by Maayana Miskin, Arutz 7
If a Palestinian Authority state is created in Judea and Samaria, no Israeli citizen will be allowed to set foot inside, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas said this week in a meeting with members of the Arab League. The PA chairman also stated that he would block any Jewish soldiers from serving with an international force stationed on PA-controlled land.
“I will never allow a single Israeli to live among us on Palestinian land,” Abbas declared.
Abbas addressed the Arab League during a discussion over the possibility of holding direct negotiations with Israel. Like Abbas, Arab League members agreed to direct talks in theory, but only if a number of “measures and conditions” were met. De facto, both Abbas and the League nixed the talks, but the constant discusiion of conditions is seen as an attempt to throw the ball back into Israel’s court after PM Netanyahu, in Washington recently, succeeded in putting the onus for agreeing to talks on Abbas.
“The agreement depends on what will be discussed and the manner in which negotiations are conducted,” said Qatari Foreign Minister Hamad bin-Jassim bin-Jabor al-Thani.
Abbas has demanded that Israeli completely freeze construction for Jews in areas east of the 1949 armistice line, including north, south, and east Jerusalem, and that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu commit to creating a PA state with borders based on the armistice line. Until those conditions are met, Abbas has said, the PA will not negotiate.
Arab League members claimed they had received new support from United States President Barack Obama. A recent letter from Obama to Abbas included “guarantees,” according to League head Amr Moussa. He did not specify the alleged promises.
During his meeting with the Arab League, Abbas gave his explanation for why negotiations with the previous Israeli administration, headed by then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, failed to yield a peace deal. “We almost reached an agreement, and I agreed to a land swap for 0.19% of the territory, while he suggested 6.5%. I refused, and we did not reach an agreement,” he said.
The land swap idea is meant to allow Israeli population centers in Judea and Samaria to remain in their current locations even in the case of an Israel-PA peace deal.
Abbas reiterated his support for the “right of return,” the demand by Arabs who fled Israel during the War of Independence when their leaders promised them a quick return after the Jews’ annihilation, to come back to the country along with the hundreds of thousands of children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren born since.
That demand is the reason they remained in squalid refugee camps as opposed to the larger number of Jewish refugees expelled from Arab lands in 1948 who became productive citizens of the land of Israel.
Abbas said he had discussed the “right of return” with Olmert, and had warned that the issue was “very dangerous” and must be resolved “according to the Arab initiative.”(IsraelNationalNews.com)
