A Palestinian State:
How to Lose and Still
Come Out
a Winner
LEBANON
Beirut • Beirut
Mediterranean Sea
Safad ✪
Tiberias ✪ Haifa ✪
• Kuneitra
• Damascus
Tyre •
Kuneitra
Damascus
Safed
Haifa
Tyre
Sassa
Nazareth
SYRIA
Jerusalem ✪
Hadera ✪
✪ Hebron
• Kerak
JORDAN
Dead
Sea
Hebron
• Beer Sheba
Beer Sheba
Ras el-Aish
Suez
Canal
Kantara
Ismailia
Abu Aweigila
Negev
Bir Gafgafa
Suez
• Suez
Kuntilla
SINAI
Eilat ✪ • Aqaba Aqaba Eilat
Given to Egypt
by Israel in 1979
Gulf of Eilat (Aqaba)
Dahab • St. Catherine's Monastery
Tor
Gulf of Suez
Abu Zeneima
• Abu Rudeis
E G Y P T EGYPT
•
Sharm e-Sheikh
Red Sea
• Ma'an
Mudawwara •
SAUDI ARABIA
Israel before the 1967 war
Given to the Palestinians by Israel
Israeli conquests during the 1967 war
Sharm el Sheikh
0 25 50
km
Carta, Jerusalem
0 50
Miles
10
Former U.S. ambassador
to Israel, Martin Indyk
(AFP/Getty Images).
Awise man once gave the formula for a struggling nation to become great: Start a war with the United States
and lose. Sage advice once, but it may not
apply anymore. Today there are never supposed to be clear winners. Conflict must stop
short of humiliating either side so that losers
can claim victory, and winners can fill the coffers of their former enemies with goodies.
Sound absurd? Then consider what’s taking place today.
Martin Indyk, former U.S. ambassador to
Israel, recently declared, “Unless the US, Israel
and the Palestinians have an alternative, the
Palestinian [Quartet peace] plan can not [sic] be
won. . . . If there isn’t anything else, then in
September [2011] there will be a vote in the UN
that will recognize a Palestinian state, just like
the UN recognized Israel in 1948.”1
“The real question,” Indyk opined, “is to
find a way to return to the negotiating table”;
and he recommended Israel recognize a
Palestinian state in pre-1967 borders.
2
Pragmatically, on April 27, Palestinian
Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas hammered out an implausible deal to unify the PA
and its former archenemies, Hamas, the terrorist rulers in Gaza. The deal was designed to create the illusion that the Palestinians have a
regime capable of being, as one PA leader put it,
ready for statehood.
JULY/AUGUST 2011
