http://www.nationalreview.com/node/426768/print How Much Will Obama Extract from Israel in His Last Year?
By Anne Bayefsky — November 9, 2015
Much ink has been spilled blaming the state of U.S.–Israel relations on the poor personal rapport between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu. The fact is that huggable Barney the Purple Dinosaur could have been Israel’s elected leader, and the relations would have been equally hostile.
For seven decades from the moment of Israel’s birth — through five wars, one campaign, eight operations, two “uprisings,” and years of terrorism — Palestinian Arabs have done everything possible to avoid living peacefully side by side with a Jewish state.
This isn’t ancient history. It’s today.
Here is Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas speaking to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva on October 28, 2015:
The situation . . . as a result of the continued Israeli occupation and its practices is the worst and most critical since 1948. . . . How long will this protracted Israeli occupation of our land last? After 67 years for how long do you think it is possible for it to continue? . . . Seventy years of suffering, injustice, oppression, and deprivation, and the perpetuation of the longest occupation known to mankind in modern history.
The Palestinian narrative has never varied: Israel has been built on occupied Arab territory — not since 1967, but since 1948. That’s why Palestinians claim a “right of return” whose very purpose is their ideal “one-state solution” — one state where Jews are demographically outnumbered.
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