On Thursday, The Federalist posted the following headline:
If Palestinians Wanted Peace And Prosperity, They’d Already Have It
The article notes:
In 2005, Palestinian Arabs were given autonomy over the Gaza Strip for the first time in their history. To make it happen, the Israeli government forcibly removed thousands of Israelis from the area. Without military protection, Jews would be murdered by Palestinians, who prefer their land Judenfrei.
As Jews were being evicted from their homes, some began to dismantle the farms and hothouses they’d built, reluctant to hand over years of hard work. In the name of peace, however, American Jewish donors purchased the 3,000 remaining greenhouses that stood over 1,000 acres for $14 million and gave it to the Palestinian Authority, gratis. A large portion of the donations were earmarked for “crucial equipment like computerized irrigation systems” and other modern farming systems for Palestinians.
As soon as the Jews were gone, mobs of Palestinians showed up and broke windows, stole irrigation hoses, water pumps, and everything else they could get their hands on, destroying everything they could, as “police” stood by and watched. This happened before Hamas came to power. Before any blockades.
At that point the mobs destroyed the hope of continuing the prosperity that had just been handed to them.
The article also reports:
By 2007, the unity government between the PLO and Hamas had fallen apart after the latter won a landslide election in 2006 and began defenestrating its political opponents. It was a warning. There has not been a real election in the West Bank since. And it’s a good thing because Islamists would surely grab power there as they had in Gaza. Joe Biden likes to say that Hamas doesn’t speak for Palestinians, but the ugly truth is that Hamas is a far better ambassador of the Palestinian people than the “moderate” Fatah party, which we prop up with billions of dollars.
The article notes that the only way to create a successful society in the Gaza Strip would be for Israel to take it over and set up civic institutions. However, that does take into consideration the children who have been trained almost from birth to hate Jews and to fight them. In the end, “liberating” the Gaza Strip from Hamas would probably be about as successful as liberating Afghanistan from the Taliban was.