ABU YEHUDA
The Biden Administration and the “War of Return”
by Victor Rosenthal
December 24, 2020

…Another phrase whose ambiguity has prevented agreement is “two-state solution.” Virtually every Israeli that favors this understands it as “two states for two peoples.” But the Palestinians want one totally Jew-free Palestinian state, and one state in which the right of return for Arab refugees has been implemented (and which theoretically might contain Jews, at least for a while). They have never accepted the idea of any Jewish sovereignty between the river and the sea, and hence reject the formulation “two states for two peoples.” Schwartz and Wilf explain that Western and Israeli negotiators have always assumed – perhaps because the demand is so extreme – that the right of return was a bargaining chip that the Palestinians would cash in for the currency of borders, the removal of settlements, or rights in Jerusalem. But they were wrong. READ MORE