The definition of madness, commonly attributed to Albert Einstein, is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. In all likelihood, Einstein never said this, but the formulation is useful for understanding not only madness but western policy in the Middle East. (Admittedly, there is substantial overlap.) One idea that fixates foreign policy elites, so much so that we must persevere with it despite all evidence, is the creation of a Palestinian state. It is less a policy than a religious doctrine and its most devout adherents are to be found not in Israel or the territories but in the US State Department, the British Foreign Office, the European Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Brookings Institution, and the editorial conferences of the Times, the FT and Foreign Policy magazine.

A Palestinian state is an article of faith to which reality must bend. In an example of what behavioural psychologists call escalation of commitment, the more the proposition is shown to be faulty, the more ardently its disciples pursue it. Speaking to MPs on Monday night, Lord Cameron escalated his and the government’s commitment to Palestinian statehood:

‘We should be starting to set out what a Palestinian state would look like – what it would comprise, how it would work. As that happens, we, with allies, will look at the issue of recognising a Palestinian state, including at the United Nations. This could be one of the things that helps to make this process irreversible.’

The Foreign Secretary made the speech to the Conservative Middle East Council, which is Conservative Friends of Palestine in all but name. This is a shot across the bow at Benjamin Netanyahu, who said earlier this month that he would not ‘compromise on full Israeli security control over all the territory west of Jordan’, referring to an area that includes Israel proper and the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria, also known as the West Bank. Netanyahu said that this position was ‘contrary to a Palestinian state’.

As close observers of the Israeli political scene will know, there is a world of difference between what Netanyahu says and what he does. This is the man who promised the rabbis and the settlers that ‘you can trust me on Hebron’, then implemented the Oslo II agreement signed by Yitzhak Rabin to surrender 80 per cent of the city to Yasser Arafat. The man who pledged before the April 2019 election to apply Israeli sovereignty to the settlements in the West Bank, which five years on remain under military rather than civilian law. Which is to say that Netanyahu is a politician, with a base to manage, a right flank to appease and a country to lead which is still reeling from the mass slaughter of 7 October.

But while Netanyahu wants his voters – and possibly his late father – to think of him as the man who stood in the way of a Palestinian state, as ever with Bibi this is nothing more than self-aggrandising rhetoric. There are many roadblocks to a two-state solution and Israel is responsible for some of them. Despite accepting the principle of a ‘demilitarised Palestinian state’ in his 2009 Bar-Ilan speech, Netanyahu has not lifted a finger to help bring one about. Yet even if he was a good faith actor, the Israeli prime minister could not overcome the most stubborn obstacle to a Palestinian state: the Palestinians. Not all Palestinians, of course, but enough in government, civil society, academia and the general population to make statehood unachievable at least for now.

For western liberals, Palestinians are the only people who have no agency

Israelis often cite the many occasions on which the Palestinians or their representatives rejected or walked away from statehood. Hajj Amin al-Husseini before the Peel Commission in 1937. The Arab Higher Committee in response to the partition plan in 1947. Arafat at Camp David in 2000. Mahmoud Abbas with Ehud Olmert in 2008. Abbas and the Deal of the Century in 2020. As Abba Eban said a long time ago: ‘The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.’ In western liberal discourse these refusals are spoken of as tragedies that befell the Palestinian people because the truth is too unfathomable, too horrendous to confront. While Israel deserves its share of the blame, Palestinian rejectionism is by and large a self-inflicted wound that has festered for close to a century now, with leadership and populace alike refusing one remedy after another.

It is not polite to point this out; the preferred terminology is ‘cycle of violence’. For western liberals, Palestinians are the only people who have no agency. But they do have agency, which is why it doesn’t matter what Lord Cameron says, what Benjamin Netanyahu says, or even what Joe Biden says. The Palestinians need to want a Palestinian state living in peace alongside Israel and, for the most part, they don’t. Too much of Palestinian nationalism, with honourable exceptions, is organised around the destruction of the Jewish state rather than the construction of a Palestinian one. Cameron’s approach is liberal and legalistic: recognise Palestinian statehood in London and Brussels and a Palestinian state will follow in Gaza and Ramallah. This view of foreign affairs is so naive it could only be held by a British foreign secretary.

I wrote in December about how 7 October had taken a two-state solution off the table for the foreseeable and why, even when it gets back on the table, it will face the same hurdles as it did on 6 October. The sociological hurdles – by which I mean Palestinian attitudes, norms and culture – are consistently overlooked by people like Lord Cameron, and for good reason. Palestinian polling puts support for 7 October between 72 and 75 per cent. More than 60 per cent say ‘armed struggle’ is the best way of ‘ending the occupation’ while only 20 per cent endorse negotiations. Palestinian support for a two-state solution remains stable but it still stands at only 34 per cent. Then there are customs that are harder to quantify but observable and troubling, such as the practice of handing out sweets to Palestinian children in celebration of attacks on Israelis and graduation ceremonies at some Gazan kindergartens in which the children are dressed in military fatigues and given fake guns to carry out make-believe terror operations against Israel. These are cultural and generational obstacles that will not be overcome by statements from the British foreign secretary.

It is the Palestinians who must overcome these obstacles because there will be no viable, sustainable form of self-determination until they do so. Seven wasted decades should be more than enough but many of the incentives in Palestinian politics and civil society remain geared towards extremism and rejectionism. That is why it is all the more vital that these tendencies are not rewarded diplomatically. Reinforcing a link between terrorism or hostility towards Israel’s existence and advantage at home or abroad sets back progress towards ending the conflict. Yet reinforcing that link is what the two-state solution’s true believers keep doing.

In 2014 the House of Commons voted in favour of recognising Palestinian statehood. The Cameron government rejected this call, saying: ‘The UK will bilaterally recognise a Palestinian state when we judge that that can best help bring about peace.’ Recognition without a cessation of hostilities would not have helped bring about peace then and would not help now. It would only reinforce the rejection-reward pathway and incentivise Ramallah to continue waging diplomatic war on Israel instead of coming to the negotiating table. For Britain’s foreign secretary to raise the possibility of recognition in the wake of the 7 October massacre, however creditable his intentions, sends an ominous message. Start a pogrom, get a state.