Thursday, August 26, 2021
Elder of Ziyon
He used the occasion to ask the EU to pressure Israel economically to agree to establish a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital. He also thanked Sweden for its supposed support for the "right of return." (As far as I can tell, Sweden's position is for a token number of Palestinians to be allowed to move to Israel as part of a larger peace agreement, and it says "the Palestinians will have to abandon their demand for a mass repatriation to Israel itself.")
Perhaps the most absurd part of the conversation was Shtayyeh's insistence on the fiction that the PA really, really wanted to hold the scheduled legislative elections in May, but Israel's refusal to allow Arabs in Jerusalem to vote is what scuttled the plan.
Even though that was the excuse used by Abbas when he canceled the elections in April, no one believed him. His Fatah party had split into three groups and polling showed that Hamas would win handily. And the few thousand Jerusalem Arabs who used post offices in 2006 to cast remote ballots could have easily traveled a short distance into the territories to vote.
The proposed elections, from the start, were intended to establish that Jerusalem was Palestinian land. The ruling Fatah party never had any intention of giving up its rule, and as soon as the Fatah split showed it losing many seats, the elections were canceled. (The presidential elections originally scheduled for July 31 also weren't held.)
