To get a state, Palestinians should do what the Zionists did

Seventy years ago, the United Nations created Israel. At least, that’s how Turtle Bay’s boosters and Israel’s critics remember it.

In reality, the UN General Assembly’s vote of Nov. 29, 1947, to partition Palestine merely recognized reality. The Jews had built their state; the UN acknowledged this fact. And getting the history right is essential to any hope of lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

Early Zionists started arriving to join their fellow Jews in their ancestral land at the end of the 19th century. Bit by bit (or “a dunam here, a dunam there,” as their slogan went) they built up not only their numbers but their institutions. By the partition vote, there was a state in place.

This week that historic vote is commemorated twice, demonstrating the difference between two national movements.

At the Queens Museum, the site of the 1947 tally, Israelis and Americans (including Vice President Mike Pence) reenacted the drama on Tuesday. They also tried to revive the euphoria among Zionists, as they celebrated around the world, from New York to Tel Aviv.

At Turtle Bay, meanwhile, the General Assembly will solemnly mark the date on Wednesday, as it does every year, by conducting an “international day of solidarity with the Palestinian people” — remembering one of the only consequential decisions the UN ever took by celebrating those who rejected it.

Unlike the Queens festivities, speakers at Turtle Bay will lament the fact that only half of the partition plan’s promise was fulfilled: Palestine, while recognized at the UN as a non-voting state, is still not independent. It’s yet to be recognized by many of the leading democracies, including America.

Why? Because the Arabs, as they were called in the 1947 partition plan, never really undertook the tasks required to become a state.

Instead, they first launched the 1948 war to undo the nascent Jewish state. A worldwide terror campaign followed, including the infamous massacre at the 1972 Munich Olympics, ostensibly to gain attention for the plight of stateless Arabs. Then, after global attention indeed grew, Palestinian leaders changed focus in the 1990s, adding a diplomatic push for recognition of their future state.

In that, incidentally, they did emulate the Zionists, whose early leaders (like first Israeli President Chaim Weizmann) endlessly pushed for world recognition. They first succeeded by gaining a 1917 British nod for creating a “Jewish homeland” from London’s foreign secretary Arthur Balfour. Thirty years later, the UN approved the creation of a Jewish state.

But here’s the difference: In 1948, the Zionists determined they had all the pieces in place to declare their independence.

Long before partition, the Zionists had competing political parties, active and effective workers unions and universities and scientific research institutes. A free press thrived, a budding legal system developed and, overcoming early fights between Jewish militias, a united army under civilian control was formed as soon as independence was declared.

It wasn’t at all perfect. Nothing is. But the Zionists weren’t promising to be a stable democracy sometime in the future. They were demonstrating one right then and there.

Not so the Palestinians. Yet they’ve been declaring a state forever. But their pursuit of UN recognition has been putting the cart before the horse for decades.

In Palestinian-controlled West Bank cities and in Hamas-ruled Gaza, political differences are resolved by force. Armed groups violently compete with each other. The powers-that-be control the legal system. Corruption is rampant. Dissent is suffocated. PA President Mahmoud Abbas is nearly a decade past the end of his one elected term, yet he still wields power.

So, no. The United Nations, the Arab League, the Saudi plan, President Trump’s new peace deal, BDS or any other BS — none will create a Palestinian state. Only the Palestinians will, and they’re far behind.

Israeli celebrations in Queens will soon be forgotten. So will Turtle Bay’s annual whine-fest. But in what once was called Palestine, a Jewish state will flourish, while partition, and the two-state solution, will wait until Palestinians get their act together.

In Ramallah, not Manhattan.

Twitter @bennyavni

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