via Palestinian Statehood? by Louis René Beres
The Palestinian Liberation Organization [PLO], forerunner of today’s Palestinian Authority, was founded in 1964, three years before Israel came into the unintended control of the West Bank and Gaza. What therefore was the PLO planning to “liberate”?
Why does no one expect the Palestinians to cease all deliberate and random violence against Israeli civilians before being considered for admission to statehood?
On June 30, 1922, a joint resolution of both Houses of Congress of the United States endorsed a “Mandate for Palestine,” confirming the right of Jews to settle anywhere they chose between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. This is the core American legacy of support for a Jewish State that President Obama now somehow fails to recall.
A sovereign state of Palestine, as identified by the Arabs — a Muslim land occupied by “Palestinian” Arabs — has never existed; not before 1948, and not before 1967. From the start, it was, and continues to be, the Arab states — not Israel — that became the core impediment to Palestinian sovereignty.