It’s Not Palestine Unless It’s Judenrein

By Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian Authority President

Binyamin Netanyahu has once again raised a non-starter of an idea: let the Israeli settlers remain in their settlements after the land is transferred to the emerging state of Palestine. Of course we Palestinians must reject that. What kind of Arab country would we be if we allowed Jews to live here in any significant numbers?

Look around. I challenge you to find a prospering Jewish community anywhere in the Arab world – heck, anywhere in the Muslim world. That’s just not what we’re about. So there’s no way Netanyahu can expect us to swallow a proposal to leave Jews unmolested in Palestine.

I’m not even talking about the fact that none of them would want to live under us; we couldn’t care less about the consent of the governed anyway, as my own Presidency demonstrates – I’m in the tenth year of my four-year term, and the Palestinian Authority hasn’t held legislative elections in years. I’m talking about the necessary irony – delicious as it is – of ridding the heartland of the Biblical Holy Land of Jews. It just can’t be the Palestine we want if it’s not Judenrein.

The irony doesn’t end there, though. The term “Palestine” was assigned to Judea by the Romans, who were specifically trying to reduce its association with the Jews. So they took the name of the Israelite nemesis through much of the Biblical period, the Philistines, and applied that instead. The name means “invaders.” But the kicker is this: the Philistines inhabited the coastal towns while the Israelites held the inland mountains – we’re going to relegate the Jews to the coastal plain and position them as the invaders. Which of course will always be true no matter how many generations of Jews are born here.

The same thing goes for our refugee brethren. They weren’t born in Palestine, but we’ll always consider them refugees. Which is why we’ll never let them actually gain citizenship in our state. That would mean depriving them of the right to return to their ancestors’ homes in Israel, and far be it from any Arab state to try improving the refugees’ lot with actual jobs, citizenship, health care, or social services. If they did that, the refugees might decide to stay, and then the governments would have to administer political repression over even more people, which isn’t as simple as it sounds. Just look at Syria.

Of course we Arabs claim it’s all about the Right of Return, when in fact it’s mostly about keeping the refugees in limbo so we can use them as a distraction. Whenever dissent threatens an autocrat, all we have to do is wave the Palestinian card, and poof! Support for the government in its noble struggle against the Zionists! It’s worked like magic over the years. Mostly. Just look at Syria.

So there’s no way we could allow the Palestinian refugees to have Palestinian citizenship, either; that just wouldn’t be the Arab way. We obviously can’t afford to accommodate them, subsisting as we do on international aid and menial jobs in Israel. And the jobs in Israel will dry up once they are inundated by millions of refugees, collapse the economy, and drive the Jews away. Besides, we can’t be expected to welcome people who have become accustomed to handouts from the United Nations; we simply do not have the resources to bankroll our own corrupt officials, let alone institute a dole.

If we have no room for fellow Palestinians, then forget about Jews.