How Palestinians lost Jerusalem to Israel - opinion

While the Palestinians never had Jerusalem – even east Jerusalem, which was under occupation by Jordan – their actions today demonstrate why they never will. For that, they have only themselves to blame.

The recent uptick in violence began at the start of Ramadan with a disturbing TikTok trend of Arabs assaulting Jews and filming it. The response was an equally disturbing pushback of far-right Israeli Jews who rioted in Jerusalem, even chanting “death to Arabs.” But neither of these activities came from nowhere. The Kahanist Right in Israel has been emboldened by vile racist leaders like Itamar Ben-Gvir, who maneuvered their way into the Knesset to the great shame of our entire nation. 

Yet on the other side, we have entire generations raised on glorifying violence against Jews. Most recently, we see Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority all ramping up their incitement to violence, with the world’s largest sponsor of terrorism, Iran, dousing the entire situation with kerosene and lighting the match. 

Iran-allied Palestinians even recently put up billboards with Iran’s slogan for Jerusalem Day at the entrance to Kalandiya in the West Bank. This is far from the first time Palestinians have promoted Iranian propaganda, but it is a clear and continued indicator of where Palestinian alliances lie – and they aren’t with their fellow Arab states. 

With the talk of Palestinian elections (which unsurprisingly have already been canceled), the PA increased the hate speech on their networks with more calls to violence, praise for “martyrdom” and glorification of Palestinian terrorist operations like the Munich massacre. Around the same time, terrorist groups in Gaza increased calls to violence surrounding Ramadan, carried out rocket attacks and encouraged the most recent wave of explosive-laden balloons from Gaza. 

The violence has continued with attempted terror attacks as well as the riots and violence against Israeli police at al-Aqsa. Throw in the incitement on Arabic social media over Sheikh Jarrah, as well as Iran’s promotion of Jerusalem Day, and you have a time bomb waiting to explode. 

But as is always the case with Palestinian violence, it won’t bring them any closer to a state, and certainly not to Jerusalem. Instead of learning from their mistakes, the Palestinian leaders are turning their backs on their historic allies in the Arab world and hedging their bets on the radical violent regime of Iran, which sooner or later will invariably fall. 

Not only that: Iran is the pariah of the Middle East, responsible for the deaths of countless Arabs in the region – yet none of that matters to Palestinian leaders who are hell-bent on living in a false narrative they’ve concocted that is so strong they themselves are fooled by it. 

There will be no fantastical “liberation” of Jerusalem, firstly because Jerusalem was never Palestinian, and secondly because the tactics which Palestinian leaders continue to use lead directly to their consistent failure as a nation – and everybody in the Arab world seems to know it but them. 

As Palestinian leaders and Iran incite mobs to wreak havoc at holy sites for Jerusalem Day, they are once again fulfilling a rich and lengthy tradition of failure that only harms their nationalistic interests in the end. 

Palestinians didn’t “lose” Jerusalem because of the occupation or because of settlers or any other excuse their leaders use to ignite tensions. Palestinians never had Jerusalem and they never will – because instead of learning from their mistakes, they dig themselves into a collective national grave. With the political support of Iran, the terrorism of Hamas and the kleptocracy of the PA, the Palestinians will surely never see Jerusalem as their capital.