[Wall Street Journal] Jeff Robbins - For over 80 years, as historian Benny Morris notes, Palestinians have "persuasively demonstrated" that they do not want any Jewish state in the region, regardless of the boundaries, and regardless of the settlement policy pursued by this Israeli government or that one. Thus, in the 1930s, the Palestinians rejected a proposed two-state solution that would have created a Jewish state in less than 20% of Palestine. In the 1940s, the Palestinians rejected the UN partition plan which created a Jewish state on less than half of the arable land in Palestine. From 1948 to 1967, the Arabs created no Palestinian state. Palestinians have been proclaiming somewhat indiscreetly that, actually, the trouble with Israel has nothing to do with settlements and everything to do with its existence, which, three generations after Israel's founding, remains unacceptable. The U.S. Administration's purposeful distancing of itself from Israel is likely to empower those who believe that American support for Israel can be degraded, which will inadvertently deal whatever prospects exist for Middle East peace a serious blow. The writer served as a U.S. Delegate to the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva during the Clinton Administration.
2009-07-07 06:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive