Simply wishing for a moderate Palestinian leadership won't make it happen - opinion

During US President Joe Biden’s July 2022 visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories, he said, “Even if the ground is not ripe at this moment to restart negotiations, the United States and my administration will not give up on bringing the Palestinians and the Israelis, both sides, closer together. The Palestinian people deserve a state of their own that’s independent, sovereign, viable, and contiguous. Two states along the 1967 lines, with mutually agreed-to swaps, remain the best way to achieve an equal measure of security, prosperity, freedom, and democracy for the Palestinians as well as Israelis.” 

It would be reasonable for President Biden’s opinion on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its possible solutions to change after the October 7 Palestinian attack on Israel, but it didn’t. In a November 18 Washington Post op-ed column, President Biden wrote, “As we strive for peace, Gaza and the West Bank should be reunited under a single governance structure, ultimately under a revitalized Palestinian Authority, as we all work toward a two-state solution.” 

Is the two-state solution truly viable in a post-October 7 Israel and Gaza? President Biden wasn’t sure if it was even before October 7, saying the ground wasn’t ripe for negotiations. It is curious that President Biden is more optimistic about the chances for peace, an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the two-state solution after October 7 than he was before the Palestinians conducted a mass terror attack on innocent Israelis. 

President Biden’s optimism for the two-state solution ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and creating peace in the region is not backed up by Palestinian opinion polls. In an article by Joel C. Rosenberg in All Arab News, Rosenberg wrote, “Palestinians overwhelmingly support the actions by Hamas on October 7 to invade Israel, murder 1,200 Israelis, and take hostage more than 250 men, women, children, and babies. Fully 67% of Palestinians overall say the Hamas move was correct, according to the new survey released by Dr. Khalil Shikaki, director of Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research based in Ramallah.

“In Gaza, the number is holding steady at 57%, the same number as when they were first polled in December. Among Palestinians living on the West Bank of the Jordan River – in the land known biblically as Judea and Samaria – the number is 73%.”

The think tank the Foundation for Defense of Democracies recently published a report on its website stating, “[Palestinians] blamed Hamas for their suffering. Seventy-one percent of all Palestinians supported Hamas’s decision to attack Israel on October 7 – up 14 points among Gazans and down 11 points among West Bank Palestinians compared to three months ago. Fifty-nine percent of all Palestinians thought Hamas should rule Gaza, and 70% were satisfied with the role Hamas has played during the war.”

FDD further stated, “Before October 7, Fatah would have defeated Hamas in a head-to-head vote of all Palestinians 26% to 22%. If elections were held today, Fatah would lose to Hamas 17% to 34%. Eighty-one percent of respondents were dissatisfied with Abbas, up from 76% before the war. Sixty-two percent did not view the recent resignation of former PA Prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh as a sign of reform. And 65% of Palestinians think the PA is a burden on the Palestinian people.

“Among likely voters, 56% supported Marwan Barghouti, who is serving multiple life sentences for his role in the murder of Jews during the Second Intifada. Thirty-two percent supported Qatar-based Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, and 11% supported Abbas.”

Little to no trust in Biden

In a recent poll on Palestinian support for a two-state solution, 84% of Palestinians stated that they have little to no trust in President Joe Biden to help negotiate peace. 24% of Palestinians support a two-state solution, down from 59% in 2012. Young Palestinians significantly less likely to believe in two states living side by side. Khalil Shikaki, a Palestinian pollster told NBC news, “Generally speaking, when there is greater exposure to violence by Palestinians the immediate reaction – that is temporary but is immediate – is the rise in support for violence. This is true in every single survey we have done.”

Richard Goldberg, an FDD senior adviser, wrote, “While Secretary of State Antony Blinken travels across the Middle East talking about a two-state solution and a Palestinian state, the main impediment to such schemes remains the same: a radicalized Palestinian population that supports terrorism against Israel instead of peacemaking.” 

In 2010, famed Israeli historian Benny Morris wrote a book titled, One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict. In his book, Morris concluded, “The idea of a “secular democratic Palestine” is as much a nonstarter today as it was three decades ago. It is a nonstarter primarily because the Palestinian Arabs, like the world’s other Muslim Arab communities, are deeply religious and have no respect for democratic values and no tradition of democratic governance. 

“Although... polls have often concluded that most Palestinians, at least in the West Bank and Gaza, support a two-state settlement, they have also shown that there is almost complete unanimity among Palestinians in support of the “right of return,” the implementation of which would necessarily subvert any two-state settlement. And Palestinian Arabs are equally unanimous in denying the legitimacy of Zionism and Israel – which, again, would raise a vast question mark over the durability of any two-state arrangement.”

The writer is a certified interfaith hospice chaplain in Jerusalem and the mayor of Mitzpe Yeriho, Israel. She lives with her husband and six children.