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Israel-Palestine
Abbas to announce new stance on right of return
2005-03-15
Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas will tell militant Palestinian factions meeting in Cairo Tuesday that the right of return of refugees should be looked upon "realistically," and that not all Palestinian exiles will return to former homes in Israel and the territories, Israel Radio said, quoting the London-based Asharq al-Awsat newspaper. Palestinian sources told the paper that Abbas will tell the participants in the Cairo parley that the right of return cannot be fully implemented, and that those who cannot return should be granted compensation.

Palestinian officials hope that the planned three days of discussions will conclude with a declaration of a hudna, or cease-fire, to which all Palestinian organizations will agree, including such militant groups as Hamas and the Islamic Jihad. Abbas is expected to ask the groups to agree to a truce even if Israel violates it. He will stress that he will hold firm in talks with Israel on other core issues, including Jerusalem, settlements, and release of Palestinian prisoners. The unofficial Palestinian position is that refugees who wish to do - primarily those who live in Lebanon - should be allowed to re-settle in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and that those who choose not to, should receive compensation. Militant organizations have long held that Israel has no right to exist, and that once the Jewish state is dismantled, all refugees should return to their former homes and villages.
Posted by:Fred

#4  I realize that this does not compute on the cross-wired logic circuits of the group in question, but, uh, starting and then losing wars often has consequences. I'd love to challenge these nitwits, live on TV, to a little exercise to illustrate their detachment from reality.

Try booking a vacation at a Bolivian Pacific coast resort. Follow that up with a hike across the middle of Okinawa, as a civilian Japanese. Round off the exercise by trying to find ethnic German towns in western Poland and parts of the Czech Republic. Starting to get the idea?

Starting and losing wars is always a bad strategy. Persistently starting wars of annihilation and losing, then plumbing new depths of barbarism involving murder of innocents and cultivation of a national cult of racist hatred, is a VERY bad strategy.

Behaving as though the world owes you something, and not with the deep shame of the moral leper and odious criminal that you have become, is pathetic.

Not having been treated as your brother Arabs would have treated you in the same circumstances should be "compensation" enough.

Finish the wall. Import more Asian gastarbeiters and end Palestinian entry into Israel. Tell the religious lunatic settlers they're on their own. Respond to any indirect fire attacks with strikes resulting in 1,000 times the damage of the provocation. Assign some former convict to your UN post and tell him to misbehave, and add CNN to the banned media list. Go about building a vibrant high-tech economy. Are we done yet?
Posted by: Verlaine in Iraq   2005-03-15 4:19:19 AM  

#3  BaR, if he were truly 'realistic' in his pronouncements, he would be dead the very next morning, if not the next hour. He probably knows that there's no chance, but he may be trying slowly to get the idea, in incremental form, across. It's just a guess, I have no idea what is truly on his mind.
Posted by: Sobiesky   2005-03-15 1:32:16 AM  

#2  ..and that not all Palestinian exiles will return to former homes in Israel and the territories, Israel Radio said, quoting the London-based Asharq al-Awsat newspaper.

If Mazen was being "realistic", he wouldn't even be talking about a "right of return", because there's no such thing.
Posted by: Bomb-a-rama   2005-03-15 1:19:19 AM  

#1  Abbas magnanimously says, the right of return of refugees should be looked upon "realistically," and that not all Palestinian exiles will return to former homes in Israel and the territories

He can do as he pleases wrt the Palestinian territories (not that I'd want the denizens of Ein el Hellhole as my neighbors; they aren't house trained). But no returns to Israeli territories. That's been tried already, and those people organize quite a few of the terror attacks deep within Israel.
Posted by: trailing wife   2005-03-15 12:33:31 AM  

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