. Please show me evidence concerning, let's say, Fatah. Evidence that Fatah
> advocates the purist position (i.e. your position), namely:
>
> that the Palestinian national movement should under all circumstances
>> reject any settlement of the conflict that does not implement the right of
>> return in an unlimited way...[such that] it would naturally result in the
>> actual return of millions of Palestinians to Israel and the end to any
>> Jewish-majority state.
>>
>
My God! Is that supposed to be a challenge? So that I'm not accused of
introducing dated material, here's something from earlier this year:
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=387217
I eagerly await your explanation of why it means something entirely different, and rather the opposite, of what it might appear.
Okay, now you're trying to claim that the top leadership of Fatah,
> including Yassir Arafat, put forward concrete negotiating proposals at Taba
> for a limited/circumscribed RoR, yet this should be inexplicably ignored on
> the grounds that -- and you offer zero evidence for this either as a fact or
> (even granting the fact) as a causal explanation -- Israel "would never
> accept" those proposals. I'm sure many people will find this puzzling.
> Especially since the *current* and frequently repeated position of the Fatah
> leadership is that negotiations, whenever they resume, should start where
> Taba left off.
>
If you prefer, you can imagine that the Palestinian leadership expected Zionists to accept their proposal, which the Palestinian people would then soundly reject by referendum. It seems to me that that sort of gambit, which sometimes works well in labor negotiations, would be more suicidal in talks of this sort; I can't really believe it was Arafat's plan. Regardless, the chance that refugees, a substantial majority of the Palestinian people even within the '67 territories, would have acceded to a surrender of their rights was somewhere between jack and squat, a fact he knew as well as anybody.
> By the way, if you're now arguing that Israel "would never accept" even a
> limited/circumscribed RoR, how exactly do you expect an unlimited RoR to
> happen? An invasion and occupation of Israel?
>
An invasion and liberation of Palestine, you mean? My answer: A whole bunch of stuff. BDS, popular resistance, demonstrations, political education, lobbying (ugh), sex and rockets, plus shit nobody's even thought of yet. We can all be glad I'm not the one-man brain trust of this operation!
With that, I'm way over quota, and probably testing Doug's patience, so out for the evening.
-- "Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen lytlað."