A while back a friend argued that Israel should not exist as it was the only state in the world created specifically for one religious group. That is, of course, wrong. There’s Pakistan and Bangladesh, for starters.
There’s also the broader fact, as noted by Richard Fernandez:
- There was a certain asymmetry in the confrontation that often went unremarked. Israel was the world’s only Jewish state while the Palestinians were part of a larger community in the region, some would say indistinguishable from it. Israel’s existence was its all-in-all. On the other the hand, the Palestinian state was in the final analysis, optional to the Arabs in the region as a whole. Israel non-negotiably needed to live. Palestine’s nonnegotiable demand was that Israel needed to die.
Which leads to the issue of “right of return”. Quoted in “The Coalmine Collapses”, above, in which Jennifer Rubin argues:
- The right of return therefore should be understood as the extermination of a Jewish state. Berkowitz explains: “The question of refugees, moreover, is much more than, as the president described it in his State Department speech, a ‘wrenching’ issue. Palestinian dedication to a right, with no precedent under international law, inhering in seven million Palestinians to establish residence in the state of Israel has been and remains the overriding obstacle to a secure and lasting peace.”
- So what did Obama do? He delinked the right of return and return of territories. Israel’s bargaining power is eliminated because Obama gave it to Abbas despite his stated intention this week to continue war against the Jewish state. What have the Palestinians given up? Nothing. Obama offered sympathy but didn’t even suggest that the Palestinians had to jettison that central obstacle to peace.
