Does PA Really Want a State?

by Yehudah Lev Kay

An editorial in the latest issue of the prestigious Atlantic Monthly posits that the Palestinian Authority may never have a state because it does not want one.
Writer Robert Kaplan claims that statelessness has more appeal to the PA than statehood.
Kaplan’s ideas are based on a recent study by John Hopkins professor Jakub Grygiel in which he claims that in the modern era, technologies have given minority groups more power to communicate and commit violent acts without the need for a formal state. He claims that the lack of a state, rather than being a detriment, enables the group to maintain its extremist views while avoiding the complicated task of governing. Grygiel cites as a case in point the Hizbullah terrorist group.
"Though probably capable of taking over the weak central government of Lebanon, Hizbullah has preferred to maintain its sub-state role, thereby limiting its responsibility and hence its vulnerability to attacks," he writes.
"Having a state would most likely weaken the ability of Hizbullah to attack Israel, whose military forces could find easy targets."
"Statelessness provides impunity from the retaliatory actions of a powerful state," Grygiel points out, in one of the main thrusts of his study.Hamas, once it gained independence from Israel, faced exactly the problem Hizbullah chooses to avoid, according to Kaplan. "It was the very quasi-statehood achieved by Hamas in...Gaza...that made it easier for Israel to bomb it," he explains.
The implications for the Palestinian Authority are just as clear. "Statehood would mean openly compromising with Israel," he writes. "Better the glory of victimhood … As a stateless people, Palestinians can lob rockets into Israel, but not be wholly blamed in the eyes of the international community. Statehood would, perforce, put an end to such license."As proof that the Palestinian Authority prefers to remain stateless, Kaplan points out that although former Prime Minister Ehud Barak made vast concessions to late PA Chairman Yasir Arafat at Camp David in 2000, the PA leader chose not to compromise.
As Kaplan explains, Arafat "may have seen that as a more morally and emotionally satisfying conclusion to a life of statelessness than that of making the unenchanting concessions association with achieving statehood."