(Ha'aretz) Gadi Taub - Why should Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas sign a peace treaty with Israel in return for a state along the 1967 lines? It's not so simple. First of all, it would require giving up the Palestinian refugees' right of return, for which any Palestinian politician would pay a heavy price. Yielding on the right of return will without a doubt be regarded as capitulation and moral bankruptcy. Abbas has surely looked around at what's happening throughout the region and has noticed that Arab nation-states have been collapsing all around him. The assumption that a Palestinian national state will be an island of stability in the heart of this chaos is not obvious. Tiny, with institutions that have not been groomed for nation-building and with a shaky economy that's dependent on others, it would not be a particularly safe bet, especially when all that separates it from the Islamic State caliphate is Jordan.
2016-02-19 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive