Well done to USA Today for publishing the sort of Palestinian statements that many in the media prefer to turn a blind eye to:
“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,” Maen Areikat, the PLO ambassador, said during a meeting with reporters, in response to a question about the rights of minorities in a Palestine of the future.
Such a state would be the first to officially prohibit Jews or any other faith since Nazi Germany, which sought a country that was judenrein, or cleansed of Jews, said Elliott Abrams, a former U.S. National Security Council official.
Israel has 1.3 million Muslims who are Israeli citizens. Jews have lived in “Judea and Samaria,” the biblical name for the West Bank, for thousands of years. Areikat said the PLO seeks a secular state, but that Palestinians need separation to work on their own national identity.
The Palestinian demand is unacceptable and “a despicable form of anti-Semitism,” Abrams said. A small Jewish presence in a future Palestine, up to 1% of the population, would not hurt the Palestinian identity, he said.
“No civilized country would act this way,” Abrams said.
So while Israel is portrayed as an “apartheid state” despite its 20% Arab minority which enjoys equal rights under Israeli law, the Palestinians want to create a Jew-free exclusivist state. Now imagine the outrage if Israel suggested that it wanted to be free of all non-Jews.
