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French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced this week that their countries would unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state.

The first problem with that is "Palestine" is a fictional place. There never was any such thing.

And diplomatic recognition of it no more changes this reality than if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were to decide to recognize the archipelago of Islamic banlieues on the outskirts of Paris as an independent nation.

But what exactly are Britain and France recognizing?

Mahmoud Abbas, the dictator of the Palestinian Authority in the "West Bank," is now 89 years old. What does Macron and Starmer think will happen when he finally dies?

The best-case scenario, I suppose, is for another corrupt strongman to take over an independent "Palestine." Will these Western European leaders back an autocracy?

What happens when a civil war breaks out? Because the prospects are quite high. Since the Oslo Accords, the Palestinian Authority has relied heavily on Israel's security apparatus to stay in power. It would almost certainly implode without it.

The French and Brits should recall that the first thing Palestinians did when handed a protostate in 2005 was destroy over 3,000 greenhouses and modern farming systems that American Jews had purchased for $14 million and handed them, gratis.

The second thing they did, though, was put Hamas in charge.

So, will France and Britain support open elections in this new nation? What if Hamas, or some other iteration of that organization, wins those elections? Will France and Britain recognize such a state?

"Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people," Macron claimed during a visit to Ramallah with Abbas in 2023. This is Western elitist twaddle: The unpleasant truth is that Islamists far better represent the people than the "moderate" Fatah party, which is propped up with billions of Western dollars and Israeli assistance.

In 2006, Hamas not only won the Gaza elections, but it also won a majority of the parliamentary seats in the PA, which it still holds. In 2024, Hamas and Fatah signed the Beijing Declaration, brokered by Communist China, agreeing to form an "interim national reconciliation government."

Will the French and British "recognize" a similar arrangement in the future? Is Macron going to send French troops into Jenin to root out Islamist militants firing Iranian- or Qatari-funded missiles into Jerusalem?

Whether the French could even win such a war, I suppose, is the better question.

And what will "Palestine" look like? Not once in the dozens of attempts to give Palestinians a state have they accepted any arrangement that didn't include "a right to return" into Israel proper.

"Nakba" itself -- Palestinians' bitter term for what they see as the "catastrophe" of Israel's founding -- was the result of a war that was launched by local Arabs and their allies who rejected a state.

Even if a deal could be struck, what makes Macron and Starmer believe Palestinians can run their own nation, anyway? Palestinians in Gaza are unwilling to build the basic infrastructure necessary for themselves. despite receiving hundreds of millions in yearly aid.

Every Israeli restriction on Palestinians in Gaza has been put in place to mitigate violence. When you send Gaza concrete, they build tunnels and military installations under hospitals, not schools or businesses. If you build them infrastructure, they dig up water pipes to make casements for rockets. When you allow shipments of necessities, they smuggle in explosives. When you send food, they give it to the terrorist army before the children.

Unless, of course, those children have been recruited to the Islamist cause.

Will France and Britain send in their citizens to administer this new state and its borders to ensure that the same doesn't happen again? Or will Israel just be forced to invade once more?

Now, of course, Macron says Hamas must be "disarmed" and that Gaza needs to be rebuilt. But the French and British recognition of "Palestine" incentivizes the opposite. What does he think Israel has been trying to do?

Is France or Britain going to disarm Hamas? Is France or Britain going to bring back the more than 50 hostages still being held and tortured in Gaza?

Macron and Starmer, like so many apologists for Palestinian violence, lose nothing with this cynical moral preening to their domestic Islamists.

The real world is a lot more complicated.

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David Harsanyi is a senior writer at the Washington Examiner. Harsanyi is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of five books -- the most recent, "The Rise of Blue Anon," available now. His work has appeared in National Review, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Reason, New York Post and numerous other publications. Follow him on X @davidharsanyi.

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