The Redhunter

The "Right of return" is one in which the Palestinians insist that the refugees, and their descendants, allegedly displaced during the 1948 war of independence, have the right to return to Israel proper and claim the land that they say they owned. Depending on which website you believe, this would mean anywhere from 3.5 to 6 million Arabs moving into Israel, a country of 6 million Jews and 1 million Arabs. The clear purpose of the "right of return" is to destroy Israel.

Fatah (or "Fateh"), is supposedly the "good" organization with whom we can make peace. Yet on their website they insist on this "Right of return"

The inalienable rights of the Palestinian people include the right to self-determination, the right of return, the establishment of a sovereign state with Jerusalem as its capital.

Also, as part of their constitution (somehow now missing from their website) is this

Obstacles to Peace

The first obstacle to a settlement, then is the Palestinian insistence on a "right of return"

The second obstacle, though, is the Israeli fear that if they give the Palestinians a state terrorist and rocket attacks will continue as before.

The settlements are not an obstacle. If you want to know why, read what I wrote here. The short version, however is this: If the settlements are the problem today, what was the problem before 1967?

But perhaps the bigglest obstacle to peace is that the Palestians are in a state of near chaos. As it is, the Palestinian territories are split; Fatah rules the West Bank and Hamas Gaza.

If Mahmud Abbas ("Abu Mazen", or whatever name he goes by these days) reaches a settlement, will the rest of Fatah go along? What about the other political parties that make up the Palestinian Authority? Will Hamas agree to any settlement?

Of course, it's unlikely in the extreme that anyone except Abbas and his closest associates will agree to anything. The rest of them will reject the settlement, and will continue with their terrorism and Qassam rockets.

Just consider this: Ismail Haniyeh is a senior Hamas official. On March 29, 2006 he was sworn in as Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority. Abbas dismissed him on June 14 2007, but Haneyeh refuses to accept Abbas' authority and says that he is still PM, governing what he can from Gaza. There is a big dispute over the legality of Abbas' dismissal of him but the point is that they can't govern themselves. Haniyeh is part of the rejectionist camp, having declared in December of 2006 that "we will never recognize the usurper Zionist government and will continue our jihad-like movement until the liberation of Jerusalem."

Some say that if we give them (or allow them to have) a country the infighting will cease and they'll behave. I consider this argument unpersuasive.

I used to think that the Palestinians (as they are called, a whole debate unto itself) should have their own country. No more. Until they can behave with a minimum of decency they should not be allowed to rule anything.

As such, any meeting in Annapolis will be counterproductive. The Palestinians will be promised a country before having had to make any concessions. They will then refuse to give up their "right of return" or make any meaningful concessions of their own. Because of this refusal they will not be given a state, just promised one at some indefinate time in the future. Abbas and his cronies will get mad, and this will be a signal to the terror masters that it is time to unleash their minions and start another Intifada. Israel will retaliate, and the world will condem Israel.

Andrew McCarthy, writing in National Review this past June, summed up his analysis if Fatah and the prospects for a peace agreement with them by saying that

The Palestinians are a backward people, indoctrinated toward brutality. They don’t rate a sovereign state or anyone’s help until they civilize themselves. Sovereignty is a privilege that implies acceptance of civilized norms — that is why we speak of states like Iran and North Korea as “rogues.” Regardless of whether there really are scattered Palestinian moderates, it is a dangerous fantasy to assume the Palestinian people, as a whole, are ready to be anyone’s peace partner.

We are enabling their hatred when we provide support without insisting that the Palestinian people — not just Abbas and Fatah, but the people — convincingly foreswear revolution, terrorism, violence, ethnic-cleansing, and the goal of eliminating Israel. We are a generation or more, at least, from any hope of such developments. In the meantime, as long as we subsidize the hatred, we shall be buying more of it, while giving the Palestinians no incentive to reform.

My thoughts exactly.