When ‘statehood’ still means terror

For years, Mahmoud Abbas and his circle have tried to present the Palestinian Authority as a government-in-waiting: a partner for peace, a future state with courts, elections, and institutions. In recent months, Abbas has again promised democratic renewal, speaking of elections and reform as if the main obstacle to Palestinian independence were simply Israeli hesitation or international delay.

But every so often, someone inside the system says the quiet part out loud.

That moment came recently when Jibril Rajoub, secretary of Fatah’s Central Committee and one of the Palestinian Authority’s most senior figures, described what “national unity” really means. “National unity must be based on the adoption of U.N. resolutions by all of us, which grant us a state and also resistance in all its forms…” Rajoub said. “Resistance in all its forms is still on the agenda of this [Fatah] movement… Let no one think that we are surrendering.” (Thanks to Palestinian Media Watch for the translation.)

This is not rhetoric from Hamas or Islamic Jihad. It is not a marginal extremist voice. Rajoub is a pillar of Fatah, the movement that dominates the Palestinian Authority and is routinely described by Western diplomats as the “moderate” alternative to Hamas.

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And his statement is revealing: Palestinian statehood is not presented as a replacement for violence, but as something meant to coexist with it. A state, yes — but with “resistance in all its forms,” meaning terror, kept permanently on the menu.

That is not how states are built.

A functioning state requires monopoly over force, not celebration of it. It requires law that restrains violence, not rhetoric that sanctifies it. Yet Rajoub’s formulation treats terror not as a tragic past to be overcome, but as a continuing entitlement. This is not the language of transition from revolution to governance. It is the language of revolution with a flag.

This is why talk of Palestinian elections and reform, while superficially appealing, misses the deeper problem. The obstacle to statehood is not technical capacity. It is political culture. When senior leaders still insist that “resistance in all its forms” remains official doctrine, they are declaring that armed struggle is not a phase but an identity.

This is not new. It is merely newly admitted.

In May 1995, during the height of the Oslo process, I had a conversation with Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin that has stayed with me for three decades. Rabin was not given to rhetorical excess. He was blunt, often unsentimental, and deeply aware of the risks he was taking. Yet about Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian leadership, he told me: “Make no mistake, Arafat is a terrorist, will always be a terrorist, and he’s surrounded by terrorists.”

Rabin was not questioning the necessity of negotiating. He was questioning the character of the system he was negotiating with. He understood that Arafat was not a man who had abandoned terror, but one who had merely rebranded it. He also understood that Arafat’s power base depended on men who could not afford peace because their authority flowed from “the struggle.”

Rajoub’s statement shows that the surrounding culture Rabin described never disappeared. It simply learned new vocabulary.

Today, Abbas speaks the language of institutions. Rajoub speaks the language of impunity. Abbas talks about elections. Rajoub talks about “resistance in all its forms.” Together, they demonstrate the contradiction at the heart of Palestinian politics: the desire for the privileges of statehood without the discipline of sovereignty.

This is why international insistence that “the Palestinians need a state now” is so dangerously simplistic. Statehood is not a reward for suffering. It is a responsibility for governing. It requires leadership that renounces violence as a tool of policy, not one that preserves it as a sacred right.

Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and left behind infrastructure, homes, and hope. The result was not peaceful development but the rise of Hamas and the transformation of the territory into a launchpad for war. That outcome did not happen because Palestinians lack talent or intelligence. It happened because the political culture rewarded militancy and punished compromise.

The same dynamic remains in the West Bank today. A leadership that glorifies prisoners convicted of murder, that pays stipends to families of attackers, and that insists terror remain “on the agenda” is not preparing its people for peaceful sovereignty. It is preparing them for perpetual conflict under a new flag.

None of this denies Palestinian national aspirations. But aspirations do not excuse ideology. A state cannot be built on a foundation that treats violence as virtue. Until Palestinian leaders say clearly that terror is not “resistance” but a moral and political dead end, statehood will mean exporting instability rather than creating peace.

Rabin understood that truth in 1995, even as he took the risks of diplomacy. His warning was not that negotiations were useless. It was that illusions were dangerous.

Rajoub has now confirmed what Rabin feared: the ecosystem that sustained Arafat’s politics is still in place. The slogans have changed. The logic has not.

A leadership that insists on a state and terror at the same time is not ready for sovereignty. It is ready only for a new stage of the same old war.

Stephen Flatow of Long Branch is an attorney and the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995. He is author of “A Father’s Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian Terror” and is the president of the Religious Zionists of America-Mizrachi.