Abbas says he would turn down free land if it wasn't claimed by Israel

Mahmoud Abbas gave an interview yesterday to an Egyptian paper where he explained how things are in his alternative universe.

He claims that Israel and Hamas had an agreement with Egypt's Mohamed Morsi to give some Sinai land to Hamas and allow Hamas to declare an Islamic Emirate in the enlarged Gaza.

Really.

Here are some excerpts:

- What if Israel decided to directly negotiate with Hamas, bypassing the Palestinian Authority which Tel Aviv and Washington now consider uncooperative?

I've already had to sit down with Hamas about the famous project 'Igor Island', of a Palestinian state in Gaza, plus on Egyptian land, and give up Jerusalem, the right of return, and an end to the Palestinian issue completely, and my information is that Hamas has already signed with Israel on the approval of the project, and only a single obstacle stood in the way, namely, Egypt agreeing to this framework and granting alternative land.

President Mohamed Morsi had no objection to the achievement of this demand for Israel and Hamas, but said he was only waiting for the right time to implement it. what about President al-Sisi, Did you discuss this matter with him?

President Sisi has already informed me, during my discussion with him about it, and I told him that Hamas and Israel has already agreed, and he told me literally 'Not one Egyptian, as well as the President of the Republic, would grant a single centimeter to Hamas or Israel,' and I replied him that we in Palestine also would 'never establish a Palestinian state on one centimeter of the territory of another Arab country. '

- We have heard about Turkish mediation between Hamas and Israel, is to do with the 'Igor Island' project?

Yes, Hamas is still dreaming of an independent state, an Islamic Emirate in Gaza, and this is a risky path, and it tempts a lot of countries that do not want to do good, not to Palestine and the region as a whole.

Even though this entire thing is a figment of Abbas' imagination (at best, he is grossly mis-stating the Ben Arieh land swap plan between the Negev, Gaza and the West Bank) notice how vehemently he rejects the idea of having Palestine expand into Arab countries - even if the land is given to them for free.

There has been remarkable consistency of the Palestinian Arab position on its territorial objectives throughout the years: it only desires whatever Jews control. As soon as the British divided up the mandate between Palestine and Transjordan, and promised Palestine to the Jewish nation, Palestinian Arabs have considered the arbitrary British borders assigned to Jews to be sacrosanct as their land - even though no map of Palestine before 1917 includes the Negev, and every map included large parts of today's Jordan and Lebanon.

Except for the time period between 1948 and 1967. During that time, no Palestinian Arab leader said that they wanted an independent state to include Egyptian-held Gaza and the Jordanian-held West Bank. In fact, the PLO charter of 1964 specifically excluded those sections:

Article 24: This Organization does not exercise any territorial sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, on the Gaza Strip or in the Himmah Area. Its activities will be on the national popular level in the liberational, organizational, political and financial fields.

Since 1967, of course, that PLO exclusion went away, since Jordan lost the land it had seized illegally in 1948 and Egypt lost its Palestinian Arab concentration camp in Gaza, where they forced every Palestinian to live.

Remember, if Abbas considers the British Mandate boundaries to be the borders of "historic Palestine," it means that he is admitting that there is no Palestinian Arab history from before 1923.

But more importantly, this side statement of Abbas' proves that he is not interested in a viable state by any means, but only in finding more and more excuses to destroy Israel in phases - the 1974 plan that Abbas still subscribes to.

Abbas wants Gaza's population to explode. He wants things to get more and more crowded. And he wants to make sure that it never spills over into Egypt, but only adds more pressure to Israel.

It is a strategy to destroy a state, not to build one. Its remarkable consistency over the years proves not only that the goals have never changed, but also how much Western wishful thinking trumps clear and consistent counterproofs.