A top negotiator said on Sunday Palestinians may demand to become part of a binational state with Israel, if the Jewish state continued to reject the borders they propose for a separate country.Isn't it interesting that Palestinian Arabs, who supposedly are so desperate for their own independent state, keep acting as if they can "demand" everything they want with no concessions on their part from israel? One would think that they have won a war or something. But, no. All they have is the ever-present threat of terror and the continuing absence of any desire for real peace and compromise, as their list of "demands" keeps including things that Israel cannot and never will accept, no matter how left-wing the government is.
Ahmed Qurei, who heads Palestinian negotiators in US-brokered talks with Israel, told Fatah party loyalists behind closed doors that a two-state solution could be achieved only if Israel met their demands to withdraw from all occupied land.
"The Palestinian leadership has been working on establishing a Palestinian state within the '67 borders," Qurei said, referring to land in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that Israel captured in a 1967 war, which Palestinians seek for a state.
"If Israel continues to oppose making this a reality, then the Palestinian demand for the Palestinian people and its leadership (would be) one state, a binational state," he added at the meeting held in the West Bank town of Ramallah.
As Ami Isseroff notes:
The "1967 borders" were negotiated as armistice lines with Jordan, Egypt and Syria. Along the frontier with Jordan, they reflected no justice or demographic realities. They reflected the achievements of the Trans-Jordan Legion, made possible by arms and officers supplied by the British, in order to further their imperialist designs in the Middle East. No Arab country, and no Palestinian Arab group ever recognized or honored these borders while they existed. These borders, in the version of the Palestinian authority, put East Jerusalem in "Palestinian" territory. But officially, Jerusalem was to have been internationalized. As that was never implemented, owing to Arab and British opposition, Jerusalem is a subject for negotiation. It is unimaginable that Israel would agree to surrender all national rights to the old city of Jerusalem and environs. The Palestinian claim to Jerusalem seems to be based on the fact that no Jews lived there before 1967. Evidently, the Palestinians think the world has a short memory, and it might be so. The Jewish community of Jerusalem, which had lived there for hundreds for years, was forcibly "ethnically cleansed" from Jerusalem by a series of racist pogroms, culminating in the removal of the remaining Jewish population when the Jewish quarter was conquered by the British officered Trans-Jordan Legion in the Israel War of Independence (see The Ethnic Cleansing of Jerusalem).It is also noteworthy that the Arabs have made this demand before.
As the UN was arguing over what to do with Palestine in 1947, the Arab solution was simple: a single Arab state, period. As partition came closer to reality, the Arab counter-offer stayed the same, along with some words about how much they would protect the Jewish minority in this state. But this is only as long as Jews remain the minority - because they were adamant that no Jews would ever be allowed to immigrate.
Note all of the verbiage meant to assuage Western concerns that this would be another Arab state where the Jews would be delegated to permanent dhimmi status.
This was all a sham, of course, a last-ditch effort to stop a Jewish state from ever being created. The fact that the new Palestine would be pre-defined as "Arab" shows that democracy was the last thing on Arab minds.
And five days later, as it became clear that the world saw that the Arabs weren't serious about planning to treat the Jews fairly, the Arabs proved them right. Jamal Husseini gave an implicit threat against Jews in Arab countries if a Jewish state would exist:
Qurei is following in the exact footsteps of his Arab forefathers - not accepting compromise and threatening to kill Jews if he doesn't get exactly what he demands.