It is true that a recent poll indicated that 75 percent of Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank supported the actions of Hamas on October 7. It is true that the people of Gaza chose to elect Hamas as their leaders in 2006. And it is true that an alarming number of Palestinians have no desire to see a two-state solution. Instead, they want an Israel-free Middle East, “from the river to the sea.” Yet in many ways the Palestinians are victims, and my strong support for Israel does not stop me from grieving over the suffering of the Palestinian people.
They have been victims of decades of bad leadership. Victims of lifelong, anti-Israel propaganda. Victims of the aftermath of the Six Day War in 1967.
Their leaders rejected a two-state solution under the Peel Commission in 1937, under the UN Partition Plan in 1947, and under subsequent arrangements through the decades. (For a powerful summary of the evidence, see Efraim Karsh, Palestine Betrayed.)
Not only so, but rather than absorb the Arab refugees who fled Israel during the War of Independence in 1947, the surrounding Arab nations were complicit in creating a permanent refugee crisis. To this day, the…
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