When your so-called “partners for peace” make statements like these, you tend to become just a little bit doubtful about their peaceful intentions:
“The PLO will now concentrate on splitting Israel psychologically into two camps… We plan to eliminate the State of Israel and establish a Palestinian state. We will make life unbearable for Jews by psychological warfare and population explosion. Jews will not want to live among Arabs. I have no use for Jews. They are and remain Jews. We now need all the help we can get from you in our battle for a united Palestine under Arab rule.” – Yasser Arafat, speech to Arab diplomats in Stockholm (Jerusalem Post, February 23, 1996)
“We are ambushing the Israelis and cheating them… If we agree to declare our state over what is now 22 percent of Palestine, meaning the West Bank and Gaza, our ultimate goal is the liberation of all historic Palestine from the River to the Sea… We distinguish the strategic, long-term goals from the political phased goals, which we are compelled to temporarily accept due to international pressure.” – Faisal Husseini, PLO strategist (Al-Arabi, Egypt, June 24, 2001; Jerusalem Report, July 30, 2001)
The Arabs of Palestine have a 100-year history of rejecting every single offer of compromise, even those greatly to their own advantage. Here’s a partial list:
1919: Arabs of Palestine refused to nominate representatives to the Paris Peace Conference.
1920: San Remo conference decisions, rejected by the Arabs of Palestine.
1922: League of Nations decisions, rejected by the Arabs of Palestine.
1937: Peel Commission partition proposal, rejected by the Arabs of Palestine.
1938: Woodhead partition proposal, rejected by the Arabs of Palestine.
1946: Anglo-American Commission proposal, rejected by the Arabs of Palestine.
1947: UN General Assembly partition proposal (UNGAR 181), rejected by the Arab League and the Higher Arab Committee for Palestine/.
1949: Israel’s outstretched hand for peace (UNGAR 194), rejected by the Arab League and the Higher Arab committee for Palestine.
1967: Israel’s outstretched hand for peace (UNSCR 242), rejected by the Arab League and the PLO.
1978: Begin/Sa’adat peace proposal, rejected (except for Egypt) by the rest of the Arab world, including the PLO.
1994: Rabin/Hussein peace agreement, rejected by the rest of the Arab League (except for Egypt and Jordan).
1995: Rabin’s Contour-for-Peace, rejected by the Palestinian Authority.
2000: Barak/Clinton peace offer, rejected by Yasser Arafat, who then initiated the pre-planned second intifada.
2001: Barak’s offer at Taba, rejected by the Palestinian Authority.
2005: Sharon’s peace gesture, withdrawal from Gaza, rejected by the Hamas takeover in 2007.
2008: Olmert/Bush peace offer, rejected by Mahmoud Abbas.
2009 to present: Netanyahu’s repeated invitations to peace talks, rejected.
2014: Kerry’s Contour-for-Peace, rejected by the Palestinian Authority.
2018: Trump’s “deal of the Century”, rejected in advance by Mahmoud Abbas.
This is the official ambition of the Palestinian Authority:
The map shown is the same map used in the geography books taught from in Palestinian Authority and UNRWA schools.
If and when the Palestinains abandon this aspiration, there might be something to talk about. Until then, we Israelis will not agree to commit national suicide to please the anti-Semites, anti-Zionists and Jew haters around the world.