Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas has reiterated that a future Palestinian state, if established, will be Jew-free saying, “We have frankly said, and always will say: If there is an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, we won’t agree to the presence of one Israeli in it … when a Palestinian state is established, it would have no Israeli presence in it” (Khaled Abu Toameh, ‘Abbas vows: No room for Israelis in Palestinian state,’ Jerusalem Post, December 25, 2010).
Abbas’ Fatah-dominated PA, as well as leading Palestinian figures, including those often mistakenly regarded in the West as moderates, have insisted that a future Palestinian state must be judenrein and all Jews currently living in communities in Judea and Samaria must be uprooted:
· Saeb Erekat, senior Fatah/PA official, former PA foreign minister: “…nobody should agree to Israeli settlers remaining in the Palestinian [state]” (‘MEMRI: Saeb Ereqat: Over the Years, Israel Has Gradually Withdrawn from Its Positions; Therefore, We Have No Reason to Hurry,’ Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), July 13, 2009).
· Ahmed Qurei, former PA prime minister and former PA senior negotiator: “There can be no peace with the presence of these settlement blocs in the West Bank … the settlers are dangerous and … it’s impossible to live with them … Peace can be achieved only if Israel withdraws to the last centimeter of the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967” (Khaled Abu Toameh, ‘Qurei: No room for Jews in West Bank,’ Jerusalem Post, December 13, 2008).
· Dr. Sari Nusseibeh, the Dean of Al-Quds University, widely touted as a Palestinian moderate: “The Israelis now living in the territories of the future Palestinian state should return to living within the borders of the state of Israel. No Jew in the world, now or in the future … will have the right to return, to live, or to demand to live in Hebron, in East Jerusalem, or anywhere in the Palestinian state … What’s wrong with Taibeh [an Arab city in Israel], for example, being an integral part of an Arab Palestinian state? … Jaffa [part of Tel Aviv] too” (Interview, Al-Jazeera TV, November 30, 2007, translation courtesy of Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI)).
ZOA National Chairman of the Board Dr. Michael Goldblatt said, “Mahmoud Abbas has reiterated in stark terms the PA position that it intends to create a Palestinian state in which no Jews will be permitted to live. Whereas Israel has a large Arab and Muslim minority, the Palestinians openly demand that their state be judenrein.
“While speaking to Western audiences, Mahmoud Abbas and Salaam Fayyad might rarely – and only rarely – go through the motions of claiming to acknowledge the rights of Jews to live in Israel within the pre-1967 borders or in a future Palestinian state – they have pointedly refused ever to accept Israel as a Jewish state and daily tell their people that Jews are usurpers. In any case, to Arab and Muslim audiences, they are candid that they intend to uproot the hundreds of thousands of Jews living in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) if and when they obtain their own state.
“The Palestinian demand for a Jew-free state is not only obscene and anti-Semitic in itself, but it exposes their rejection of Israel as a Jewish state and thus the reason for the absence of peace. They refuse to accept the truth of the Jewish religious, legal and historical connection to Israel and thus the right of Jews to have their own state in their biblical homeland. They not only refuse to accept Israel as a Jewish state – something they have stated publicly and repeatedly, even to Western audiences – but also insist that no Jews remain in Judea and Samaria. To acknowledge the right of Jews to live in these territories – as Jews are morally as well as legally entitled to do under the terms of the 1920 Sam Remo Conference, a legal right that has never superseded by a subsequent, legally binding agreement – immediately invalidates the PA’s rejection of the religious, legal and historical basis of Israel’s existence.
“In the interests of working towards a future peace, which the Obama Administration says is its priority, the ZOA urges the Obama Administration to immediately and publicly condemn Mahmoud Abbas’ statement that no Israeli will be permitted in a Palestinian state and to withhold all further diplomatic support and financial aid to the PA until it rescinds this anti-Semitic, anti-peace position.”