Complicity in terror: Why recognizing a Palestinian state will not lead to peace

An alternative perspective can be found in the column “Two peoples, two states: How recognizing Palestinian statehood could help resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict.”

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Palestinian support for October 7

The evidence supports the thesis that another Palestinian terror state and its major infrastructure in the hills of Judea and Samaria overlooking Israel's coastal plain would constitute a strategic threat to the State of Israel. A May 2025 Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR) poll provides a sobering reminder that Palestinian society overwhelmingly supports the October 7 atrocities, reflecting decades of indoctrination and radicalization.

Despite the devastating consequences of the Hamas massacre of October 7, 50% of Palestinians still view Hamas's decision to launch that attack as “correct” — rising to 59% in the West Bank. Despite Hamas's military defeat, 32% of Palestinians still support the organization, making it the most popular faction. Furthermore, 85% of respondents in the West Bank and 64% in Gaza oppose the disarmament of Hamas, rendering meaningless the Western precondition of demilitarization of a future Palestinian state.

The myth of a moderate Palestinian Authority

Western leaders' recognition rests upon the assumption that the “moderate” Palestinian Authority will govern any future state. The late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin had his own reservations from the beginning. In October 1995, while presenting the Oslo II interim agreements to the Knesset, then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said that a future Palestinian entity would be “less than a state.” Rabin's doubts were well-founded. For three decades, the PA has spread blood libels against Jews and Israelis, promoted the financial incentivization of terror, and is guilty of massive corruption.

Today, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is in the 20th year of his four-year term, leading one of the world's most corrupt regimes. PCPSR polling shows 81% of Palestinians want Abbas to resign, yet Western leaders plan to empower his illegitimate government with statehood.

In the present moment, Abbas and his security forces do not offer safety to Palestinians. Other than Ramallah, they do not even exert political control over the cities under the PA’s formal jurisdiction. Instead, the Iranian regime and its Hamas and Islamic Jihad proxy militias dominate PA cities and towns, proving the failure of the PA’s bona fides as a legitimate pre-state authority. Splinter factions such as Fatah's Tanzim in Jenin and Nablus have become no-go zones for PA security forces, while Iran-backed groups gain territorial control.

If the PA cannot maintain order in cities under its supposed control, it would be hard-pressed to secure a sovereign state. Even more far-reaching, in a post-October 7 reality, Israel can never afford to lose its intelligence capabilities in the Palestinian cities of Judea and Samaria the way that it lost its human intelligence networks in Gaza.

Lessons learned from Gaza's de facto sovereign precedent

Hamas's bloody putsch of the PA in Gaza in 2007 and its subsequent establishment of governmental and security control quickly became a reign of terror reminiscent of Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime and Syria's Assad regime, infused with the Islamic extremism of ISIS. Materials recently discovered by the IDF reveal copies of Hitler's Mein Kampf, together with Salafist jihadi symbols, reflecting the doctrine of the Palestinian Abdullah Azzam, Osama bin Laden's mentor and the drafter of Hamas's 1988 charter. October 7 was the climax of decades of Gaza's radicalization.

From 2007 to 2023, Hamas exploited de facto state sovereignty to build the most extensive tunnel network in modern history: a 500-kilometer underground terror base where Hamas amassed tens of thousands of rockets, provided cover for the “Al-Aqsa Flood” invasion, and served as a strategic headquarters for its two-year war of attrition. This development went undetected by Israeli intelligence, which is among the most respected in the world.

The threat to defensible borders

Therefore, post-October 7, neither Israel nor any other Western country can afford to risk another jihad emanating from another sovereign Palestinian entity in Judea and Samaria. Considering the geography of the West Bank, the stakes are far higher than they were in Gaza. A prospective Palestinian state would threaten 70% of Israel's population and 80% of its industrial capacity located on the coast, along with its main thoroughfares and transportation hubs.

Judea and Samaria's elevated terrain — more than 3,200 feet above sea level — renders Israel's coastal plain an easy target for terrorists. From there, basic rockets and mortars would paralyze Israel's airport, highways, and population centers. The distance from West Bank territories to Israel's coast measures just 9-15 kilometers — easily within reach of the types of short-range rockets used on October 7. Even if Israel retained control over the Jordan Valley, the elevated western slopes would remain in Palestinian hands, providing natural fortress positions overlooking Israeli cities.

Demilitarization agreements offer no solution. October 7 was carried out with simple weapons — AK-47s, RPGs, and improvised explosives — that cannot be effectively monitored.

The West Bank: Iran's terror infrastructure

Since the early 2000s, discoveries of Iranian weapons ships headed for Gaza have attested to the massive material support Palestinian terror groups receive from the regime in Tehran. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has infiltrated the West Bank along with Gaza. In January 2025, Palestinian Islamic Jihad announced joint operations rooms, coordinating with Hamas and Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades under Iran's supervision — a unified terror command structure.

The IRGC has been actively supplying Palestinian militant groups in the West Bank with weapons, training, and funding as part of a broader strategy ordered by Iran's leadership to “arm the West Bank.” Reports indicate the IRGC has funneled small arms, automatic rifles, grenade launchers, RPGs, anti-tank mines, and explosives into the territory, while also providing expertise in rocket manufacturing, explosives, and guerrilla tactics.

These transfers are coordinated through specialized IRGC Quds Force units, often using smuggling routes via Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan. Financial programs like “Tufan-1” and “Tufan-2” have funded tens of millions of dollars' worth of arms procurement, while Brigadier General Saeed Izadi, head of the IRGC's Palestine Corps, oversaw much of the operation until his killing in 2025. Together, these efforts show that Iran is systematically working to expand Palestinian militant capabilities in the West Bank, just as it has long done in Gaza.

Hamas established rocket production infrastructure in Jenin under the direction of Saleh al-Arouri. The “Al-Ayash Battalion” has already launched seven locally-produced Qassam rockets from West Bank territory. Iran has cultivated relationships within mainstream Palestinian leadership through figures like Jibril Rajoub and Abbas Zaki, who have openly called for Palestinian-Iranian cooperation.

Iran's weapons smuggling network operates through Syria and Jordan, Israel's longest and most strategically consequential border, introducing high-quality IEDs and rocket components into West Bank territories. The June 2023 IED attack against an IDF vehicle in Jenin demonstrated that West Bank terror groups now possess Gaza-level capabilities. Israel's response came in the form of Operation Iron Wall in January 2025, targeting militant infrastructure in Jenin, Tulkarm, and Nablus to prevent Iran from establishing a permanent “terror front” — one that would become impossible to address under conditions of Palestinian sovereignty.

PLO independence and the intensification of terror

The historical record demonstrates that international recognition of Palestinian statehood has consistently rewarded and encouraged terrorism rather than promoting peace.

Following Arafat's 1988 PLO unilateral declaration of independence in Algiers, which was recognized by 78 countries, Palestinian terrorist attacks escalated dramatically. During the Oslo Accords period, when the PLO gained unprecedented international legitimacy and the PA was established, terrorist attacks reached new levels of intensity, killing more innocent civilians than during the period between the 1967 war and the 1993 Oslo exchange of letters.

With Arafat's willful ignorance, Hamas launched its first suicide bombing campaign after Oslo. It included the 1994 Afula bus attack that killed eight people, its October 1994 Tel Aviv bombing that killed 22, and its January 1995 Beit Lid junction bombing which also killed 22 people. Between 1994 and 2005, suicide bombings killed 735 Israelis and wounded 4,554, with attacks specifically targeting civilians on buses, in shopping centers, and in restaurants.

The pattern is clear: international legitimization of Palestinian political aspirations has consistently coincided with escalations in terrorist violence, as extremist groups view diplomatic victories as validation of their violent strategies.

Western capitulation

Western support for a Palestinian state comes at a particularly critical moment. European countries led by progressive left governments in France and Spain are facing massive immigration from Muslim countries. They are desperate to solicit support from these populations, which have become critical constituencies for progressive governments to maintain power. But such fear-driven policies are bound to backfire.

Their support for a prospective Palestinian state will provide succor, support, and encouragement for other jihadi groups in the Middle East and Europe to carry out terror attacks such as the fatal 7/7 al-Qaeda assault in London, the April 2004 Madrid attack, and the French school stabbings, to name only a few assaults on Europe.

A Palestinian state supported by scores of Western countries sends a clear message to extremists worldwide: terror pays, and the more heinous the act, the greater the diplomatic reward.

It will further destabilize Israel, the surrounding Arab countries, and, most far-reaching, it lays the groundwork for an increase in jihadi terrorism against the West.

Where do we go from here?

The jihadist invasion of October 7 ought to have ruled out the establishment of a Palestinian state for at least the next several years. Israeli polling consistently reflects massive public opposition to another Palestinian state that is subject to deep indoctrination and radicalization and which promotes incentivization to terror and anti-Jewish conspiracy theories.

Changing these subversive patterns is not a short-term challenge, but a generational process. The moral obligation currently rests on the Western powers to demand a complete remaking of Palestinian society and its leadership. The West cannot continue a policy of double standards: one that reflexively recognizes a Palestinian state that does not reflect any of the democratic principles those countries hold dear.

Regrettably, the experience of Israel and the West has demonstrated that the Palestinian Authority has not satisfied any of the fundamental liberal and democratic norms that underpin a viable society. It is reasonable to assume that it will likely not differentiate itself from the majority of Arab dictatorships in terms of human rights abuses, corruption, and a lack of democracy.

A centralized Palestinian leadership has proven unviable in this era. The more workable option aligns with the more organic structure of the Arab Muslim Middle East, organized by family, clan, and tribe.

The leading sheikhs of Hebron, who have met with this writer, have expressed their interest in a direct relationship with Israel that includes mutual economic, security, social, and political cooperation. Most importantly, the local leadership opposes the sort of oppressive rule that has characterized the Palestinian Authority for the last 32 years of its very problematic and tension-filled relationship across Judea and Samaria — the West Bank.

A Hebron first Arab federation concept could serve as a model for a far friendlier, more secure and more prosperous relationship between Israel and its Palestinian neighbors. Such a setup would provide a corrective to the ill-advised Oslo Accords, which have resulted in tremendous losses in human lives.

No less important, it has resulted in a painful paradox in which the PA has refashioned Israel as a settler-colonial foreign implant in the Middle East. This is a fraudulent structure that the local leadership rejects. They are prepared to recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, one with a 3,600-year connection to the ancient Middle East.