(Jerusalem Post) David Horovitz - The Obama administration, replicating some of its Israel pressure on the Palestinian side, should ask Mahmoud Abbas to stand up and deliver, as Netanyahu did at Bar-Ilan University last year, his version of the "two states" speech, his vision of peaceful coexistence. Let Abbas speak in Arabic, to his own people - with his leadership colleagues on hand to publicly support and applaud him - and let him tell them that the Jews, too, have historic rights to Palestine. Let him make plain that viable compromise is vital to the future well-being of both peoples. Let him recall that the international community, in partitioning British mandatory Palestine, provided for a Jewish and an Arab entity side by side - that the provision for revived Jewish sovereignty was integral to the right the Palestinians seek to realize for their own historically unprecedented independence. And let him declare, therefore, that he recognizes that the demand for a "right of return" for millions of Palestinians to what is now Israel is a dream that must be abandoned, for the Jewish nation has the right to that small sliver of sovereign land of its own. Wouldn't such a speech be an ideal, immediate test of Palestinian intentions? Wouldn't such a speech serve Palestinian, Israeli and American interests?
2010-04-27 08:28:10Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive