The Media and the Disappearing Palestinian State

In 1973, Israel’s longtime foreign minister, Abba Eban, famously quipped that “the Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”

Less famously, perhaps, the media never misses a chance to cover for the long history of Palestinian leaders rejecting statehood if it meant living in peace next to a Jewish nation. 

Eban’s comment came after the failure of the Geneva Peace Conference, one of numerous international initiatives aimed at resolving what is commonly referred to as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

For nearly a century such efforts have resulted in failure. And the reason is simple: rejectionism, first by Arab states and later by Palestinian leaders themselves. Yet, with growing frequency many in the press, while lamenting the lack of a Palestinian state, omit this relevant history.

Take, for example, The Washington Post. The newspaper has run dozens of articles in recent years claiming, if implicitly, that the lack of a Palestinian state is what drove Hamas and other Iranian-backed proxies to perpetrate the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre. Hopelessness, they assert, was behind the largest slaughter of Jewish civilians since the Holocaust.

Nor is the Post alone. Other publications, including those geared towards policymaking audiences, have made the same claim. Foreign Policy is among the worst offenders. On August 4, the magazine published a piece hailing the recent decision by several European nations to recognize a Palestinian state. France and the United Kingdom vowed to recognize a Palestinian state — provided that Hamas sets down its arms. Paris and London didn’t both offering specifics as to how the latter would be accomplished. Nor did they articulate the borders of this state, who would rule it, its currency, etc. But thankfully the days of European powers drawing up borders for failed states in the Middle East is over.  

Yet, curiously, Foreign Policy, which has a long history of decrying Western interference and colonialism in the Middle East, found much to like in the idea, with an August 4 report celebrating the move as “an international tipping point on Gaza.” The magazine noted that other countries, such as Canada, Finland, Malta, and Portugal, “have also announced their plans to recognize Palestine this fall.”

The absence of a Palestinian state is something that Foreign Policy has expended considerable column space fixating on. In August 2024, the publication hosted a webinar called “A Future for Palestinian Statehood.” A few weeks prior, in May, Foreign Policy published an op-ed entitled “Why the U.S. Should Recognize Palestinian Statehood.” And in February of that year, the magazine published an op-ed, “A Trial Palestinian State Must Begin in Gaza.” Recent events, Foreign Policy asserted in an Aug. 8, 2025 op-ed, symbolize “The West’s Turn Against Israel.”

Of course, there already been a “trial Palestinian state” and it was in Gaza. In 2005, Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip. In the first and only elections since, Gazans voted in Hamas, a Muslim Brotherhood derivative, whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel and the genocide of Jews. If one is to treat Gazans like people with independent agency — as one should — it can be surmised that they were well aware of Hamas’ charter. After all: Hamas doesn’t exactly hide its aims. 

Unsurprisingly, rockets were subsequently launched from Gaza into Israel, necessitating a blockade by both Israel and neighboring Egypt. Electing a genocidal US-designated terror group is hardly conducive to good governance, and multiple wars have followed.

Hamas, the duly elected government of Palestinians in Gaza, is every bit as cruel and kleptocratic as other Islamist movements. The heads of the terror group live in luxury abroad, many in Qatar and Turkey, launching wars for which Israelis and average, everyday Gazans pay the consequence. Gaza has received copious international aid — including long before October 7 — but Hamas has diverted it, building an extensive underground tunnel system to store fighters, munitions, and hide hostages, while those above ground are used as human shields.

The test case — offering up land for the construction of a Palestinian state — has been tried and found wanting. Gaza is a crystal-clear example.

And the reason is simple: Palestinian leaders, be it Hamas in Gaza, or its rival, Fatah, the movement that rules Judea and Samaria, also known as the West Bank, believe that Israel is “Palestine.” According to their doctrine, any land once ruled by Muslims is waqf and is forever theirs. Notions of political, social, and religious equality are anathema.

Hamas’ own charter spells this out quite clearly. The official media and educational curriculum of the Palestinian Authority, the US-backed entity that controls most of the West Bank, also presents Israel as “Palestine.” This, of course, is a violation of the Oslo Accords, which created the Authority in the first place. These beliefs are the reason for the lack of an independent Palestinian state.

After all, Palestinian leaders have been offered statehood on numerous occasions — most recently in 2000 at Camp David, 2001 at Taba, and 2008 after the Annapolis Conference. Yasser Arafat, the now deceased head of the Fatah movement and ruler of the PA, rejected the 2000 and 2001 proposals. The 2008 offer, presented to PA President Mahmoud Abbas, included 93% of the West Bank with land swaps for remaining areas and a capital in eastern Jerusalem. Tellingly, Abbas turned it down and failed to even make a counteroffer. The 2008 proposal served as the basis for additional US-attempts to begin negotiations in 2014 and 2016. These attempts were similarly rejected by PA leadership.

 As the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA) has documented, Palestinian leaders have been rejecting opportunities for statehood for nearly a century. Indeed, in 1947, the UN put forward a resolution to partition British-ruled Mandate Palestine into two states, one Arab and the other Jewish. The leaders of the Zionist movement voted to support the plan. By contrast, Arab states and leaders of the Palestinian Arab movement like Amin al-Husseini, categorically rejected the opportunity to create something that hasn’t ever existed: a Palestinian Arab state. Instead, less than three years after the Holocaust, they chose to wage war on the fledgling Jewish State, vowing to cast its inhabitants into the sea. They lost and they’ve kept on losing ever since. 

Curiously, however, the media continually omits these failed opportunities for Palestinian statehood, choosing instead to cast Palestinians as helpless and without independent agency. This is little more than an updated version of the colonialism that many members of the Western intelligentsia pretend to abhor. But readers of newspapers and once venerable policy periodicals deserve to know relevant history and they deserve to see Palestinians as people with independent agency, not merely as victims. 

The writer is a Senior Research Analyst for CAMERA, the 65,000-member, Boston-based Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis