Harris needs to support a two state solution

[martybegan]

Palestinians in the West Bank can do nothing about Gaza and Hamas

MSN

Palestinian factions including rivals Hamas and Fatah have signed an agreement on “ending division and strengthening Palestinian unity” in Beijing, China said Tuesday.

The announcement followed reconciliation talks hosted by China involving 14 Palestinian factions starting Sunday, according to China’s Foreign Ministry, which come as Israel wages war against militant group Hamas in Gaza and as Beijing has sought to present itself as a potential peace broker in the conflict.

 

[Billiejeens]

In July 2000, we were filled with hope as Ehud Barak, Israel’s Prime Minister and leader of the Labor Party, left for Camp David to negotiate a final peace agreement with the Palestinians. After more than a decade of previously unimaginable historical breakthroughs – the collapse of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of Apartheid in South Africa and the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland – we believed we had arrived at the historical moment when peace with the Palestinians might finally be at hand.

Barak placed a bold proposal on the negotiating table that would have provided the Palestinians with an independent sovereign state in almost all of the West Bank and Gaza, without a single settlement in sight, and a capital in east Jerusalem, including holy sites. And we were certain the Palestinians would say yes. After all, for decades we had been told that the key to peace in the Middle East was for Israel to hand over land – “land for peace” – and Barak had just agreed to hand over the land to the Palestinians.

Moreover, we made the straightforward assumption that when a people who seek to govern themselves in their own state are presented with the opportunity to do so, they say yes.

We were wrong.

There was no yes. Yasser Arafat, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, walked away. He walked away from Barak’s proposal at Camp David, and he walked away from President Clinton’s proposal which set the parameters for peace.


Had he not walked away, the state of Palestine would have celebrated twenty years of independence this year, in its capital in Jerusalem.

So why did he walk away? Why did Arafat not say a resounding yes when presented with the opportunity to give his people the liberty and dignity of political independence? And why did he face no criticism whatsoever from his people for doing so? What did the Palestinians actually want if not an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza with its capital in east Jerusalem?

The answer was hiding in plain sight: the right of return.

The overriding Palestinian demand, more important than the explicit demand of statehood, has always been the innocuous sounding right of return — the demand for millions of Palestinians, descendants of those who fled or were expelled in the 1948 war, to be recognized as possessing each a “right” to settle inside the state of Israel. This right, not sanctioned by international law, crucially overrules Israeli sovereignty; since the number of these Palestinians is between five and nine million, and since Israel’s Jewish population is about seven million, the meaning of such a demand is the transformation of Israel into an Arab state.

And this demand for a massive collective right to enter Israel has been inseparable from the larger negotiations from the Palestinian side. What this means is that when Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority, spoke of their support for a two-state solution, they actually envisioned two Arab states: one in the West Bank and Gaza, and another one to replace Israel.


This is the only two-state solution Palestinians have ever agreed to. There has never been a Palestinian vision of peace where the sovereign state of the Jewish people is allowed to remain as is, because there has never been a Palestinian vision that didn’t include the right of return for millions of Palestinians.

This is why Arafat walked away in 2000. “Recognition of the right of return,” said an internal PLO memo written a short time after the Camp David summit, “is a prerequisite for the closure of the conflict.” The same week, an official magazine of Arafat’s faction within the PLO wrote that the mass return of Palestinian refugees to Israel would “help Jews get rid of racist Zionism.”

Eight years later, When Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sketched out the details of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s peace proposal to Abbas in May 2008, his telling response, quoted in her memoir “No Higher Honor,” was, “I can’t tell four million Palestinian [refugees] that only five thousand of them can go home.”

And as in 2000, there was no criticism of Abbas for depriving Palestinians of a state, no Op-Eds saying that this was a great opportunity that should have been grabbed with both hands, and no NGOs calling on Palestinians to move on from the fixation on return.

One thing Abbas might have told these Palestinian refugees was that the twentieth century saw many empires collapsing and nation-states established, often in a bloody and painful process of land division and border drawings that caused the death and displacement of tens of millions of human beings. Many of them, just like the Palestinians, wanted to return to the places where they had lived before. But it was only the Palestinian demand to resettle inside the State of Israel that was indulged and sustained in such a way by the international community. The fact is, no other refugee population exists from the 1940s. They have all moved on to build their lives in the places to which they fled or in other countries.

The refusal on the part of the international community to engage these simple truths is telling. In 1947, British Foreign Minister Ernst Bevin summarized the essence of the conflict in the British Mandate territory as boiling down to the fact that the Jews want a state in the land, and the Arabs want the Jews not to have a state in the land. He has only been proven right ever since. More than the Palestinians wanted a state for themselves, they still want the Jewish people not to have their own state in the land, in any borders.

And as long as the price of having a Palestinian Arab state in the land was going to be that the Jewish people would have their own state in the land as well, the answer was going to be no, no and — to quote Abu Mazen — “a thousand times no.”

 

[surada]

That is the only way forward in the war between gaza and Israel. One state controlled by the moderates for the Palestinian. This would allow israel to control its land the way they choose and strengthen their rights to exist as the Palestinians couldn't act like like they had a right to live in it.

Harris needs to campaign on this and promise that she will push for the two state solution. The central government of palestine needs to take control of gaza and force out hamas....Needs to be a real nation on the map.

No she doesn't.. The US has no business in Palestine.

 

[Frankenstein]

VP Harris finally reacts to DC violence, hours after flag burning by anti-Israel agitators

Vice President Harris condemned the rioting that took place in Washington, D.C. Wednesday, that included anti-Israel demonstrations and flag burning.

www.foxnews.com

Yes, only after it was apparent it would hurt her chance to have a go at continuing the destruction of America.

 

[SassyIrishLass]

No she doesn't.. The US has no business in Palestine.

There isn't a Palestine

 

[surada]

In July 2000, we were filled with hope as Ehud Barak, Israel’s Prime Minister and leader of the Labor Party, left for Camp David to negotiate a final peace agreement with the Palestinians. After more than a decade of previously unimaginable historical breakthroughs – the collapse of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of Apartheid in South Africa and the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland – we believed we had arrived at the historical moment when peace with the Palestinians might finally be at hand.

Barak placed a bold proposal on the negotiating table that would have provided the Palestinians with an independent sovereign state in almost all of the West Bank and Gaza, without a single settlement in sight, and a capital in east Jerusalem, including holy sites. And we were certain the Palestinians would say yes. After all, for decades we had been told that the key to peace in the Middle East was for Israel to hand over land – “land for peace” – and Barak had just agreed to hand over the land to the Palestinians.

Moreover, we made the straightforward assumption that when a people who seek to govern themselves in their own state are presented with the opportunity to do so, they say yes.

We were wrong.

There was no yes. Yasser Arafat, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, walked away. He walked away from Barak’s proposal at Camp David, and he walked away from President Clinton’s proposal which set the parameters for peace.


Had he not walked away, the state of Palestine would have celebrated twenty years of independence this year, in its capital in Jerusalem.

So why did he walk away? Why did Arafat not say a resounding yes when presented with the opportunity to give his people the liberty and dignity of political independence? And why did he face no criticism whatsoever from his people for doing so? What did the Palestinians actually want if not an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza with its capital in east Jerusalem?

The answer was hiding in plain sight: the right of return.

The overriding Palestinian demand, more important than the explicit demand of statehood, has always been the innocuous sounding right of return — the demand for millions of Palestinians, descendants of those who fled or were expelled in the 1948 war, to be recognized as possessing each a “right” to settle inside the state of Israel. This right, not sanctioned by international law, crucially overrules Israeli sovereignty; since the number of these Palestinians is between five and nine million, and since Israel’s Jewish population is about seven million, the meaning of such a demand is the transformation of Israel into an Arab state.

And this demand for a massive collective right to enter Israel has been inseparable from the larger negotiations from the Palestinian side. What this means is that when Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority, spoke of their support for a two-state solution, they actually envisioned two Arab states: one in the West Bank and Gaza, and another one to replace Israel.


This is the only two-state solution Palestinians have ever agreed to. There has never been a Palestinian vision of peace where the sovereign state of the Jewish people is allowed to remain as is, because there has never been a Palestinian vision that didn’t include the right of return for millions of Palestinians.

This is why Arafat walked away in 2000. “Recognition of the right of return,” said an internal PLO memo written a short time after the Camp David summit, “is a prerequisite for the closure of the conflict.” The same week, an official magazine of Arafat’s faction within the PLO wrote that the mass return of Palestinian refugees to Israel would “help Jews get rid of racist Zionism.”

Eight years later, When Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sketched out the details of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s peace proposal to Abbas in May 2008, his telling response, quoted in her memoir “No Higher Honor,” was, “I can’t tell four million Palestinian [refugees] that only five thousand of them can go home.”

And as in 2000, there was no criticism of Abbas for depriving Palestinians of a state, no Op-Eds saying that this was a great opportunity that should have been grabbed with both hands, and no NGOs calling on Palestinians to move on from the fixation on return.

One thing Abbas might have told these Palestinian refugees was that the twentieth century saw many empires collapsing and nation-states established, often in a bloody and painful process of land division and border drawings that caused the death and displacement of tens of millions of human beings. Many of them, just like the Palestinians, wanted to return to the places where they had lived before. But it was only the Palestinian demand to resettle inside the State of Israel that was indulged and sustained in such a way by the international community. The fact is, no other refugee population exists from the 1940s. They have all moved on to build their lives in the places to which they fled or in other countries.

The refusal on the part of the international community to engage these simple truths is telling. In 1947, British Foreign Minister Ernst Bevin summarized the essence of the conflict in the British Mandate territory as boiling down to the fact that the Jews want a state in the land, and the Arabs want the Jews not to have a state in the land. He has only been proven right ever since. More than the Palestinians wanted a state for themselves, they still want the Jewish people not to have their own state in the land, in any borders.

And as long as the price of having a Palestinian Arab state in the land was going to be that the Jewish people would have their own state in the land as well, the answer was going to be no, no and — to quote Abu Mazen — “a thousand times no.”

There's no contiguous state amid tiny, disconnected bantustans.

 

[surada]

There isn't a Palestine

It's always been a province of Syria.

 

[SassyIrishLass]

It's always been a province of Syria.

There is no nation or country named Palestine and never has been. Just a bunch of desert nomads nobody wants