As part of his plan to bring an end to the war in Gaza and peace to the Middle East, US President Donald Trump has foolishly decided to give the Palestinians yet another chance for statehood. The Palestinians don't deserve another chance. They've had plenty of opportunities already to achieve statehood: the Peel Commission (1937), the UN Partition plan (1947), the Camp David Summit (2000), the Taba Summit (2001), Prime Minister Olmert's offer (2008), and most recently, the "Deal of the Century" (2020) that Trump offered the Palestinians in his first term as president. Each time, the Palestinians said no, because their real objective has never been a two-state solution. Their real objective has always been the complete destruction of Israel and its replacement with an Arab state. As if the Arabs needed another country to add to the 21 that they already have now.
Nevertheless, Trump wants to be remembered as the man who brought peace to the Middle East, and he knows that if he wants the Arab countries to normalize relations with Israel, he must acquiesce to their demand for a pathway towards a Palestinian state. The Arab states would be wise to drop this condition, however, because it doesn't make sense for them to continue supporting the Palestinians any longer if they are truly interested in peace.
Why do the Arab states still insist on Palestinian statehood anyway? What have the Palestinians ever done for them? Indeed, everywhere the Palestinians go, trouble always seems to follow. In 1970, they tried to overthrow the Jordanian government. In 1982, they caused Israel to invade Lebanon by attacking the Jewish state from Lebanese territory. In 1991, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat backed Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, prompting the Kuwaiti government to expel 200,000 Palestinians after the country was liberated. And let's not forget the billions of dollars in aid the Arab states have given the Palestinians – aid that could have turned the Gaza Strip into the Middle East's Singapore, but instead, was used to build tunnels and buy weapons for attacking Israel. To make a long story short, the Palestinians have caused their Arab brethren nothing but headaches.
Yet, most Arab states still demand that the Palestinians be given a state in exchange for normalizing relations with Israel. In reality, the Arab states have only cared about the Palestinians to the extent that they could use them against Israel, to pressure Israel into agreeing to the "right of return" by which millions of Palestinians would flood the Jewish state, negating the country's Jewish majority, and therefore, the Jewish state itself. This is why the Arab states have kept 1.5 million Palestinians in squalid refugee camps to this day, and refused to give the Palestinians citizenship or any other basic rights. It's also why, despite the mass casualties and relentless suffering that have plagued the Palestinians of Gaza for the last two years, not one Arab country has offered them refuge.
Inasmuch as Arab leaders don't care about the Palestinians, however, they know that many of their people do care. Indeed, the Palestinian cause still resonates with multitudes of ordinary Arab citizens. And although tyrants and dictators govern the entire Arab world, even tyrants and dictators sometimes have to be cognizant of the mood on the street, lest their people rise up against them.
That being said, no Arab government has ever been overthrown for making peace with Israel, despite the issue of the Palestinians not being resolved. And if any Arab dictator in power now is overthrown in the near future, it almost certainly won't be because of their negation of the Palestinian cause. Thus, the Arab states really have no rationale to continue demanding statehood for the Palestinians as a condition for peace with Israel – unless, of course, they haven't given up using the Palestinians to attack Israel's existence, in which case they are not really interested in peace.
