Wrong, Sen. Warren - creating a PA state is not 'official US policy'

Stephen M. Flatow: Wrong, Sen. Warren - creating a PA state is not 'official US policy'

Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Elizabeth Warren has to get her facts straight when it comes to creating a state out of the Palestinian Authority.

My latest column on Arutz Sheva deals with Senator Elizabeth Warren's belief that the so-called "two state solution" is official US government policy.

Here's the column:

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren has raised eyebrows with her not-so-subtle threat to withhold U.S. aid from Israel in order to extract Israeli concessions. But there was another disturbing element to Warren’s statement that is being overlooked.

“It is the official policy of the United States of America to support a two-state solution, and if Israel is moving in the opposite direction, then everything is on the table,” Warren said at an Iowa campaign event this past week, in response to a question about whether she would use aid to pressure Israel.

“Official U.S. policy”?  Not even close.

It is not the policy of the Trump administration to support creating a Palestinian Arab state. In fact, administration officials have specifically said that their forthcoming proposal for an Israeli-Palestinian agreement does not include a Palestinian state.

The London Guardian reported on September 5:  “Although little is known for certain about the Kushner-Greenblatt plan, Trump officials have made it clear it will not commit to supporting the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state alongside Israel…” Other media outlets have reported likewise.

But it didn’t start with President Trump.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower didn’t call for creating a Palestinian state. Neither did Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, or George H.W. Bush. 

In addition, neither Bill Clinton nor Jimmy Carter ever publicly called for a Palestinian state while they were president. Palestinian statehood was not “official U.S. policy” during their administrations.

The first U.S. president to publicly call for a Palestinian state was George W. Bush. That was in 2002. But, significantly, Bush conditioned it on the Palestinians electing a new leadership, and permanently abandoning terrorism. Needless to say, the Palestinians never met those conditions. 

The first—and still only—sitting American president to call for creating a Palestinian state without preconditions was Barack Obama.

There are good reasons why Palestinian statehood has been “official U.S. policy” during only one administration in the past sixty-plus years:

—The Palestinian Arabs have a long record of fomenting regional instability, including an armed conflict with King Hussein of Jordan and a civil war in Lebanon. It’s only a matter of time before a Palestinian state would stir up turmoil and mayhem throughout the region. How would regional chaos be good for America?

—The Palestinians have always allied themselves with the most extreme and aggressive regimes in the world, including the Soviet Union, North Korea and Iran. “Palestine” would become a proxy-state for the world’s worst rogue regimes. How would an Iranian port in Gaza be good for America?

—From the Palestinian Authority’s practices over the past 24 years, we know what kind of state they would have: Islam would be the state religion; elections would be held rarely, if ever; dissidents would be tortured and suppressed; Christians would be intimidated; women would be second-class citizens. How would creating a regime that represent the opposite of American values be good for America?

—Creating a Palestinian state would reduce America’s only real ally in the region, Israel, to just nine miles wide. Making Israel so vulnerable would not only endanger the Jewish state, but would also undermine the confidence of all of America’s allies, and call into doubt the value of America’s promises. How could that be good for America’s strategic position in the Middle East, or its reputation anywhere in the world?

In short, the establishment of a Palestinian Arab fascist dictatorship—for that is certainly what it would be—would be bad for American values, bad for American interests, and bad for America’s allies.

I understand why advocates of the Palestinian cause like to claim that a Palestinian state is longstanding U.S. policy. It makes the idea sound more legitimate. It creates an air of inevitability. But it’s a lie. Somebody needs to explain that to Senator Warren.

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