Mick Hartley

Seth Mandel at Commentary on Palestine’s new Constitution:

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s constitution-writing committee has produced a draft of what would theoretically be the basic-law document of the State of Palestine. The document is a major blow to anyone’s hopes of a two-state solution, dwindling as those hopes already were. The “Palestine” “Constitution,” as currently envisioned, seems to be Abbas’s way of burning everything down behind him.

In Princeton Professor Zaid Al-Ali’s English translation of the document, there is no mention of Jews or Israel. Reporting confirms the same is true of the Arabic original.

It’s not that other religions are excluded—there are specific mentions of the rights of Christians, for example. But the State of Palestine declares itself judenrein.

At least Hamas mention Jews in their charter: they must be eliminated. No such problem here.

The original Hamas charter, it’s worth noting, was straightforward in its “struggle against the Jews.” The Palestinian Authority’s own proposed constitution doesn’t mention Jews at all. This is the problem when dealing with each of the Palestinian national movement’s leaders in its century-old existence: Jews are either excluded entirely or they are mentioned only as the object of a genocidal raison d’etre. To these Palestinian nationalists, Jews either don’t exist or else they must be made to not exist.

Western leaders like Macron and Starmer persist in their illusion that the Palestinians want a two state solution, with the implication that the Israelis are the stumbling block. As the Palestinians make clear again and again, all they’re willing to consider is a one-state solution, with no Jews. Isn’t it about time the message got through?