We’re constantly hearing about how the majority of Israelis and Palestinians want peace. If this was true, there would likely be a peace agreement signed tomorrow. While this is true of Israelis, who want to live normal lives like most of us, it is definitely not true of the Palestinians. One major stumbling block to any peace agreement is the Palestinian insistence on the “right of return”. Notwithstanding that Jordan is Palestine, the Palestinians don’t only want a Jew-free West Bank and Gaza (the latter which they already have), but they also want to flood Israel with millions of refugees, which is what the “right of return” means. Israel obviously won’t do that!
How are we so sure that this is what Palestinians want? According to the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion (questions 14 and 15), a Palestinian polling organization, almost 82% of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza (yes, fully 4 of 5!) say that the Palestinians must NOT renounce thri “right of home return”, even at the price of no peace deal as a consequence, and even with financial compensation! Please keep in mind that the Palestinians polled live in the Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem and are not even the refugees in question, who languish in refugee camps around the Middle East.
Knowing that Israel can never accept the “right of return”, as it would destroy Israel and would create yet another Muslim-majority country, these numbers prove beyond a doubt that Palestinians are not interested in peace – they want Israel destroyed. Let us remember this when our friends tell us that both sides want peace – that Palestinians want peace is a fallacy.
Palestinians, for the last 40 or so years, have been claiming that they’ve existed since time immemorial. However, Joseph Farah, one of the first Christian Arabs to come out in strong defense of Israel, wrote in 2002 that “Palestinian people do not exist“, and he, of course, is right!
Instead of compiling opinions of this matter from world leaders and the press, Farah goes straight to the source – the PLO/Palestinian Authority. Here are some beautiful quotes that he compiles:
Zahir Muhsein, Palestinian Liberation Organization executive committee member, 1977: ‘The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct “Palestinian people” to oppose Zionism.’
Yassir Arafat, Palestinian Liberation Organization leader, 1993: ‘Since we cannot defeat Israel in war, we do this in stages. We take any and every territory that we can of Palestine, and establish a sovereignty there, and we use it as a springboard to take more. When the time comes, we can get the Arab nations to join us for the final blow against Israel.’ This quote, by the way, confirms a recent post we wrote about the Palestinian’s Phased Plan of 1974.
It is interesting to read this article from 8 years ago – the issues have not changed at all. There is still an intransigent Palestinian Authority that resists peace at every move, a press that despises the state of Israel and the Israelis still standing tall and proud as the only (militarily unenforced) democracy in the Middle East.
Another brave Christian, Geert Wilders, whose PVV party finished 3rd in the Holland elections and is part of the ruling right-wing government, has suggested to ending the Middle East conflict by renaming Jordan to Palestine.
Mr. Wilders’ comments aren’t even that controversial. Unfortunately, most people don’t know (be…cause the press doesn’t tell them) that before 1923 Jordan and Palestine were one entity – named the “British Mandate of Palestine”. The Brits split “Palestine” then into two parts – Palestine (24%) and Transjordan (76%). How the smaller entity took the name of the previous entity is beyond us. For more information, please see the Middle East Maps for Dummies.
