1.
On Friday, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas visited Rome, where he was warmly received as a head of state. Since the establishment of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Italy has been deeply invested in the idea of a Palestinian state. Only a handful of Italian politicians dare to say the truth, that this idea exists only in the European imagination; even the Arabs do not truly believe in it.
Abbas repeated the same statements his hosts wanted to hear: "We want to live in our own state alongside Israel, which we recognized in 1988 and in the 1993 Oslo Accords, as a state and as a territory." Like all Europeans, the Italians are careful to distinguish between the "moderate" Abbas and the Hamas terrorist organization, and between Ramallah and Gaza. These kinds of statements make that artificial separation easier to sustain.
2.
For decades, people have been talking about the "two-state solution," as Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni also did in her statement after meeting with Abbas. But in both Abbas' declaration and Meloni's remarks, half the phrase was missing, "for two peoples." The premise of the Oslo Accords was that two national movements lie at the root of the conflict: the Jewish Zionist and the Palestinian, struggling over the same territory. The logic went that if they divided the land, peace would follow.
Yet while Israel recognized the national identity of the Palestinians, they have never recognized the Jews as a people entitled to national self-determination. It is almost absurd when one considers that the Palestinian people did not truly exist before Israel captured Judea, Samaria and east Jerusalem in 1967. Until then, those territories were controlled by Jordan and Egypt. Why, then, was no Palestinian state established at that time?
The answer is simple: Despite Abbas' sweet words, the Palestinians never wanted a state of their own alongside Israel. They only wanted a state instead of Israel. Had the Jews lost the 1948 War of Independence, the Arabs of the region would have slaughtered them as they did on October 7, and then divided the spoils and land among themselves, southern Syria, northern Egypt and western Jordan. "Palestine" was never meant to be a distinct Arab homeland, but an antisemitic psychological construct, a name the Romans in the second century deliberately gave this land in place of "Judea" (or "Israel") to erase the link between the Jewish people and their land.
3.
It is not only Hamas that denies the Jewish people's existence as a nation; Abbas does too. Article 20 of the Palestinian National Charter explicitly states: "Judaism, being a divine religion, is not an independent nationality. Likewise, the Jews are not one people with an independent personality; they are citizens of the states to which they belong." This clause in the official document of the Palestinian Authority has never been amended. It asserts that the Jews, one of the world's most ancient peoples, are merely adherents of a religion, not a nation, and therefore have no right to their own homeland.
This is why when Abbas speaks before European audiences about recognizing Israel, he does not recognize it as a Jewish state, meaning, he does not recognize the Jewish people's right to their ancestral land. The consequence is that even if a Palestinian state were established, as in the European fantasy, the conflict with the Jews would continue.
Every survey conducted in the Palestinian Authority shows a solid majority supporting Hamas and its atrocities. The cruel irony is that Abbas himself has encouraged such support: His government pays lifelong stipends to terrorists who murder Jews and to their families, with the payments determined by the number of Jews killed. This is a formal budget item, signed and defended by Abbas despite international pressure to abolish it.
4.
And a geographical note: Gaza lies at sea level, while Ramallah sits at an altitude of about 900 meters, overlooking Israel's main population centers and its international airport. Supporting the establishment of a Palestinian state there is equivalent to calling for Israel's suicide. After the October 7 massacre, there is a broad Israeli consensus against this reckless idea.
Some 32 kilometers east of the Italian prime minister's residence in Rome stands Monte Gennaro, at an elevation of about 1,200 meters. Would the Italians agree to the creation of an entity modeled on Nazi Germany atop that mountain, one devoted to their annihilation? The answer is obviously no, and that same clarity should guide policymakers in Rome when it comes to Israel.
