Many commentators who argue in favor of the Palestinian cause base themselves  on an assumption which they never voice and which, perhaps, they are not entirely conscious. That assumption is that Israelis are morally superior to Palestinians and, in political terms, more intelligent than them. There follow a couple of examples of what I mean.

An article by David Gardner has just appeared on Open Democracy in which he argues that the Palestinian refugee problem is solvable and that doing so is an urgent necessity in spite of the fact that it might cost up to 100 billion dollars. Turning to what he believes will happen if it isn’t solved he writes:

Already the phenomenon of al-Qaida-style jihadism has begun to surface in the camps (for example, in Nahr al-Bared in Lebanon, in Jordan, and in Gaza - where Hamas crushed a jihadist group on 15 August 2009 after an eruption of fighting).

Johnny Guitar writes on a similar tack.  In a post dealing with the crushing by Hamas last week  (I wonder if the force used was proportionate…) of the  Jund Ansar Allah group he urges Israel to  immediately start substantive negotiations with  the current rulers of Gaza. What does he think will happen if it  doesn’t?

There is an alternative, of course, which is to have a so-called ’settlement’ that excludes around half of the Palestinian people. Were that situation ever to arise, Jund Ansar Allah may not remain on the eccentric fringes of Palestinian life for too long.

Both authors suggest that if the Palestinian people don’t get what they want and soon then they may react by embracing groups that reject modernity in its entirety, are even keener on mayhem and slaughter as the only path to national liberation than their present leadership, that  would be bound to alienate even the most dewy-eyed foreign supporters of the Palestinian cause and would also be a gift from the heavens to the hard core of the Israeli right.

Funny how you never come across the same logic applied to Israel. It would go something like this: “If Israel’s neighbors and large elements of the Palestinian people continue to deny its legitimacy as a state for Jews then its democratic institutions may collapse under the weight of an assault from extreme religious nationalists who will try to construct a state ruled by Jewish religious law, a state that will seek to solve Israel’s security problems by resort to the full use of its overwhelming military power. There would no more piddling around with targeted assassinations and military operations like the Gaza campaign would go on till the last enemy gunman had either been killed or fled across the nearest border.”

No serious member of the commentariat thinks that the bulk of Israelis would support any such response to the terrorism and hostility that they have been subjected to throughout the life of their state. Why then do such people think that Palestinians would be willing to embrace medieval jihadism? I’d suggest that one part of the answer might be that for all their sympathy for the Palestinians and their cause they can’t bring themselves to regard them as their own equals or the equals of the Israelis.

While they - and the bulk of Israelis - lead lives of quiet, anomie-ridden, consumerist desperation they see the Palestinians as stubborn, romantic and charming, clinging to their ancient ways and noble, fundamentally hopeless cause. Indeed for the progressive commentariat it is the apparent hopelessness of the Palestinian cause that makes it so appealing. The day the Palestinian leaders start to show serious signs of wanting to make a deal that’s possible to make, that’s the day the progressive commentariat will start looking for another group of exotic people to come over all misty-eyed about, in a well meaning but condescending way.