It’s been my hope for a very long time that a Palestinian leader would view David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founder, as a role model. Ben-Gurion built the apparatus and economy of a state before the state existed, and he said yes to the grant of a state that seemed neither viable nor defensible — but he made something of it anyway.

Abbas (unlike the deposed prime minister of Palestine, Salam Fayyad) wants the international community to hand him a perfect, ready-made Palestine. Hence his decision to seek membership in 15 international conventions, the proximate cause of the coming collapse of negotiations. Abbas is under the illusion that membership in various international conventions means he rules a country. But the moral support of Bolivia and Thailand and Norway and Malawi will not bring about the creation of a state. Only Israel can conjure a Palestinian state into existence.