On his visit to Cairo Monday, to meet with Egypt’s interim president, Adli Mansour (With Hamas Out, It’s Abbas’s Turn as Egypt’s Favorite Palestinian), PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas stated emphatically that no Israeli settlers or border forces would be allowed to remain in a future Palestinian state, Reuters reports.
“In a final resolution, we would not see the presence of a single Israeli – civilian or soldier – on our lands,” Abbas told the Egyptian press.
Funny he should use the term “final resolution,” which sounds so disturbingly familiar. It brought to mind two other familiar terms from the same era, Judenfrei (“free of Jews”) and Judenrein (“clean of Jews”), the Nazi terms designating an area “cleansed” of Jewish presence. Judenfrei referred to “freeing” an area of all its Jewish dwellers by deportation, while Judenrein had the stronger connotation that any trace of Jewish blood had been removed as an impurity.
With his demand for a Jew-free country, the revered Palestinian statesman joins the majority of Arab nations, including Saudi Arabia, where Jews—especially the Israeli kind—are not permitted to set foot.
And so, as far as Abbas is concerned, there is no way the Jewish settlements of Judea and Samaria that happen to remain on the wrong side of the new border could apply for Palestinian citizenship. For him, the only option is the Gaza Gush Katif option: all the Jews must leave and everything they didn’t take with them is burned down to the ground.
Regarding the status of East Jerusalem, which for a majority of Israelis is a deal breaker—Abbas had nothing new to say, possibly because it’s too early in the negotiations to let go of such an asset, but, more likely, because it’s his deal breaker as well, and he’s hoping Tzipi Livni would blink first.
She would, too.
“We’ve already made all the necessary concessions,” Abbas told the Egyptian reporters. “East Jerusalem is the capital of the state of Palestine … if there were and must be some kind of small exchange (of land) equal in size and value, we are ready to discuss this – no more, no less.”
Palestinian sources have told Reuters that in talks in the coming days, the Americans hope to satisfy Palestinian objections by issuing a statement declaring the 1967 lines the basis for negotiations, and the United States will attempt to compel the Israelis to endorse their note.
Tzipi will do that one, too.