A Palestinian State Isn’t a Reward for Hamas. It’s a Punishment.

The Biden administration is hard at work putting together a deal for Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the Palestinians that would involve the normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia alongside certain “irreversible” steps towards the creation of an independent Palestinian state. 

There are many good reasons to support such an initiative. There are also many good reasons to oppose it. Palestinian support for Hamas is high and the possibility that a Palestinian state would be an existential threat to Israel is not to be lightly dismissed. 

There are also bad reasons to oppose this initiative, one of which is that any talk of Palestinian statehood now—so soon after October 7th—would constitute a reward for Hamas for committing terrorist atrocities.

I’m not unmoved by this argument. The fact that October 7 and the subsequent war has put Palestinian statehood back on the international agenda could be said to send a powerful message that terrorism gets you what you want. But this line of thinking rests on the faulty assumption that Hamas wants a Palestinian state.

If Hamas wanted a state, they would have used Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza as an opportunity for state building and diplomacy. If they had demonstrated any intention to live as peaceful neighbors, it’s likely that further Israeli withdrawals in the West Bank would have followed.

They do not. If Hamas wanted a state, they would have used Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza as an opportunity for state building and diplomacy. If they had demonstrated any intention to live as peaceful neighbors, it’s likely that further Israeli withdrawals in the West Bank would have followed. Instead, they turned an opportunity into a nightmare—both for their own people and for the residents of Israel’s southern towns—a nightmare that has culminated in the horrors of the current war. 

That anyone fails to grasp this is beyond my comprehension. Hamas has said this plainly, to the New York Times no less. Their goal is that “that the state of war with Israel will become permanent.” 

Statehood would be a disaster for Hamas’ cause. If the Palestinians had their own sovereign state, the world would have much less patience for their belligerence against Israel. They might still have allies among the radical campus left, who would agree that Israeli Jews must be cleansed from all the land “from the river to the sea,” but most people would see Palestinian statehood as the end of this long bloody story and would hope to never hear of it again.

Were the new Palestinian state to demand that Palestinian refugees be allowed to “return” to Israel, it’s hard to see such a demand being taken seriously. Most people would take it for granted that Palestinian refugees may be repatriated to the newly formed Palestinian state and would be confused by demands for anything else.

Were the new Palestinian state to attack its neighbor, the international community would not see this as the justified lashing out of a subjugated minority. Rather, most people would start to view the Palestinians the way they view Iran today—as extremist troublemakers. 

Hamas knows this. So long as there is no Palestinian state, their case against Israel remains open. Once there is a Palestinian state, it’s closed. For good. 

There is reason to believe that the October 7 attacks were timed to disrupt previous normalization talks between Saudi Arabia and Israel. That deal, it was speculated, would have included “major concessions” to the Palestinians. If Israel lets Hamas’ horrifying assault succeed in extinguishing this progress towards regional peace, that truly would be a reward for terror. To continue with the negotiations—to push through war towards a better future—is a far more effective strategy.

A Palestinian state is chiefly desirable because Palestinians deserve to be in control of their own destiny. It’s also desirable because it would send a message—to extremist Palestinian factions and to the international community—that the debate about Israel’s existence is over. 

Implementing such a state in a way that won’t devolve into another Gaza and put Israelis at risk is a complicated problem to solve, but not an impossible one. Most importantly, it wouldn’t be a concession to Hamas. Indeed, it may be the only real way of defeating their ideology.

Matthew Schultz is a Jewish Journal columnist and rabbinical student at Hebrew College. He is the author of the essay collection “What Came Before” (Tupelo, 2020) and lives in Boston and Jerusalem.