It was never for the Palestinians. Arab tyrants used the Palestinian cause to validate their own regimes, then betrayed them at every turn. This is a central theme in Palestinian history. The Ottomans betrayed them in the same way. Then the pan-Arabists. Eventually the Islamists will too. The Palestinians’ “allies” have historically very rarely been interested in actually helping the Palestinians themselves. One of the great tragedies of Palestinian politics is that there was once a political world whose basic interests overlapped profoundly with Palestinian interests — the Israeli left. But every “ally” and ideologue in the Palestinian camp urged rejection of that potential ally.
See Tweet