[Peptobismol]

The New York Times op-ed by Mahmoud Abbas is entitled “The Long Overdue Palestinian State,” but you would not learn from it that he turned one down in 2008; that the Palestinians rejected the Clinton Parameters in 2001; and that they rejected the offer of a state at Camp David in 2000. Each of those offers consisted of a state on substantially all of the West Bank and Gaza with a capital in Jerusalem and a “right of return” to the new Palestinian state. Three rejections in eight years.

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/20...stinian-state/

1. Abu Mazen tries to create the false impression that the Palestinian refugee issue caused the Arab war against Israel in 1948. The Palestinian refugees were the result, not the cause, of that war.

2. Israel absorbed over 600,000 Jewish refugees who were thrown out of Arab countries in the immediate aftermath of the 1948 war. Another roughly 300,000 Jewish refugees were absorbed in other countries, including the United States, Canada and France.

In contrast, despite the Arab world’s vast territory and wealth, 600,000 Palestinian refugees have never been absorbed by the Arab countries to which they fled. Instead, the refugees and their descendants have been held hostage by the countries in which they live in an apartheid situation, and used by the Palestinian leadership for more than 60 years as pawns against Israel.

3. Abu Bluff’s strategy for the past two years has been to avoid a negotiated settlement with Israel. That’s why he avoided Netanyahu’s continued call for negotiations. That’s why he placed a settlement freeze as a precondition for negotiations, something he and his predecessor never did before in the 18 years of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. That’s why he walked away from peace talks last September. And that’s why he had no qualms about forging a pact with Hamas, which refuses to recognize the existence of Israel and refuses to abandon terrorism (Hamas has fired thousands of rockets at Israel’s cities, and last month, a Hamas terrorist fired an anti-tank rocket at a school bus). Two weeks ago, the leader of Hamas even condemned the United States for killing Osama bin Laden, whom Hamas praised for being a Holy Warrior. For that matter, Fatah's 'military wing' (the 'al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades') agreed with Hamas.

4. Based on this article, one can only conclude that Abbas has abandoned even the pretense of embracing the path of peace and instead chosen a strategy to establish a Palestinian state and use the improved position of statehood to wage a diplomatic and legal war against Israel.

http://israelmatzav.blogspot.com/201...mes-op-ed.html