Jerusalem Post-17/07/2007

TBC, (Jerusalem Post)

"Bush said that Israel "should be confident that the United States will never abandon its commitment to the security of Israel as a Jewish state and homeland for the Jewish people." This is code for the US opposing a Palestinian "right of return" to Israel, rather than to Palestine. But why use code? Why not say this clearly? And even more importantly, why not call the Arab states who claim to support peace to say it? It is difficult to promote peace without speaking clearly about the key obstacle to peace. There is no greater obstacle to peace than the Palestinian demand to demographically overrun Israel, which is an obvious back-door attempt to destroy Israel and deny our right to exist. Abandoning this demand is the Palestinian equivalent of Israeli acceptance of a Palestinian state: together they are the sine qua non of the two-state solution.

Yet while there has been no shyness to press Israel on Palestinian statehood, and that pressure has been dazzlingly effective, the West - even the US - is still in code stage regarding the "right of return." This needs to change.

The best way the US, Europe and the Arab states could help Palestinians escape their radicalization spiral is to take the wind out of the radical dream of Israel's destruction. This can be done by saying explicitly that Palestine and the Arab states, not Israel, are the solution to the refugee problem."

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