Emanuele Ottolenghi: The Great Myth of Palestinian Statehood
[Mr. Ottolenghi is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and author of "Iran: The Looming Crisis," (Profile Books, 2010).]
Since Sept. 11, 2001, American neoconservatives have forcefully argued that the combination of economic stagnation, rapid demographic growth, lack of upward social mobility, and political repression in most Arab countries was a breeding ground for Islamic radicalism. Their "freedom agenda"—which George W. Bush embraced during his first term but largely relinquished after 2006—rejected the conventional wisdom that the Arab rage that brought down the Twin Towers was a child of Israel's occupation; that the Islamist wave sweeping the Muslim world fed on the humiliation of the Palestinians; and that the growing radicalism infecting Muslim immigrant communities in the West was made in Israel.
This narrative informed the heretofore accepted view that the only alternatives to repression in the Middle East were civil war and failed states, or the rise of Islamic theocracies. That the status quo was unjust, that the regimes were corrupt, and that their rulers were cruel, were unpleasant but necessary facts of life.
The Arab world's unpalatable regimes would nonetheless help the West midwife the solution to the region's ills: a Palestinian state that, by restoring Palestinian justice and dignity, would miraculously neutralize extremism...
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Since Sept. 11, 2001, American neoconservatives have forcefully argued that the combination of economic stagnation, rapid demographic growth, lack of upward social mobility, and political repression in most Arab countries was a breeding ground for Islamic radicalism. Their "freedom agenda"—which George W. Bush embraced during his first term but largely relinquished after 2006—rejected the conventional wisdom that the Arab rage that brought down the Twin Towers was a child of Israel's occupation; that the Islamist wave sweeping the Muslim world fed on the humiliation of the Palestinians; and that the growing radicalism infecting Muslim immigrant communities in the West was made in Israel.
This narrative informed the heretofore accepted view that the only alternatives to repression in the Middle East were civil war and failed states, or the rise of Islamic theocracies. That the status quo was unjust, that the regimes were corrupt, and that their rulers were cruel, were unpleasant but necessary facts of life.
The Arab world's unpalatable regimes would nonetheless help the West midwife the solution to the region's ills: a Palestinian state that, by restoring Palestinian justice and dignity, would miraculously neutralize extremism...