OPINION:
On the eve of direct talks between the Israeli and Palestinian leaders this week, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas told Jews living in Judea and Samaria - which he calls the West Bank - to pack up and leave.
This comes on the heels of his July comments in Cairo that not a single Jew will be allowed in any Palestinian state, period. He also has reiterated that not a single Jewish soldier incorporated within any international peacekeeping force will be allowed to enter “Palestine.” This has nothing to do with peace. It’s purely ethnic cleansing based upon racial discrimination.
Activists rightly find the principle of ethnic cleansing to be both repulsive and racist. The exception: when the victims are the Jews.
The world has embraced the creation of a Palestinian state while being largely ignorant of that state’s prerequisite, which involves the removal of many thousands of Jews from land wherein they have a 3,000-year heritage. Indeed, rather than the peaceful coexistence of two peoples, a Palestinian state is predicated upon ridding the land of Jews.
Why should this be? Where are the condemnations of Palestinian apartheid? Where are the boycotts against the forcible expulsion of Jews from their ancient homeland? If what is being genuinely sought is a two-state solution, with Israel and Palestine living in peaceful coexistence side by side, why the Palestinians’ insistence that the territory they receive be ethnically cleansed of Jews?
The notion that an Arab state with such a platform of hatred could possibly live at peace with Israel is ridiculous. Gaza has been cleansed of Jews and has shown itself to be a precursor to what will happen in any land ceded by Israel.
DOUGLAS ROBERTS
Tredegar, Wales
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