Elliott Abrams is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a friend of the Washington Free Beacon. He has served in senior foreign policy roles in three Republican administrations focusing on the Middle East, Latin America, and the U.S.-Israel relationship. Through it all, he has been a relentless advocate for American interests and a proud and unyielding Zionist.
Earlier this month, he published an essay in Mosaic magazine headlined, “There Never Will Be a Palestinian State. So What’s Next?” We wanted to ask him a few questions about it, and recommend you read the whole thing.
The upshot of your piece is that the Palestinian leadership doesn’t actually want a state. You’ve worked on Middle East diplomacy for a long time. When did you come to this conclusion?
After they rejected [former Israeli prime minister Ehud] Olmert’s 2008 offer. I hated his offer, which would have abandoned Jerusalem, and thought it would never get cabinet or Knesset approval. But even that offer was rejected by the Palestinians.
What took you so long?
I never dealt with [former Palestinian Authority president Yasser] Arafat, but I thought things might work out much better when he was dead. He died in late 2004, and nothing changed, so I drew conclusions.
You say you came to the conclusion there would never be a Palestinian state in 2008. But you wrote this piece in 2025, 17 years later. Why the delay?
I have been saying it; that article was not the first time. I told the Obama transition team in late 2008 that [current PA president Mahmoud] Abbas would never, never say yes to anything. But I admit I’ve been clearer as the years have gone by. That’s because the sickness in Palestinian society has I think become clearer and clearer.
You say Palestinian leaders don’t want a state. What’s the strongest evidence for your view?
Partition into two states is an old idea, going back to the British a century ago and then the UN resolution in 1947. Though it would have created a tiny Israel, the Zionists accepted it; they desperately wanted a state. The Palestinians have always said no—after World War I, after World War II, then to Clinton and Bush and Obama. Instead they have always chosen war and terrorism. Their goal has been destroying Israel, not building a state of their own.
French president Emmanuel Macron, British prime minister Keir Starmer, Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese, and Canadian prime minister Mark Carney recently recognized a Palestinian state. You argue that this never would have happened absent the October 7 attacks. Why?
The October 7th attacks aroused a kind of blood lust in many Muslim populations and among many left-wing groups. They have cheered Hamas on, and they call Israel’s war against Hamas “genocide.” These politicians—Macron, Carney, Starmer, and Albanese—are catering to domestic audiences, giving them the rhetoric they want. This recognition of a Palestinian state that does not exist is pure theater, and does not help one single Palestinian. It comes in reaction to this unbelievably brutal attack on Israel, and assault on Israel for defending itself.
You note that these international leaders have dropped even the pretense of demanding preconditions for the creation of a Palestinian state, such as the renunciation of terrorism on the part of its leaders: “They know what a Palestinian state will require to be successful, but they no longer care, the political pressures are too great to resist, and they wish to punish Israel and its right-wing government for the sin of defending itself.” How much of that pressure is international and how much is domestic?
I think it’s almost entirely domestic. What great international pressure is there? There’s no evidence, for example, that Saudi Arabia is pressuring Spain to do this, or the UAE is pressuring France, and the Arab League is pressuring Canada, and threatening boycotts and disinvestment. This isn’t like the 1973 Arab oil boycott. These are weak leaders catering to pressure groups, in essence throwing the Jews in their countries to the wolves because there are lots more wolves than Jews.
You spend time writing about the Palestinian leader Salam Fayyad. What is his significance?
Fayyad was the one Palestinian leader who actually did want to build a state. He was finance minister and then prime minister, and he worked on things like eliminating corruption, and publishing the Palestinian Authority budget. He spoke in almost Zionist terms, saying Israel wasn’t built in 1948; it was announced in 1948 after the Zionists had spent 75 years building institutions. That’s what he wanted for the Palestinians—and when he ran for office he got 2.4 percent of the vote.
You quote an essay published recently in the New Yorker by the former adviser to Yasser Arafat, Hussein Agha, and the former U.S. diplomat Rob Malley, who is still under FBI investigation by the way. I don’t think the New Yorker mentioned that. They write, “The two-state solution is not the natural resting place for either Israelis or Palestinians [and] runs counter to the essence of their national identities and aspirations.” You comment, “True, but the Zionists, in 1948, compromised and took what the UN was offering. The Palestinians did not.” Why did the Jews take the deal?
First, because they were builders. You start with something, whatever you can get, and then work to make it better. Second, because they were realists and knew they had limited ability to demand more. Third, because they desperately needed a place that Jewish refugees could come to from the displaced persons camps in Europe.
You note that the New Yorker article is based on a book with one interesting difference. It “added new and exceptionally vicious condemnations of Israel.” Why do you think that is?
I think Agha and Malley must have started this book a couple of years ago, before October 7th. Things seemed much calmer back then, so they drafted an almost philosophical review of fifty years of peace processing. They cast a lot of blame on the Palestinians as well as on the Israelis (and on U.S. policy too). But now in 2025, that won’t do; if you’re not accusing Israel of war crimes and genocide, you will have zero credibility among Palestinians and most Arabs, and certainly on the Left. So, to use a phrase of Daniel P. Moynihan’s, they “joined the jackals.”
