Ep 26: The Myths That Define Israel-Palestine - Part 1: Palestinian Rejectionism

In a five-part series examining the myths that define the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I explore the truth behind the stories we’ve been told.

In Part 1, I take on the myth of Palestinian rejectionism — the claim that Palestinians have always rejected peace.

From the 1947 UN Partition Plan to the Oslo Accords, Camp David, and the 2008 negotiations, this episode examines what was actually offered, why those deals failed, and how the rejectionism narrative became one of the most powerful myths shaping the conflict.

Check out my substack page where I tackle some of the episode topics in depth and write about other issues our country and the world are facing today. https://substack.com/@ktdpodcast 

Transcript

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Hello and welcome back to Khannecting the Dots. In the last episode, I talked about coming full circle about why I started this podcast in the first place. One of those reasons was DEI, how the administration is using cultural fears to promote division and hatred. Well, today I'm launching into the other reason that I started the show, the plight of the Palestinians. I've talked about what's happening to them throughout season one, and like I said before, what's happening to the Palestinians Didn't just start after October 7th, 2023. The atrocities of that day didn't happen in a vacuum. For decades we've been told a story about this conflict, a set of myths, so familiar, they feel like common sense, and those myths don't just distort history. They make the ongoing violence feel inevitable, justified, someone else's fault. So today I'm launching into a five part series on the hidden history of Israel and Palestine. To examine why the stories we've been told don't survive contact with the record. But first, let me tell you where we are right now because the urgency of this moment cannot be overstated. It's been more than two years since the October 7th attacks, and Israel's brutal response. It's been months since various countries rushed to recognize the state of Palestine, the uk, France, Spain, and many others, making grand diplomatic gestures that generated headlines and momentary hype. But for Palestinians, nothing has changed. Since the ceasefire took effect in October, 2025 through to this recording, at least 556 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza. Over half are women and children, including most recently, a five month old. This is what Israeli peace looks like. The total death toll since October 7th, 2023. Over 71,000 Palestinians confirmed dead according to the Gaza Media office numbers that even Israeli officials aren't arguing against anymore, and that's just the bodies they've been able to count and identify. Tens of thousands more likely remain buried under the rubble. 1.6 million. Gazen still face food insecurity, starvation being used deliberately as a weapon. At least 1 million people still desperately need shelter and humanitarian aid. 80 doctors and nurses from Gaza are being held in Israeli prisons, medical professionals, imprisoned while trying to save lives. And it's not just Gaza. In the West Bank, settler violence against Palestinians is at an all time high. Israel has accelerated operations that fragment Palestinian communities. Even further, settlements continue to expand. What has long been a slow motion ethnic cleansing is speeding up. And that aid that was promised, it's being blocked. Just recently UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency that provided essential services to Palestinian refugees since 1948. Had its headquarters bulldozed by Israeli forces. The international community expressed concern. Nothing changed. Now, doctors Without Borders, one of the most important humanitarian agencies in the world has been banned from providing life-saving aid to the region. People are dying of preventable diseases of infected wounds of starvation, not because there isn't food and medicine in the world, but because Israel won't let it through. So when countries recognize Palestine, it's symbolic diplomatic theatre that costs nothing and changes, nothing. Palestinians are still dying. The occupation continues, the settlements expand, the systematic destruction of Palestinian life goes on. And through all of this, we're told a story, a comforting one that explains why this has to continue, that peace isn't possible, that this is tragic, but unavoidable. That somehow it's the Palestinians own fault. Not long ago on PBS NewsHour a show. I greatly respect. I heard David Brooks repeat the same story. One of the things that it's reminding people of is at the end of the Clinton term, the second Clinton term, he really wanted to have a peace with Israel and Palestine, which was absolutely the right thing to do. But Yasser Araf was never interested because he didn't think Israel was a country vladi or Putin does not think Ukraine is a country, and so you can't argue people into a peace they do not want to have. This is one of the most successful lies in modern political history. The lie that Palestinians have rejected peace over and over because they fundamentally don't want Israel to exist. The lie that if only Palestinians would accept Israel's generous offers, they could have had their state decades ago. This lie is so pervasive, so embedded in American political consciousness that even smart well-meaning people like David Brooks repeat it without questioning. It's become common sense, conventional wisdom, but it's not just wrong, it inverts reality so completely that it makes understanding this conflict impossible. So over the next five episodes, I'm going to take a deep dive into the myths that we've been told about Palestine, that Palestinians always reject peace, that Israel is just defending itself, that it's the only democracy in the Middle East. And finally, I'll take on the two states solution itself, why it's a sham and what can really be done to solve the tragic situation. I'll take this on, not with rhetoric or propaganda, but with documented history, Israeli, Palestinian, and American sources. These aren't just academic debates about history. These myths have real consequences. They're why hundreds of Palestinians can be killed during a ceasefire, and Americans barely notice. They're why we continue to fund this catastrophe with our tax dollars and still think of ourselves as the good guys. If you understand how these myths work, how they flip cause and effect, how they shift blame from oppressor to oppressed, you can finally see what's actually happening. And once you see it, you can't unsee it. So let's start at the beginning. Let's look at what Palestinians have actually been offered and what they've actually rejected, because the truth is nothing like what David Brooks mentioned on PBS. The myth of Palestinian rejectionism begins in 1947 with the United Nations partition plan. And if you understand what actually happened here. Everything else falls into place. The standard story goes something like this. The international community offered a fair division of the land. Jews got a state, Palestinians got a state. Everyone should have accepted it, but the Arabs and Palestinians rejected it out of hatred and launched the war to destroy Israel. That rejection we're told. Proof Palestinians never wanted peace. That story has been repeated for nearly 80 years. But here's what actually happened. The UN proposed giving the Jewish state 56% of historic Palestine. Now that might sound reasonable. A slight majority of the land for the Jewish state, the rest for Arabs, until you look at the demographics and the land ownership. In 1947, Jews comprised one third of Palestine's population. Palestinians made up two thirds, but here's what's really striking. Jews owned less than 10% of the private land. Palestinians owned over 90%. Let me repeat those numbers again. Jews were 33% of the population, own less than 10% of the land. Were offered 56% of the territory Palestinians were 67% of the population owned more than 90% of the land, and were offered only 42%. That's not compromise, that's highway robbery. The injustice wasn't just about percentages, it's about what land each side was offered. The proposed Palestinian state wasn't contiguous. It was carved into three disconnected segments like Swiss cheese with Jewish territory cutting through it. Meanwhile, the Jewish state got most of the coastal plain, the most fertile agricultural land where citrus exports and modern farming were concentrated the main deep water port at Haifa in control of most of the Jaffa/Tel Aviv coastal area. The entire shoreline of the sea of Gelli, a crucial water source, a corridor all the way down to the Red Sea through the Negev. Yes, the Negev was mostly desert, but it gave the Jewish state strategic depth future development space and the maritime outlet to the south, the Palestinian state. It got the central and northern highlands areas with existing Arab agriculture, but largely landlocked, fragmented, and with only a narrow coastal strip around Gaza and no major deep water port. Even the UN's own economic analysis predicted the Arab state would struggle financially and likely depend on its larger neighbor for support baking in economic weakness. This wasn't partition. It was colonization with a un stamp of approval. And here's where the myth really collapses. Zionist leaders didn't see these borders as final. David Ben-Gurion, who would become Israel's first prime minister, wrote to his son in 1937 about an earlier partition proposal that accepting partition would be a first step towards possession of the land as a whole. In internal Zionist discussions documented by historians, they repeatedly describe partition as tactical and temporary. Another statement attributed to Ben-Gurion captures that logic. After establishing a state in a strong army,"we will abolish, partition, and expand to the whole of Palestine". So let's be clear about what happened in 1947. Zionist leaders accepted the UN partition plan publicly gaining international legitimacy and the moral high ground of having said yes to peace, but privately they never intended to honor those borders. Expected Arab rejection planned to use a resulting war to expand beyond the UN lines and sought to prevent a viable Palestinian state from ever existing. Some historians argue that Zionists only accepted partition because they knew Arabs would reject it, giving them the perfect excuse to take more land while claiming self-defense. Whether or not that's exactly right, what's undeniable is this. Ben-Gurion and other Zionist leaders saw partition as a tactical step toward controlling awe of historic Palestine, not as a final settlement. When Palestinians rejected the partition plan, war broke out, and during that war, something happened that fundamentally changed everything. Something that Israelis called the War of Independence, and Palestinians called the nakba or the catastrophe. Roughly 750,000 Palestinians, three quarters of the Arab population in areas that became Israel were expelled or fled. Over 400 Palestinian villages were destroyed. For decades. The official Israeli narrative was that Palestinians left voluntarily that Arab leaders told them to leave so Arab armies could destroy Israel and then they could return that. Israel had no role in their displacement, but Israeli historians working in Israeli military archives had proven this is a lie. Ilan Pappe. In his book, 10 Myths About Israel, Describes Plan Dalet, adopted in March, 1948. It explicitly called for the destruction of villages and expulsion and demolition of Palestinian population centers that might threaten Jewish military control. This wasn't spontaneous. This wasn't the fog of war. This was systematic planned ethnic cleansing. Villages were surrounded at dawn, fighting age. Men were separated from women and children. People were forced onto trucks or made to march at gunpoint. Those who resisted were shot. Villages were then dynamite, so refugees couldn't return. The most infamous massacre was a Deir Yassin, where forces led by future Israeli prime ministers, Menachim Begin and Yitzhak Shamir killed over 100 Palestinian civilians. The massacre was used deliberately to terrorize other Palestinians into fleeing. By the end of 1948, Israel controlled 78% of historic Palestine, far more than the UN partition plan had allocated. Think about that. They were offered 56% and took 78%. The Palestinian state that was supposed to exist. It never materialized Egypt to control of Gaza. Jordan annexed the West Bank, and 750,000 Palestinians became refugees. In December, 1948. The United Nations passed resolution 1 94. It affirmed that Palestinian refugees had the right to return to their homes or receive compensation for their property. This wasn't controversial international law. This was a basic principle that civilians displaced by war have the right to go home. Once fighting stops. Israel ignored the resolution. The United States did nothing to enforce it, and that set the pattern for everything that followed for the next 78 years. International law says one thing. Israel does another, while America provides protection from consequences. So when we talk about the 1947 rejection of partition, here's what Palestinians actually rejected, a deeply unjust division of their homeland, designed to keep them weak, fragmented, and dependent. And what they got instead was worse. Mass possession, ethnic cleansing, permanent refugee status for three quarters of their population. The lesson Israeli leaders learned was clear. International opinion doesn't matter. If you have the backing from a great power. Take as much land as you can, create facts in the ground. The world will eventually accept it. That lesson has guided Israeli policy ever since. Let me describe the 1947 partition deal this way. Imagine you own a house that's been in your family for generations. Suddenly an outside authority shows up and says, we're going to have somebody else move into your house. Not only that, they're getting the kitchen, the living room, and one of the bedrooms. You can keep the master bedroom and any other rooms while the family room with the only TV in the house will be controlled by us." Your reaction would be, hell no, this is my house. But when you refuse the new occupants backed by that outside authority, take the entire house and force you out at gunpoint, then they claim you left voluntarily and for the next 78 years, people say,"well, if you had just accepted that original deal, you could have kept some of your house." That's 1947 petition in a nutshell. Fast forward to the 1990s, the next time. Any significant attempt at resolving the Israel Palestinian conflict was made. Following the first intifada, which lasted from 1987 to around 1993, the world became more acutely aware of terrible conditions under which Palestinians were living. And so a concerted effort was being made to change things. On September 13th, 1993, Yassir Arafat an Israeli Prime minister Yitzhak Rabin shook hands in the White House lawn. The world celebrated. Palestinians celebrated. After decades of occupation. It looked like something real might finally happen. That handshake came at a cost. Arafat later said it was difficult to shake the hand of a man with so much Palestinian blood on it. He wasn't exaggerating. Back in 1948, Rabin had signed orders expelling the Palestinian populations of two cities, thousands forced to march in extreme heat, many dying along the way, one of the major ethnic cleansing operations of the nakba. During the first Intifada As Israel's defense minister, Rabin implemented a policy he openly described as"force, might, and beatings" the phrase that became infamous,"break their bones". That wasn't just a slogan. Human rights reporting and on the ground accounts documented Israeli soldiers beating Palestinian protestors, including teenagers with clubs and rifle butts, deliberately targeting arms and legs to cripple and intimidate. Still, Arafat shook his hand because Oslo was framed as the only path to freedom. But here's the part of the Oslo story that almost always gets erased. As historian Rashid Khalidi documents in his book, the a hundred Years War on Palestine- in 19 89, 4 years before Oslo, Yitzhak Rabin being publicly stated that he supported Palestinian autonomy, but explicitly rejected the idea of an independent Palestinian state. And that position never changed in October, 1995. Less than a month before he was assassinated, Rabin stood be the Knesset and made it explicit. Any Palestinian entity created under Oslo would be less than a state. I. This matters because Rabin is remembered as Israel's great peacemaker, the moderate assassinated by Jewish extremists for giving Palestinians too much. But even at the height of the peace process, even from the man supposedly willing to compromise, the vision was clear. The Palestinian self rule without sovereignty, administration without independence, control, without freedom, that was the ceiling of Oslo. Here's how it worked in practice. Oslo was supposed to create a five-year interim period during which Israel would withdraw gradually, and by 1999, the core issues borders Jerusalem refugees settlements would be resolved. Instead, Oslo two in 1995 carved the West Bank into three zones area a 18% dense Palestinian cities and are nominal Palestinian control area B 22% Palestinian Civil Administration, Israeli security control. C 60% contained almost all agricultural land, all water resources, and every Israeli settlement, and it remained in full Israeli control. Israel kept continuous territory. Palestinians were left with scattered islands. The travel between Palestinian cities, you passed through Israeli checkpoints on Israeli controlled roads that could be closed at any time. And while Palestinians were told, trust the process, the settlement population doubled. In 1993, there are about 110,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank. By 2000 there were 220,000. Economically Palestinians were locked into dependency. Israel collected Palestinian taxes and could withhold them at a will. Palestinians couldn't trade freely because imports and export move through Israeli controlled borders. The Palestinian authority or PA could run schools, but Israel controlled what moved across borders, including textbooks. It could run hospitals, but Israel controlled medical equipment and could block doctors from traveling between cities. As Nathan Thrall all documents in his book, A Day In The Life of Abed Salama, Daily Life became a permit regime, work permits, travel permits, family reunification permits, everything filtered through Israeli military approval, which continues through today. And while ordinary Palestinians waited for hours at checkpoints. PA officials traveled on VIP permits. The PA increasingly functioned as a subcontractor managing Palestinian frustration while Israel consolidated control. By 2000 Palestinians had limited cell rule and disconnected enclaves 18%, fully 22% partially with no sovereignty over land, borders water, airspace, or movement. Israel had legitimized permanent control over 60% of the West Bank while doubling settlements and fragmenting Palestinian territory. This wasn't the pathway to statehood, it was the management of occupation under the language of peace, and that's the context Palestinians brought with them to Camp David in July, 2000, they arrived exhausted. Skeptical, having watched seven years of peace process make their situation demonstrably worse while Israeli settlements doubled. They weren't recalcitrant. They were traumatized by betrayal. In July, 2000, president Clinton brought Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to Camp David for final status negotiations. This is the moment we're told everything fell apart. When Arafat supposedly rejected an incredibly generous offer. Let's look at what was actually on the table. The standard story repeated by Clinton himself and by most American media, is that Barack offered Palestinians, roughly 95% of the West Bank, all of Gaza and a capital in East Jerusalem, and offer so generous. Were told that any rational leader would've accepted it. But here's what the offer actually looked like on the ground. First, let's talk about what 95% of the West Bank actually meant. Like every previous offer, the Palestinian state would not be contiguous. It was once again divided into three disconnected cantons, separated by Israeli settlements, military zones, and bypass roads reserved to Israelis. Ilan Pape and others analysts explicitly described this as a"Bantustan" state, that were designed to look like independence for black Africans while maintaining white supremacy. And the Palestinian state wouldn't be sovereign. Israel would control all borders. All airspace, water resources, and retain the right to intervene militarily at any time. In the name of security, the proposed Palestinian state would be demilitarized, no army, no means of self-defense. Palestinian movement between the three cantons would require Israeli permission at checkpoints. That isn't the state. That's permanent occupation with a Palestinian flag on top. Now, you might think I'm exaggerating. Maybe I'm just presenting the Palestinian narrative, right? So let's hear from someone who was actually there. Listen to Robert Malley in an interview with Zeteo. He was President Clinton's special assistant for Arab Israeli affairs. He was in the room at Camp David. This is his own account of the negotiations. Any foreign minister at the time who was a Camp David with me, Shmo, AMI has said since then. Yes. That had he been a Palestinian, he would've rejected that. Yes. Because the Palestinians felt that, you know, and, and the whole setup, the whole, you know, when pre, when I hear people saying, oh, the US offered the Palestinian state on X percent of the West Bank and, and with severe restrictions on their sovereignty, let's, you know, leave that aside. And obviously no, no rights for the refugees, for the millions of refugees who were expelled in, uh, in 1948. Again, the notion that the Palestinians are offered something. This is a negotiation between two sides, where the Palestinians obviously have their point of view. The Israelis have theirs. It's not one side offering something to the other. It's a matter of can you reconcile their competing narratives and the rights of both sides. When Malley says severe lack of sovereignty, he's describing exactly what I said earlier, a demilitarized entity dependent on Israel for every function that makes a state a state, eight. Here's the other part that Malley touches on. The refugees, the 750,000 Palestinians expelled in 1948, now numbering over 5 million with their descendants, have a right under international law UN resolution 1 94 to return to their homes or receive compensation. At Camp David. That right wasn't just limited. It was explicitly rejected. Barack declared that Israel bore no responsibility for the refugee problem. The negotiating strategy was clear. Palestinians would be asked to give up the right to return in exchange for partial withdrawal from occupied land. Israel might allow a token number of returns, a few thousand people out of millions framed as humanitarian or family reunification cases. The rest. They could go to the new Palestinian state or stay in refugee camps, but they couldn't return home. So Palestinians were being asked to accept a fragmented non-state under permanent Israeli control. Give up the right of return from millions of refugees. Call this peace and thank Israel for its generosity. It's no wonder that Israel's Minister of Foreign Relations, who is at the talk said,"if I were a Palestinian, I would've rejected Camp David." In September, 2000, two months after Camp David collapsed. Ariel Sharon, a hard line, Israeli general and politician vying to be the next Prime Minister visited the Haram al-Sharif, Also known as Temple Mount, one of the holiest sites in Islam, and a sacred site for Jews surrounded by hundreds of armed Israeli police. The message from his visit was loud and clear. This is ours. Palestinians protested and Israeli security forces responded with extreme force rubber bullets, live ammunition, and tear gas. Within the first few days, the Israeli military fired 1 million rounds of ammunition at protestors. Within the first few weeks, Israeli forces killed over 100 Palestinians. The second Intifada had begun. Not from spontaneous Palestinian violence, but through frustration at a failed peace accord and by Israel's violent crackdown on protestors. But even then, talks did not stop in January, 2001, just months into the second, Intifada Israeli and Palestinian negotiators met again. This time in Taba Egypt and despite the violence, both sides reported something remarkable. They had never been closer to a deal. The Taba talks addressed many of Camp David's worst problems, movement toward genuine, territorial, congu. More serious discussions, refugees, real progress on Jerusalem. So who ended the Taba negotiations? Israel did. When Ariel Sharon was elected Prime Minister in February, 2001. He immediately declared the Taba process dead, not because it had failed, because it was succeeding in ways that threatened the settlement enterprise. Sharon, the architect of Israel settlement strategy, had no interest in the viable Palestinian state, so he killed the talks and yet somehow the myth persists that Arafat walked away from peace. The final generous offer people point to is Ehud Olmert's 2008 proposal to Mahmoud Abbas. This one is described as even better, close to 100% of the West Bank after land swaps a capital in East Jerusalem. Everything Palestinians supposedly wanted. So what actually happened first, the context. Olmert was already a lame duck Prime Minister under criminal investigation for corruption. He had announced his resignation. Everyone involved knew he couldn't deliver on any agreement, but there's context most people never hear. After the 2006 Lebanon war, Olmert had already suspended his plan to dismantle West Bank settlements and withdraw from occupied territory. Those plans were never revived. According to Ilan Pape, the Hebrew term Olmert used for his proposal hit Kasu translates as in gathering. It was designed to address what Israeli planners called the demographic threat of Palestinian population growth by keeping Palestinians outside Israeli control or preserving a Jewish demographic majority. In other words, this wasn't about creating a viable Palestinian state. It was about managing the Palestinian population. Second, there's the process. In September, 2008, Olmert made what he called a secret offer to Abas. A comprehensive plan, presented privately, not through formal public negotiations. He showed Abbas a map and asked if he could immediately accept it. Abbas said he needed time to study it with his advisors. Olmert refused to give him a copy of the map. Think about that. You're being asked to sign away the future of an entire people, your people, and you're not allowed to take the map with you to review it. Abbas declined to sign it on the spot. Olmert later complained that Abbas never came back. But by then, Olmert's government was collapsing and he was on his way out indicted for corruption. When you look at what was being offered at first glance, yes, the map looked better than Camp David's three cantons, but the underlying control mechanisms remained and major issues were unresolved. First, the land swaps. Olmert demanded Israel annex six to 7% of the West Bank to keep major settlement blocks. Abbas countered that land swaps shouldn't exceed 2%. That's not a minor gap. That's quite a bit of land. They were disagreeing over. Then there's the refugees. While Olmert claimed he would generously compensate refugees and President Bush offered to accept 100,000 as US citizens Palestinians insisted the right of return was an individual choice that had applied to every refugee. A principle Israel categorically rejected. The proposal reportedly allowed only 5,000 refugees to return to Israel over five years. 5,000 out of over 5 million. Finally there was the issue of territory and sovereignty. The Gaza West Bank connection would be a corridor under Israeli sovereignty with Palestinian use rights, not sovereign Palestinian land. The Palestinian entity, would be demilitarized. Israeli forces, would maintain presence in the Jordan Valley. Israel would retain control over Palestinian airspace and borders. And here's the final detail that exposes how unlikely this offer was to ever succeed. Even Olmert's own successors, members from his own kadima party opposed a proposal after he left office. So even this most generous offer ever presented in secret by a collapsing criminally indicted prime minister who couldn't give Abbas a copy of the map, who had already abandoned settlement withdrawal and whose own party rejected the proposals still amounted to a constrained, mini entity under Israeli control with massive, unresolved issues on land, refugees and sovereignty. So by now, the pattern should be unmistakable. Every offer follows the same formula. Present something that sounds reasonable in headlines. Structure it to preserve Israeli control and practice. Exclude any meaningful refugee solution. Demand Palestinians accept an offer without any true negotiations, and when they hesitate or ask for changes, accuse them of rejectionism. That isn't negotiation. It's a setup. The goal has never been to create a viable Palestinian state. The goal has always been to create the appearance of offering one, so that when Palestinians refuse permanent subordination, Israel can claim. We tried. They said no. The Palestinian Liberation Organization, or PLO, formerly recognized Israel in 1988. Five years before Oslo, 12 years before Camp David. This was never about recognition. It was about whether Palestinians would accept a Bantustan and call it statehood. They refused, and thank God they did, because accepting those deals wouldn't have brought peace. It would've legitimized permanent oppression on making resistance morally impossible. So let's get back to that myth. We're told Palestinians rejected peace because they don't want Israel to exist. But this was never about recognition. It was about whether Palestinians would accept permanent subordination and call it statehood. Every offer followed the same pattern. Sound reasonable in headlines? Deny sovereignty in practice. Then blame Palestinians when they refuse. This myth serves a purpose. It lets us fund apartheid while still thinking we're the good guys. It turns Palestinian suffering into their fault instead of our responsibility. But once you see it, you can't unsee it. In the next episode, I'll take on the myth of Israeli self-defense How America's unwavering support from Israel's very first moments set the stage for 78 years of expansion disguised as security. You can't claim self-defense when you strike first seize territory, create the threats you fight and eliminate anyone who might wanna negotiate peace. That's not defense, that's domination. Thank you for listening to another episode of Khannecting the Dots. If you found this episode helpful, please consider subscribing, giving a review, or sharing with a friend. Until next time, stay curious, stay critical, and stay connected. I.