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Abbas' Vision of an Ethnically Cleansed Palestinian State

(Commentary) Jonathan S. Tobin - PA leader Mahmoud Abbas told visiting U.S. congressmen that the independent Palestinian state he says he wants will have no Jewish settlements. This demand for an ethnically cleansed Palestine would mean the forced removal of all Jews living in the territories. Since he is calling for that state to exist in all of the territory of the West Bank, Gaza and the part of Jerusalem that was illegally occupied by Jordan from 1949 to 1967, that would mean in theory the eviction of over half a million Jews to accommodate his ambition. For the PA, the desire to remove the Jews stems more from ideology than pragmatism. Expunging every vestige of the Jewish presence is inextricably tied up in the enterprise of Palestinian sovereignty. Any Israeli who would call for the expulsion of Arabs from Israel is rightly branded as an extremist. Yet few in the West think there is anything odd about the fact that the Palestinians' vision of a two-state solution is to have one state with both Jews and Arabs and one Arab state where all Jews have been thrown out.
2011-08-15 00:00:00
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