PEACE NOT IN SIGHT

Peace is Nowhere in Sight - Zev Chafets
After the death of Arafat, a reasonable Palestinian leadership, led by the moderate Mahmoud Abbas, seemed briefly to arise. Then Abbas went to Gaza where gunmen tried to assassinate him. So Abbas went back to the West Bank, announced that he would follow in Arafat's footsteps, and declared himself an unshakable champion of the Palestinian "right of return" that demands that Israel agree to absorb millions of Arabs. A great majority of mainstream Palestinians reject any possible peace deal that relinquishes this "right."

For Israel, the Palestinian "right of return" means annihilation. Millions of hostile Arabs (or even friendly ones) flooding in would quickly put an end to the world's only Jewish state. Today, most Israelis agree that the Palestinians can have a country next to Israel - borders to be negotiated - but not on top of it. Survival trumps everything else. If Abbas lives long enough to reach the elections scheduled for Jan. 9, it will be as a weakened, frightened man, unable - or unwilling - to put down terror and deeply committed to the goal of dismantling Israel through demography. (New York Daily News)