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Wednesday, February 09, 2011

Saeb Erekat admits that Jews could never become "Palestinians"

Saeb Erekat was on Hardtalk this week. Unfortunately many countries cannot view the full interview at the BBC site.

But this clip is available, and it betrays the bigotry of even the moderate "Palestinian" leadership.

As Erekat dismisses the idea of a one state solution, he says:
I don't think Christian and Muslim Palestinians would convert to Judaism and become Israelis. I don't think that Jews would convert to Islam and Christianity and become Palestinians.
Since there are over a million non-Jews in Israel, his first statement betrays his hate for Israel and his propensity to slander Israel on British TV by implying that it is a Jewish-only state.

But the second statement shows that Erekat believes that Jews cannot ever be citizens of a Palestinian Arab state! Only Christians and Muslims could!

He could have framed it in national terms ("I don't think that Palestinians want to be citizens of Israel; I don't think that Israelis would want to become citizens of a Palestinian state") but instead his terminology shows that the entire Palestinian Arab national project is really about keeping Jews out of "Palestine," and in the short term limiting the areas that Jews could live, not building a state.