Everyone assumes that the Palestinians all want nothing more than to live under Palestinian rule. But in this article, Daniel Pipes has assembled telling evidence that, on the contrary, many Arabs who are already living in Israel, in Jerusalem and in the 'Galilee triangle', view the prospect with horror. They would prefer, they say, to live under Israeli rule:

'‘Abd ar-Razzaq ‘Abid of Jerusalem's Silwan neighborhood pointed dubiously to "what's happening in Ramallah, Hebron, and the Gaza Strip" and asked if the residents there were well off. A doctor applying for Israeli papers explained: "The whole world seems to be talking about the future of the Arabs of Jerusalem, but no one has bothered asking us. The international community and the Israeli Left seem to take it for granted that we want to live under Mr. Arafat's control. We don't. Most of us despise Mr. Arafat and the cronies around him, and we want to stay in Israel. At least here I can speak my mind freely without being dumped in prison, as well as having a chance to earn an honest day's wage".

'In the colorful words of one Jerusalem resident, "The hell of Israel is better than the paradise of Arafat. We know Israeli rule stinks, but sometimes we feel like Palestinian rule would be worse." The director of the Bayt Hanina community council in northern Jerusalem, Husam Watad, found that the prospect of finding themselves living under Arafat's control had people "in a panic. More than 50 percent of east Jerusalem residents live below the poverty line, and you can imagine how the situation would look if residents did not receive [Israeli] National Insurance Institute payments." In the view of Fadal Tahabub, a member of the Palestinian National Council, an estimated 70 percent of the 200,000 Arab residents of Jerusalem preferred to remain under Israeli sovereignty. A social worker living in Ras al-‘Amud, one of the areas possibly falling under PA control, said: "If a secret poll was conducted, I am sure an overwhelming majority of Jerusalem Arabs would say they would prefer to stay in Israel." '

This is because the Arabs of Israel know from first- hand experience the advantages of living under the rule of law, with freedom of expression, economic benefits and the safety and security that derive from living in a free society. So why should their kinfolk in the territories feel any differently? If they were actually to be asked, would this not be the most powerful means of removing the corrupt tyranny that has kept them in servitude and spawned the cult of death that has taken their children from them and turned them into human explosives? And so shouldn't Israel and America be demanding of the Palestinians above all that they develop the institutions of a free society as the precondition of negotiations for a state of their own?