By Ben Blushi, Albania
The recognition of Palestine by France and Britain has raised a fundamental question about the morality of nations.
The question is: when does a people deserve to have their own state?
The world still has many peoples without states, even though they have fought harder than the Palestinians, resisted longer than them, never seized anyone else’s land as the Palestinian Arabs have done for centuries, and never created terrorist organizations that kill children playing in their yards.
In the past 80 years, Palestinians have done everything wrong.
They have been their own state’s greatest enemies.
In 1947, they rejected the UN plan to establish two states—Palestine and Israel—and launched a guerrilla war, which they lost.
Then they went to war again in 1967, this time with the backing of other Arab states, and lost once more.
In 2000, they rejected President Clinton’s peace plan, under which Israel and the United States would have recognized a Palestinian state. If you tally up the refusals, it turns out that Israel has rejected the Palestinian state fewer times than the Palestinians themselves.
Moving from failure to failure, Palestinians lost time, land, money, soldiers, allies, and hope.
Just look at the demographic numbers of the two peoples to understand how they have treated themselves.
In 1947, the entire Palestinian territory had 2 million inhabitants—1.4 million Arabs and 600,000 Jews.
Today, the numbers are reversed: Palestine has around 5 million people, while Israel has 10 million.
In 80 years, Israel—this state created by migrants who came from Europe after being massacred and dispossessed by Hitler—built the most advanced agriculture on the planet in the desert, created the most intelligent army we have ever seen, became an undisputed leader in AI, and built an economy producing $600 billion a year, several times larger than that of many European countries that now recognize Palestine, and twice as large as Iran’s, even though its dry soil yields not a single drop of oil.
Meanwhile, Gaza and the West Bank, where 5 million Palestinians live, generate no more than $15 billion annually—and that was before the war.
Looking at these numbers, you don’t need to be an economist to understand what one people achieved in 80 years, and what the other did.
But it doesn’t end there.
The comparison of democratic standards between the two peoples is even more painful.
Israel is a strong democracy: the press is free, most newspapers oppose the government, the people protest every week, parliament functions, elections are held every four years, and the courts are eager to imprison the sitting prime minister on suspicion that his wife accepted a few expensive gifts.
On the other hand, Palestinians have not held elections for twenty years.
And the one time they did vote, they elected Hamas, which has, of course, never allowed elections since taking power.
The question is: why this difference?
Why do two peoples who live in the same land, feed from the same soil, drink the same water, and are touched by the same sea, diverge so greatly?
How did Israel become an economic superpower in 80 years, while Palestinians failed to produce either democracy or an economy in the same period?
Those who justify the Palestinians say that Israel has prevented them from developing democracy and the economy.
Ironically, the last elections in the Palestinian territories took place in 2005, when the Israelis withdrew from Gaza and left it to the Palestinians.
Since that day, no elections have been held there, which makes it strange to think that Palestinians go to the polls only when they are under occupation.
When free, they do not want elections.
This is precisely Gaza’s real crisis—one that no recognition can solve:
The Palestinians’ inability to govern themselves.
Their incapacity to embrace democracy as a tool of coexistence.
Do Palestinians deserve a state under these conditions?
Should a people who accept being ruled by an armed terrorist group instead of elected institutions be granted a state?
Is all of Gaza Hamas?
Do Palestinians want Hamas?
Unfortunately, yes.
In the past two years, millions of Israelis have protested against the war, but not a single Palestinian has protested against Hamas.
The young Palestinians who cross barbed wire to kill Israeli girls at concerts have never rebelled against Hamas.
Those willing to die to massacre innocent Israeli civilians could have risked their lives rising against Hamas.
But they never have.
Palestinians worship Hamas.
They declare terrorists martyrs.
In Gaza, there is no party, no leader, no political group that opposes Hamas.
This is why unconditional recognition of Palestine is a reward the Palestinian people do not deserve.
Nations must take responsibility for their actions.
We Albanians brought communists to power by voting for them, and for 45 years we did nothing to overthrow them.
The communists oppressed us, and we submitted to their violence.
If, God forbid, the Albanian communists had also oppressed another people, we would have been just as responsible—as responsible as the Germans who brought Hitler to power and gave him their children as soldiers to conquer the world.
Today, Germans acknowledge this moral abyss and live with bowed heads, knowing their votes created a monster.
But Palestinians cannot be excluded from this same moral standard.
Hamas is their monster.
They gave birth to this creature and therefore must bear responsibility, just as the Germans did.
In the name of morality, Palestinians must be required to destroy the monster they created.
The extermination of Hamas cannot be Israel’s duty alone—it must be the duty of the Palestinians themselves.
It is up to them not to give Hamas their children as soldiers, not to shelter terrorists, not to harbor merciless killers in their hearts.
Palestinians must undergo a process of exorcism; they must cast the devil out of their souls.
Only if they perform this civic act can they earn the right to have their own state.
Therefore, it is mistaken to think that the Palestinian issue concerns only Israel.
The Israeli government has made many mistakes; its army has killed innocent civilians, unprotected women, children, and the elderly. Many people rightly believe Israel’s deserved punishment is to live next door to a monster like Hamas, which bites every day.
Recognition of Palestine is indeed punishment for Israel, which kills relentlessly—but one nation’s punishment cannot be another nation’s gift.
The Palestinians do not deserve the state they are being handed, because they have done nothing to earn it.
Western recognition risks creating a new Goliath at Israel’s borders—a savage state that threatens and fights without end.
But in the myth, Goliath was Palestinian, though not Arab, and perhaps having a monster as a neighbor is Israel’s destiny, though Israel today bears little resemblance to David, the poor shepherd who once saved his people by slaying Goliath.
Those who want to absolve Palestinians of all guilt even claim that David and Goliath have switched places—that today the weak David is Palestinian, and the terrible Goliath is Israeli.
But the solution cannot be found in recycled legends.
The Palestinian issue is not only about Israel—it is about the morality of our times.
Palestine is not ready to coexist with the civilized world.
That is the issue.
Palestine is not ready to live with us.
Palestine is not ready to live like us.