PALI STATE WILL NOT SOLVE PALI REFUGEE "PROBLEM"

Will Palestinian Statehood Solve the Refugee Problem? - Zalman Shoval (Washington Times)

• We now have a radical, Jihadist "government" in Gaza supported by Iran, whose declared aim is to wipe out Israel, while on the West Bank there is what can only be described as a make-believe government under the aegis of Mahmoud Abbas.
• It surely hasn't escaped President Bush that Abbas, on whom he is now placing all his bets, never met the standards set forth in Bush's June 24, 2002, Rose Garden speech - that American support for Palestinian statehood would require the Palestinians to "embrace democracy, confront corruption, engage in a sustained fight against the terrorists and dismantle their infrastructure."
• None of this has happened; on the contrary, Abbas refrained from disarming Hamas when he still could have done it.
• The theory that creating a Palestinian state could resolve the refugee problem was never a sound one. A physically and economically "challenged" mini-state could not absorb more than 10-15% of the refugee population anyway; the only practical way to address the problem would be by their genuine integration into the countries in which they have resided for three generations.
• But the Arab world, including the Palestinian leadership, has always opposed this in order to keep the refugee problem alive and put pressure on Israel. Thus the creation of such a Palestinian state wouldn't end the clamor for the so-called "right of return" of the refugees to Israel, but would actually intensify it.