By Ben Blushi
The recognition of Palestine by France and Britain has raised a fundamental question about the morality of peoples.
The question is when does a people deserve to have their own state?
The world still has many peoples who do not have a state, even though they have fought harder than the Palestinians, even though they have resisted longer than them, even though they have not occupied anyone's land as the Palestinian Arabs have done for centuries, and even though they have not created terrorist organizations that kill children playing in the yard.
In the last 80 years, the Palestinians have done everything wrong.
They have been the greatest enemies of their state.
In 1947 they rejected the UN formula for the creation of two states, Palestine and Israel, and went into a guerrilla war which they lost.
Then they went to war again in 1967 with the help of other Arab states and lost again.
In 2000 they rejected President Clinton's Peace Agreement, according to which Israel and America recognized the Palestinian state, and if you add up the Palestinian rejections, it turns out that Israel has rejected the state of Palestine less than the Palestinians themselves.
Going from failure to failure, the Palestinians lost time, land, finances, soldiers, allies, and hope.
It is enough to look at the demographic growth figures of these two peoples to understand how they have behaved with themselves.
In 1947, the entire Palestinian territory had 2 million inhabitants.
Of these, 1.4 million were Arabs and 600,000 were Jews.
Today the numbers are reversed.
Palestine has about 5 million inhabitants, while Israel has 10 million.
In 80 years, Israel, this state created by immigrants who came from Europe after being massacred and dispossessed by Hitler, created the most advanced agriculture on the planet in the desert, built the most intelligent army we have seen to date, is the undisputed leader in AI and has an economy that produces 600 billion dollars a year, several times larger than that of many European countries that are now recognizing Palestine and twice as large as Iran, although its dry subsoil does not drip a single gram of oil.
Meanwhile, Gaza and the West Bank, where 5 million Palestinians live, cannot generate more than 15 billion dollars in economic output per year, and this was before the war.
Looking at these numbers, you don't need to be an economist to understand what one people has done in 80 years and what another people has done.
But it doesn't end here.
Comparing the democratic standards of these two peoples is even more painful.
Israel is a strong democracy, the press is free, most newspapers are against the government, the people protest every week, parliament functions, elections are held every four years, and the courts are eager to imprison the incumbent prime minister, on suspicion that his wife received some expensive gifts in return.
On the other hand, the Palestinians have not held elections for twenty years.
And once they voted, they chose Hamas, which of course has not allowed elections since the day it took power.
The question is why this change?
Why do two peoples who live in the same place, who feed on the same soil, who drink the same water, and who are bathed in the same sea differ so much?
How is it possible that Israel became an economic superpower for 80 years, while the Palestinians were unable to produce either democracy or an economy for the same period of time?
Those who want to justify the Palestinians say that Israel has prevented them from developing their economy and democracy.
Ironically, the last elections in the Palestinian territories were held in 2005 when the Israelis withdrew from Gaza and left it to the Palestinians.
Since that day, no elections have been held there, and therefore it is strange to think that Palestinians only go to the ballot boxes when they are occupied.
When they are free they don't want elections.
This is precisely the real crisis in Gaza that no recognition can solve.
The inability of the Palestinians to govern themselves.
Their inability to recognize democracy as an instrument of coexistence.
Do Palestinians deserve a state under these conditions?
Should a people who, instead of elected institutions, accept to be governed by an armed terrorist group have a state?
Is all of Gaza Hamas?
Do Palestinians love Hamas?
Unfortunately, yes.
In the past two years, millions of Israelis have protested against the war, but not a single Palestinian has opposed Hamas.
The young Palestinians who jump over barbed wire to kill Israeli girls at concerts have never rebelled against Hamas.
Those who sacrifice their lives to massacre innocent Israeli civilians could have risked standing up to Hamas.
But this did not happen.
Palestinians worship Hamas.
They declare terrorists martyrs.
In Gaza, there is no party, no leader, and no political group that opposes Hamas.
Therefore, unconditional recognition of Palestine is a reward that the Palestinian people do not deserve.
Peoples must be held accountable for their actions.
We Albanians brought the communists to power with votes and for 45 years we did nothing to overthrow them.
The communists raped us and we submitted to the violence.
If, far from it, the Albanian communists had raped another people, we would be just as responsible as the Germans who brought Hitler to power and gave him child soldiers to conquer the world.
Today, Germans recognize this moral lowland and live with their heads bowed because they created a monster with their votes.
But the Palestinians cannot be exempted from this moral criterion.
Hamas is their monster.
They gave birth to this sample and therefore should be just as responsible as the Germans.
In the name of morality, the Palestinians should be made to endure the destruction of the pattern they created.
The extermination of Hamas cannot be the task of Israel alone, but of the Palestinians themselves.
It is up to them not to give their children to soldiers, it is up to them not to shelter terrorists, it is up to them to finally remove the ruthless killers from their hearts.
Palestinians must go through an exorcism process, they must cast the devil out of their souls.
Only if they perform this civil act can they gain the right to have their own state.
Therefore, anyone who believes that the Palestinian issue is only related to Israel is mistaken.
The Israeli government has made many mistakes, its army has killed innocent citizens, elderly women and defenseless children, so many people rightly believe that the punishment deserved for this country is to have a monster like it as a neighbor.
Hamas that bites every day.
Recognition of Palestine is punishment for Israel, which is killing without stopping, but one person's punishment cannot be another person's gift.
The Palestinians do not deserve the state they are being granted, because they have done nothing to deserve it.
Western recognition risks creating a new Goliath on Israel's border, a savage state that threatens and fights relentlessly.
But the mythical Goliath was Palestinian, although he was not Arab, and perhaps having a monster as a neighbor is the destiny of Israel, which today bears no resemblance to David, the poor Jewish shepherd who saved his people by killing Goliath.
Those who want to absolve the Palestinians of all their sins even say that Goliath and David have switched places.
Now the weak David is Palestinian and the terrifying Goliath is Israeli.
But the solution is not found in recycled legends.
The issue of Palestine is not just about Israel but about the morality of the times.
Palestine is not ready to coexist with the rest of the civilized world.
This is the issue.
Palestine is not ready to coexist with us.
Palestine is not ready to live like us.
