Palestinian State Will Not Accept Palestinian Refugees

by David Meir-Levi:

In his op-ed to The New York Times on May 16, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas told the world in no uncertain terms that Palestinian statehood and UN recognition would not end the conflict:

Palestine’s admission to the United Nations would pave the way for the internationalization of the conflict as a legal matter, not only a political one. It would also pave the way for us to pursue claims against Israel at the United Nations, human rights treaty bodies and the International Court of Justice.

But no one seemed to notice that this admission contradicts the core argument for Palestinian statehood: The Palestinians are fighting for their state, so they have told the world, for their political self-determination, for their national self-realization; so the creation of a Palestinian state is the way to end the conflict.

Now we have a new iteration of this rather awkward contradiction in the words of the Palestinian Authority’s ambassador to Lebanon in an interview with the Lebanese English language newspaper, the Daily Star:

When we have a state accepted as a member of the United Nations, this is not the end of the conflict. This is not a solution to the conflict. This is only a new framework that will change the rules of the game.

And still no one seems to notice the contradiction here.

But in addition to telling the world that even after the so-called Palestinian people have their state they will continue the conflict, Ambassador Abdullah Abdullah went on to say that:

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