Looking for Palestinian Statehood in All the Wrong Places

The current strategy of Palestinian leaders and their abetters abroad is to try to obtain Palestinian statehood by various forms of coercion—for Hamas, violence; for Mahmoud Abbas, diplomatic pressure; for European foes of Israel, unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state by European governments. These attempts are all doomed to fail because of military, economic, and geographical realities, writes Haviv Rettig Gur. If Palestinians want a state, they will have to convince an already sympathetic Israeli public that they are genuinely interested in a two-state solution, not a two-step plan to annihilate the Jewish state.