Refugees are the heart of the Middle East problem

Bataween
Point of No Return
25 August '10

The announcement that direct talks are set to resume next week between Israel and the Palestinian Authority has set off a volley of the usual articles in the world's press, branding the settlements and Israeli intransigence as the main obstacles to peace.

Sol Stern, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute think tank, is one of the few to warn that the talks are doomed before they start. Hard on the heels of his acclaimed piece, the Nakba obsession, he nails the real issue for the benefit of Jerusalem Post readers: the talks are doomed to flounder on the Palestinian 'right of return' - the demand to flood Israel proper with the millions of descendants of Palestinian refugees who left their homes in 1948.


The very notion of Palestinian refugees is “a great hoax” as far as he is concerned.

“Why are there refugees 62 years after the creation of the State of Israel,” he asks. “If a baby is born today in the Balata refugee camp that baby is called a refugee. The very notion is absurd.

“There can’t be peace until some Palestinian leader is willing to go to the camps and say, in effect, ‘We’ve lied to you for 60 years and you’re not going back.’”

But Stern sees no Palestinian leader willing to take that step, certainly not PA President Mahmoud Abbas, who he says scuttled the last round of direct talks in 2008 with then prime minister Ehud Olmert despite receiving an offer that would have given him 98 percent of the West Bank.

(Read full post)

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