Pal. state would be antisemitic & Racist
The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has urged President Obama to condemn the recent statement by the PLO ambassador to the U.S., Maen Areikat, saying that any future Palestinian state it seeks with help from the United Nations and the U.S. should be free of Jews. In response to a question about the rights of minorities in a future Palestinian state, Areikat said, “I think it would be in the best interest of the two people to be separated.” Former U.S. National Security Council official Elliott Abrams said that such a state would be the first to officially prohibit Jews or any other faith since Nazi Germany and that it was a “despicable form of anti-Semitism … No civilized country would act this way” (Oren Dorell, ‘PLO ambassador says Palestinian state should be free of Jews,’ USA Today, September 14, 2011).
Areikat’s statement is consistent with the view of Mahmoud Abbas and other senior PA officials:
· Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas: “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).
· 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to Israeli settlers remaining in the Palestinian [state]” (‘MEMRI: Saeb Ereqat: Over the Years, Israel Has Gradually Withdrawn from Its Positions; Therefore, We Have No Reason to Hurry,’ Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), July 13, 2009).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).
ZOA National President Morton A. Klein, “The PLO ambassador – someone upgraded to that rank due to a decision of the Obama Administration – 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 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.
“We dare not tolerate the emergence of a racist, anti-Semitic, terrorist state. If the PLO ambassador had announced that a Palestinian state would be closed to all blacks, no-one would accept this and the UN would never approve its creation. Why are things different when it comes to Jews? We should not tolerate this.
“In the interests of working towards a future, genuine peace, which the Obama Administration says is its priority, the ZOA urges President Obama to immediately and publicly condemn the PLO ambassador’s statement.”