For those who still intend to “liberate Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea,” President Mahmoud Abbas’s statements about Safad and not residing there is a crime. The reason is that all of historic Palestine “belongs to us”, and that the returnees shall live in any place of their choosing in Palestine. And all this is a plan to be carried out “Now, now, and not tomorrow.”
For such people, Israel, with its might, nuclear arsenal, unbreakable bonds with the Western world, and the universal recognition of its existence, is but a small footnote.
As for those who accept the two-state solution, with an Israeli and Palestinian state, they know that Abbas did not deviate much from the principles that began with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)’s ‘Ten Point Program’ or the ‘Phased Plan’ in the mid-seventies, which culminated in the Madrid Conference of 1991 and then the Oslo Accords in 1993.
If it is true that Abbas’s statement can be understood to be relinquishing the “right of return,” then this is nothing more than a purely tactical mistake because a position like this should be declared in the context of negotiations and bargaining, and not to be offered as a free offering ahead of time.
Beyond that and more importantly, “the right of return” is inconsistent with the two-state solution. If this is true in principle, especially given demographic equilibrium, its validity grows with every passing day: While the Middle East unravels into religious, sectarian and ethnic groups that fear one another, and think of separating from one another, it would take us a great deal of naivety to believe that the Jews of Israel would accept the “return” of 5 to 6 million Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims, to live in their midst.
This is pure delusion whose only purpose is to undermine the two-state solution as a prelude to doing away with it completely. This is particularly the case when the call for “the right of return” is coupled with threats about numerical and demographic shifts in favor of the Arab population.
In a region that is unable to resolve the question of Kirkuk and whether it is Arab, Kurd or Turkish, the question of the return of Palestinians to the territories of 1948 is closer to being a matter of innocence possessed by a lot of devilry that rejects any kind of peace and does not want to see any end to the suffering of the Palestinian people.
This is while retaining the full right to question the desire of the Palestinian population displaced in 1948 and their descendants to ‘return’ to a place that they are only linked to by means of songs that continue to fall in numbers. Indeed, they have become more Syrian, Lebanese or Jordanian than they are Palestinian, unless of course there is some kind of an immutable Palestinian essence that does not follow the rules of life and history – which is another delusion, naturally.
The Palestinians, whom some like to paint as beings who, as soon as they wake up in the morning begin to think of liberation and return, are imaginary and nonexistent beings. As for what exists in reality, then it is a human being who thinks about issues like his livelihood, daily life, work, citizenship and the education of his children.
Most likely, Mahmoud Abbas was courageous to admit to the mythical nature of such myths. He, more than anyone of us, knows how weak the Palestinians are. Abbas also knows that the Gaza-West Bank split is much more than a “brotherly” misunderstanding between Fatah and Hamas.
The world has been preoccupied away from Palestinian concerns, and now, the Arabs themselves are preoccupied away from Palestine with their local and national concerns, which require tremendous energies to be addressed. In the meantime, Israel is growing more intransigent, arrogant and hawkish, and it is not possible to bet on anything at all without Israel being flexible and willing to compromise.
As for those who still want to “liberate Palestine from the River to the Sea”, then Abbas knows, and we know, that all they have for this purpose is the Ayoub drone, no less, and no more (which is of course made in Iran!)
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