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Source: http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/exposing-abbas-5335
Exposing Abbas
(National Interest) Benny Morris - In the New York Times, Mahmoud Abbas tells us that in May 1948, as "a 13-year-old Palestinian boy," he was "forced" and "driven" out of his home in Safad by the Zionists. But on 6 July 2009 he told an interviewer on Falastina TV, in Arabic, that his family had actually fled Safad, fearing Jewish retribution for a massacre the Arabs had committed against the town's Jews two decades before. The truth, of course, is that Safad's Arabs fled the town as it was conquered by Haganah troops on 9-10 May 1948; there was no "expulsion." The Arab states and the Palestinian national leadership opposed the partition of Palestine, claiming all of Palestine for the Arabs. When the General Assembly voted in favor of partition, on 29 November 1947, the Palestinian leadership rejected the resolution and the Palestinian militias launched hostilities to abort the emergence of a Jewish state. They were aided by money, arms and volunteers from the Arab states. In the first four months of the 1948 War, the Palestinian militias attacked Jewish traffic and settlements, but eventually the Jewish militias went over to the offensive and routed the Palestinians. Abbas' twisted history deliberately omits mention of the first half of the 1948 War in order to portray the Palestinians as innocent victims. In fact, they were primary agents in the events that followed. In history, peoples often pay for their aggression and mistakes, and this is what happened in Palestine. Once the Palestinians get their West Bank-Gaza state, they will use it as a springboard for their second-stage assault, political and military, on Israel - and they will no doubt lodge claims "at the United Nations, human rights treaty bodies, and the International Court of Justice," as Abbas has warned, as part of that assault. This is the Palestinian aim and end game, the "truth" that Abbas is pursuing. The writer is a professor of history in the Middle East Studies Department of Ben-Gurion University.