Palestine: realities overtaking fairy tales

These clear and unambiguous provisions of the PLO Charter were reiterated and confirmed at the 8th Palestinian National Council meeting in February-March 1971 - which declared:

Jordan is linked to Palestine by a national relationship and a national unity forged by history and culture from the earliest times. The creation of one political entity in Transjordan and another in Palestine would have no basis either in legality or as to the elements universally accepted as fundamental to a political entity. .. In raising the slogan of the liberation of Palestine and presenting the problem of the Palestine revolution, it was not the intention of the Palestine revolution to separate the east of the River from the West, nor did it believe the struggle of the Palestinian people can be separated from the struggle of the masses in Jordan…

Despite similar statements by many other Arab spokesmen - the Quartet - Russia, America, the European Union and the United Nations - still remain foolishly fixated on creating an independent Arab State between Israel and Jordan in the West Bank and East Jerusalem - thus separating the East Bank of the Jordan River from the West Bank and dividing the Arabs who live on each side of the Jordan River from one another.

Reunification of the West Bank with Jordan - so far as is now possible given the changed circumstances since Jordan's loss of it to Israel in the 1967 Six Day War - remains the only realistic option available to the Jews and Arabs to advance the cause of peace and reconciliation.

Any such agreement reached on the territorial dimensions of the dispute will not - however - herald an end to the conflict.

Kaddoumi himself made this clear when he added:

We launched our revolution for all of Palestine, and that's why we need to be very cautious. We must safeguard our people's right to return. We must insist on the right of return for all refugees, because this is the minimum that we could accept.

Whilst the temperature may be lowered once the reunification of the two banks of the Jordan River into an expanded and enlarged Jordan has been achieved - attitudes such as the above espoused by Kaddoumi and likewise by Hamas and the myriad number of terrorist groups who continue to conduct their murderous campaign to eradicate the Jewish State - will not end overnight.

Yet there is hope that even the vexed right of return is slowly being recognised as a right of return to the 80% of former Palestine that will be encompassed within the newly redrawn borders of Jordan - and not to the remaining 20% of former Palestine that will become the established borders of Israel.

PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas caused raised eyebrows when he stated this week that although he is a refugee from the town of Safed - he does not have the right to live there although he likes to visit the town as a tourist.

Abbas continued:

I am a refugee, but I am living in Ramallah, I believe that West Bank and Gaza is Palestine, and the other parts is Israel.