Why in the world would Whitehall and Foggy Bottom want to reward the Palestinian Arabs for Hamas’s October 7 atrocities? The way Foreign Secretary David Cameron puts it is, “We should be starting to set out what a Palestinian state would look like.” Secretary Blinken, Axios reports, is asking the State Department to “present policy options on possible U.S. and international recognition of a Palestinian state after the war in Gaza.” 

To which we ask, “on what planet?” We have long suspected that everybody in the world is itching for a Palestinian state, except the Palestinians. Statehood was offered on a silver platter in President Clinton’s Oslo Accords. The designated head of that imagined statelet, Yasser Arafat, rejected the terms. When his successor, Mahmoud Abbas, took the reins, he traveled the world over to declare independence, while life in the West Bank deteriorated.

The corruption and incompetence of Mr. Abbas and his camarilla at Ramallah have become so infamous that even some of the Palestinians’ most adamant European backers were forced at times to halt funds. In 2005 Prime Minister Sharon decided to remove all settlements and Israeli troops from Gaza and the northern West Bank. Hamas took over. As its long-declared genocidal intentions were finally on display in October, the world was shocked.      

The truth is that the statehood project failed each time it was tried. So why are the striped pants set in Washington and Europe stuck with the old notion that the region’s troubles would disappear once a new Arab country were established. The United Nations General Assembly declared “Palestine” a member state in 2012, and 139 of Turtle Bay’s members recognize it as such. All but neglecting the West Bank, Mr. Abbas has made a mint for him and his family. 

Even as Mr. Abbas raised the Palestinian flag at the Rose Garden, the garden of the United Nations, and at European capitals, he still needed the Security Council’s approval to become a full UN member. America, for good reason, blocked numerous attempts. One idea being floated now at the State Department is that Washington would soon either support or abstain in a council vote approving the final hurdle for Palestinian statehood. 

That would be a shocking move — akin to the decision of the Obama administration to take the Articles of Appeasement on Iran to the Security Council and vote for them there. The Obama administration did that in the face of what the New York Times characterized as “overwhelming” opposition in both houses of Congress. Our guess is that Mr. Biden couldn’t get a buy-in on Palestinian statehood from either house. 

According to reports, Mr. Blinken is attempting to build a new Mideast where Sunni allies would coalesce against Iranian expansionism. At the center of that plan is a peace treaty between Israel and Saudi Arabia. As Riyadh is publicly saying no such peace can be struck without Palestinian statehood, the thinking goes, what else can America do? To us, that logic completely misreads the Mideast’s mindset. 

The Saudis don’t really care about a Palestinian state, a retired Israeli general, Amir Avivi, tells our Benny Avni, adding, “they care about the two dangers that they face, Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood, and they want to see Hamas destroyed.” Based on that premise, Israelis have long argued for an “outside-in” approach to peacemaking: Alliances with Arab states would eventually force Palestinians to recognize the Jewish state. 

President Trump gave life to that concept in sponsoring the 2020 Abraham Accords. In contrast, Mr. Biden is eager to return to the tired “inside-out” dream that reckons nothing is possible until the Palestinians get their state. What’s the logic, given that the Palestinian Authority is in a shambles and, since October 7, Hamas is surging in Palestinian popularity polls? It smacks us as mendacious statecraft that would render Mideast peace a mirage.