Not everything is amenable to compromise:
The Hamas-dominated Palestinian Legislative Council Thursday passed a law that makes any concessions on Jerusalem illegal.
The law, which was approved by first reading, also defines such concessions as a crime of high treason…the law is expected to pass in second and third readings in the coming days…
…many Fatah legislators have made it known that they too support the law, which states that Jerusalem is a Palestinian, Arab and Islamic city and that it is totally forbidden to give up or conduct negotiations about any part of the city…
The law is intended to embarrass Abbas and ties his hands on the eve of the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on core issues, including the future status of Jerusalem. Hamas officials said Abbas would have no other option but to endorse the law…
“The Palestinian people want a state in the 1967 borders, including Jerusalem,” [Abbas] stressed. “We also want a solution to the problem of the refugees in accordance with the Arab peace initiative and United Nations resolution 194.” — Jerusalem Post
This racist point of view, in which Arabs must be permitted to live in Israel, enjoy full rights of citizenship, and even demand that Israel’s Jewish character be eliminated — while Jews must evacuate the Palestinian areas and must accept the definition of Judaism’s holiest place as “an Islamic city” — should be totally unacceptable to the civilized world.
It seems, however, that racism and intolerance are permitted to Arabs. How else to explain the lack of an outcry from such centers of enlightenment as the UN, which has multiple commissions and sub-organizations to fight racism?
Why is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia allowed to institutionalize discrimination against Christians and Jews, and even to insist on Jim Crow treatment of Jews at the recent Annapolis conference, where Jews were not allowed to enter by the same door as Arabs?
The Arab position on ‘details’ flows from their racist assumption of superiority and absolute refusal to accept a Jewish right to self-determination. This has not changed since the beginning of the conflict; in fact, it has gotten stronger with the rise of Islamic fundamentalism.
Unless this changes, there will never be a possibility of agreement on things like borders.
It is disgusting that the U.S. would condone the contemptuous behavior of the Saudis towards Israel.
They have done it for seventy years and it is time that the U.S. acted in accordance with its own principles in this regard.