Is There a Place for Jews In Future Palestinian State?
Anyone who expects Palestinians to welcome Jewish settlements with open arms in their future state should first examine Israel’s attitude toward the Palestinian minority in its own.
The right has recently started using the claim of “Judenrein” (German for “an area cleared of Jews”) to spearhead its propaganda against the two-state solution. How is it possible, they ask, tauntingly, that Israel has a 20% Palestinian minority, and yet the Palestinians are demanding to rid the West Bank of all its Jewish residents, down to the very last one?
Responding to the September 2011 statement by the Palestine Liberation Organization’s ambassador to the United States, Maen Areikat, that Palestine should be devoid of Jews, Elliott Abrams, who was an adviser to former president George Bush, told USA Today, "Such a state would be the first to officially prohibit Jews or any other faith since Nazi Germany." He even defined as “an abhorrent form of anti-Semitism” the position of the Palestinian envoy, who told reporters, “After the experience of the last 44 years of military occupation and all the conflict and friction, I think it would be in the best interest of the two people to be separated.”
