer of which contains the memory, artifacts, history, and soul of the Jewish people. You simply ignore this fact, but when it comes to the spiritual connection of East Jerusalem with Islam (no one mentions the "Palestinians"), no one doubts the right of the Arabs to be in this territory (including the State of Israel).
WRONG! “Palestinian” circa 1964! The entire Arab calculus has been to achieve a “Palestinian State” without a Jewish State/Israel! These Arabs can relocate anywhere else including Jordan!! You also forget to mention how these Arab leaders amassed billions of dollars while the ordinary people live in squalor - a bunch of f..ing dimwits!
“A culture of resistance asks: What did they take from us? Who is to blame? How do we make them pay?”
The phenomenon we are dealing with is grievance identity becoming grudge politics becoming revenge policy becoming Harm greater than the original grievance.
Many Jewish opinion pieces use the phrase “Palestinian nationalism.” There are two elements underlying this phrase. The first concerns Realpolitik. It says as most people accept Palestine and Palestinians as legitimate entities and Palestinian nationalism as a legitimate political movement (including Jews, so it must be so); therefore, there can no question about their legitimacy.
The second one follows a more rigorous sociological, historical, and legal approach. It asks whether or not these terms meet the standard definition and legal requirements to constitute what they claim to be.
I would be happy to objectively demonstrate empirically through verifiable evidence and logic that Palestine, Palestinian, and Palestinian nationalism are recent artificial constructs manufactured for propaganda purposes ultimately not to establish a Palestinian state but an Arab nationalist Caliphate whose declared goal is supremacism. Please ask for details.
An error in claim needs to be corrected here. It is “The Palestinian Arab leadership made a different choice . . .” It wasn’t the Palestinian Arab leadership that rejected partition but the Arab League, more specifically the five Arab nations that attacked Israel on May 14, 1948. There was no such thing as a Palestinian Arab leadership.
Regarding “two national movements” viz. Jewish and Palestinian, it needs to be noted that a national movement is based on the existence of a national group. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, a national group is a collection of people who share a distinct identity based on common nationality, country of origin, or national background. A common nationality presupposes a pre-existing country. By none of these standards do the Arabs of Judea, Samaria, and even Gaza qualify as “Palestinian nationals” or even "Palestinians" for that matter. If they don't meet the standards their claim to be a national movement is spurious. Le us just say it is an example of taqiyyah hard at work here.
As the author so astutely observed, "the Palestine Liberation Organization’s original charter explicitly stated that the organization exercised no territorial sovereignty over Judea and Samaria, which was then controlled by Jordan, or Gaza, which was then administered by Egypt."
Ergo no Palestine. Ergo no legitimate Palestinian nationalism.
Sadly what you understand about the conflict is based on lies, mainly told and promoted by the Arab States. In 1947-48 Israel was happy to accept a two state solution, but Jordan, Egypt and Syria wanted the land for themselves. If they had won there was never going to be an independent Palestine. https://jbgptmilitaryhistory.substack.com/p/1948-arab-states-did-not-want-an
Your link is a great compliment to this particular SubStack piece!