The Empty Threat of Demanding Rights

A new trend that I have noticed among the pro-Palestinian/anti-Israel crowd (which is very different from the just pro-Palestinian crowd, I might add) is the following threat. I most commonly see it from people like hemara, but others use it as well. Here it is in a condensed form:

"The Palestinians should appeal to the UN for it to recognize them as citizens of Israel and entitled to all the rights that Israelis get. One state for all, one vote one man, etc. In other words, they should stop demanding statehood from Israel and start demanding their rights."

This is considered by those who proclaim it to be the ultimate threat: If this happens, Israel will have to accept the "one-state solution" (and the national suicide it entails) or face international sanction for their refusal to grant the Palestinians their "human rights." And the scariest of all: The Palestinians could make this demand at any time, so Israel had better shape up or they will be forced into that terrible double-bind. Bwa ha ha ha!

Unfortunately for them, this plan doesn't translate well into the real world. Although I don't blame them for assuming such, The UN isn't going to blindly follow the Palestinians by the nose. The Arab nations do support the Palestinians, and so does everyone else...but only as long as the Palestinian demands remain reasonable. They even had trouble getting the UN to endorse the Goldstone Report. The reality is that the Palestinians have supporters beyond the Arabs, supporters they can't afford to disenchant.

And disenchant them they will, because making this change will completely reverse everything the Palestinians have been saying for years. They told the world that they just wanted an end to the occupation and to form their own state. That is a reasonable demand, and so pretty much the entire world got beyond them on that, even Israel and the USA. To take a more cynical approach: They have justified their seemingly endless violence and refusal to negotiate in pursuit of this goal. They are now married to it.

But then say this projected scenario happens: The Palestinians go in front of the world and say, "Guess what? You know when we were saying all those years that we just want a state? Well, we changed our minds. We really just want to be part of Israel, whether Israel wants us or not. Now who's with us?" They will have betrayed their closest supporters, who truly believed in the righteousness of their motives, and lied to everyone else! So all those people they killed (on both sides) in pursuit of that "cause" of statehood have now died for absolutely nothing.

Doing this will ensure that the Palestinians will lose popular support from everyone except their most die-hard supporters and of course, those who just want Israel destroyed. Let's not forget their own people too: The Palestinian people have been forging a nationhood quite literally from scratch for decades, do proponents of this plan really think they are just going to forget about it?

The reality is that this hypothetical demand is nothing more or less than a demand to destroy Israel, and in the process going back on everything the Palestinians have said for decades. It would be disastrous for the Palestinian leadership if they asked for this. For their sake, and the sake of the peace process, I hope they don't listen to the Huffington Posters who call for this.