When President Obama announced his support for the establishment of a Palestinian state along the 1967 lines as the starting point for negotiations, he in effect adopted the PLO Phased Plan for the gradual destruction of Israel.
While Hamas adopted the position of destroying Israel in one step through constant armed struggle, the PLO, led by Fatah adopted in 1974 a new political method of achieving that goal through two steps. According to the plan, the first step is the establishment of a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders; the second step is the liberation of all of Palestine by destroying the Jewish state through armed struggle or through the “the right of return” of millions of Palestinians to Israel, thus demographically and democratically causing Israel to lose its Jewish majority and character.
In his Middle East speech, Obama divided the core issues of the negotiations into two phases. According to the order set by the president, he in effect demanded of Israel to give up its only bargaining chip of land, based on the 1967 lines with “mutually agreed swaps” in the first phase, before negotiating t[he] other substantive questions such as the “right of return,” the Hamas-Fatah alliance, and recognition of Israel as the Jewish state.
Obama argued that by mentioning “land swaps,” he did not actually call for Israel to withdraw to the indefensible ‘67 lines, as Israel can trade off other land to avoid the ‘67 lines. But in reality the president handed the Palestinians a tremendous victory by embracing their assertion that they somehow have the implicit right to every square inch beyond the Green Line and thus must be compensated on a 1:1 basis for any adjustment. This means that if Israel wishes to keep the Western Wall or the Jewish Quarter in east Jerusalem, the Palestinians would have to agree first and then in return Israel would have to compensate them with a land swap from inside tiny Israel.
Furthermore, when the president mentioned in his speech “the fate of the Palestinian refugees”, he did not say that there will be no “right of return” to Israel proper and that the Palestinian refugees and their descendants will have to find their home in a future state of Palestine. » | Shoula Romano Horing | Sunday, May 29, 2011
