During the past century, the Palestinian Arabs have specialized in killing Jews and have committed their individual and collective existence towards one goal, the murdering of Jews and the destruction of the State of Israel. Prior to the establishment of the State of Israel and for the past 75 years, Israel has had no respite from acts of Palestinian Arab terror while their multi-generational leadership has proudly proclaimed threats of Israel’s eminent destruction. The establishment of their own state, namely the State of Palestine, has never been their primary goal, that goal was and will always be subservient to their goal of eradicating the State of Israel.
The UN partition plan of mandatory Palestine in 1947 that divided the land in a manner that would have allowed each state to have a majority population of its chosen identity,, and that both Israel and Palestine would be established one alongside the other was rejected outright by the Arabs. Since then, the Rogers Plan, the Road Map for peace, the Oslo Agreement, and the Camp David agreement have all been ultimately rejected by the Palestinian Arabs and their leadership. Any one of these plans would have led to the establishment of a Palestinian state, yet the Palestinian Arabs have consistently rejected again and again for the past century any opportunity to end their century old conflict with the Jews. The principal grievance of the Palestinian Arabs has always been counter intuitively not the absence of a Palestinian state, but that the State of Palestine cannot come into existence without the disappearance or destruction of the State of Israel. This principle grievance of the Palestinian Arabs spanning generations, has brought upon them one “Nakba” after another.
The October 7th invasion of Israel’s communities in the Gaza Envelope and the barbaric murder of 1200 Israeli civilians wasn’t a military operation; it was a Jew–killing spree. The invasion and the mass murder by Hamas will also enter the history books as the Palestinian Arabs' greatest tactical and political blunder over the past 100 years culminating in the fourth cycle of “Nakba” and an end to the presence of any Arab control over the area known as the Gaza Strip. Their goal of establishing an independent Palestinian Arab state in Judea and Samaria (i.e., "West Bank") has taken a severe setback and has unified the Israeli public from both sides of the political spectrum against their state adjacent to the state of Israel. Hamas has not only dug its own grave, but buried once and for all the possibility that a Palestinian Arab state will come in to being..
What differentiates the Palestinian Arabs from other nations who have built throughout the last century on the ruins of their historic homelands? What has made the Palestinian Arabs so successful in ensuring that no Palestinian state has come into existence over the last century and most likely will never become more than a mantra for supporters demonstrating on the streets of New York, London, or Paris?
The first cycle most associated with the saga began during the mid-1920s culminating in the War of Independence and the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. The Arab leader Haj Amin Al-Husseini the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, an avowed anti-Semite was extensively involved in Arab unrest and terror during this cycle. Haj Amin Al-Husseini met covertly with representatives of the Nazi SS, and not coincidently with Otto Adolf Eichmann, who was a German-Austrian Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer and one of the major implementers of the Holocaust’s systematic annihilation and extermination of European Jewry. Haj Amin Al-Husseini played a leading role in inciting the local Arabs to attack and murder Jews. The Hebron Massacre of 1929 in which 69 Jewish residents of the ancient city of Hebron were viciously murdered by their Arab neighbors, the massacre and mutilation of the 35 young soldiers of the “Lamed Hey convoy”, and the Arab Revolt during the 1930s against the Jews who lived in mandatory Palestine are only a few examples of how the Arabs brought upon themselves their “Nakba”. Their revolt was unsuccessful, and its consequences affected the outcome of the 1948 War of Independence and caused the British Mandate to give crucial support to pre-state Zionist forces like the Haganah.
The second cycle of the “Nakba” from 1948 until 1967 was characterized by the self-expulsion by the Arabs. David Ben-Gurion wrote at the time: “The Arabs’ exit from Palestine….began immediately after the UN resolution, from the areas earmarked for the Jewish state. And we have explicit documents testifying that they left Palestine following instructions by the Arab leaders, with the Mufti at their head, under the assumption that the invasion of the Arab armies at the expiration of the Mandate will destroy the Jewish state and push all the Jews into the sea, dead or alive.” In retrospect, a war was embarked on enthusiastically, with much unanimity, and with much anticipation by the Arab countries of driving the Jews into the sea, and when they lost, their leadership, cynically transformed the narrative into a story of victimhood.
The third cycle of the “Nakba” between the years 1967 and 1987 culminated in the “first intifada”. Masses of Palestinian Arabs attacked Israeli troops with stones, axes, Molotov cocktails, hand grenades, and firearms supplied by their leadership, killing and wounding soldiers and civilians. Throughout the intifada, the PLO leadership played a leading role in orchestrating the insurrection frequently by issuing leaflets dictating which days violence was to be escalated, and who was to be its target. Jews were not the only victims of the violence. In fact, as the intifada waned around the time of the Gulf War in 1991, the number of Arabs killed for political and other reasons by Palestinian Arab death squads in what amount to an “intrafada” exceeded the number killed in clashes with Israeli troops. Victims were stabbed, hacked with axes, shot, clubbed and burned with acid.
The fourth cycle of the “Nakba” between the years 2000 and 2023 began with the 2nd intifada and culminated in the Oct 7th massacre. The 2nd intifada was a long, sustained, and intensive series of terror attacks with Palestinian Arab suicide bombers blowing up buses sometimes twice a day. Over 1000 Israeli’s were killed and over 8000 wounded. This 2nd intifada fundamentally altered Israeli society because it impacted everyone. No one, regardless of their political opinions, level of religious observance or ethnicity, was left unaffected. For the latter part of the fourth cycle, the Palestinian Arabs led by Hamas continued their war of attrition by firing thousands of missiles on southern and central Israel. Hamas instigated violent riots on the border with Israeli communities, kites and helium balloons with incendiary material attached were launched from the Gaza Strip to the Israeli side. Hamas spread its ideology to Judea and Samaria (i.e.- West Bank) resulting in the deaths of hundreds of local Jewish residents.
Each and every cycle of the Palestinian Arabs' self-induced “Nakba” has progressively diminished the eventuality of a separate state. Former President Clinton was quoted in the past - “I killed myself to give the Palestinians a state,” “I had a deal they turned down that would have given them all of Gaza, 96 to 97 percent of the \West Bank\, compensating land in Israel, you name it.”
The massacre of Oct 7, 2023, signaling the end of the fourth cycle of the Palestinian “Nakba” will most likely be the final cycle. No Israeli government, nor the Israeli public from both sides of the political spectrum will support the establishment of the State of Palestine. That is the Nakba, the self-inflicted tragedy of the Palestinian Arabs.