The widely-held assumption in many foreign, and Israeli, circles that a Palestinian state is the desired solution for the current conflict is increasingly coming under fire. Arutz-7 presents the following set of excerpts - second in a series (the first was on Monday) - presenting voices that warn that a PLO state is far from an ideal solution:
\"On Oct. 2, 2001, just 21 days after America was attacked by Islamic terrorists long allied with Yasser Arafat\'s Palestinian Liberation Organization, President Bush went further than any president before him in calling for the creation of a Palestinian state… President Bush told the nation in September 2001 that the U.S. would have a zero-tolerance policy toward terrorism. The world would have to decide, he said, if they were with us or with the terrorists. Just days later, Bush rewarded the oldest and most celebrated terrorist in the world, Yasser Arafat, with his statement in support of a Palestinian state… Arafat was clearly emboldened to permit much higher levels of terrorism as a result of that statement. How else can one explain the timing of the suicide bombing campaign, the takeover of the Church of the Nativity, the shootings, the ambushes, the child-martyr crusades?… It\'s time for Bush to cut all aid to the Palestinian Authority.\"
-- from “Bush\'s Big Mideast Mistake,” by Joseph Farah, May 1, 2002, WorldNetDaily.com
\"After nearly half a century of futile attempts by the world community to make work the delusional idea of creating a second state for the Palestinian Arabs on a meager 2,268 sq. miles of territory, a prominent American political leader has finally offered the only sane approach to solving the conflict. In an interview with MSNBC, House Majority leader Dick Armey, a Texas Republican, said that he supports the idea that Israel should expand her sovereignty to the lands of Judea, Samaria and Gaza and that the Palestinian Arabs should be resettled in the Arab countries. He said, \"There are many Arab nations that have many hundreds of thousands of acres of land and soil and property and opportunity to create a Palestinian state.\"… Armey\'s suggestion is the only pragmatic approach to the solution of a seemingly irreconcilable problem… It is easy to demand the creation of a new \"Palestinian state\" but for some reason, no one pauses to consider that it is a crime to try to cram over 10 million people (expected population there by 2025 at the current population growth rate) into two tiny, disconnected parcels of land. Especially since these territories are both water-scarce areas…\"
-- from “With Honor and Wisdom,” by Boris Shusteff, May 3, 2002, Freeman Center for Strategic Studies
\"On the one hand, people asking the state of Israel to accept the possibility of a Palestinian state in the hands of what appears to me quite frankly to be a bunch of terrorist thugs who will build up their position to launch attacks on the very existence of Israel. That seems to me to be an unacceptable security situation. And frankly, given the present leadership on the Palestinian side, I don\'t see how one avoids it...
\"…way back when, when Israel was originally founded and declared its independence [the] Arabs had a position in which they said, \'We\'ll accept some kind of Jewish homeland, but in the context of an Arab federation in which the Jewish people would have… a limited autonomy. At the time, they thought that that would be a fair arrangement for Jewish people to live in an autonomous region... within an Arab confederation… They thought that was fair. What I\'m suggesting is that that historical precedent would actually mean that the Arabs don\'t see it as an unfair situation to have an autonomous area within a state that is comprised of a different majority. At least they didn\'t see it as unfair then. … The historical precedent was, on their part, a preference for this arrangement if it was Jews who would be in the minority. They thought that was fair. Well, if it was fair when Jews were going to be in the minority, why is it simply unfair if Palestinians, Arabs, are going to be in the minority?\"
--Alan Keyes, Host of MSNBC show \"Making Sense,\" May 13, 2002
\"On Oct. 2, 2001, just 21 days after America was attacked by Islamic terrorists long allied with Yasser Arafat\'s Palestinian Liberation Organization, President Bush went further than any president before him in calling for the creation of a Palestinian state… President Bush told the nation in September 2001 that the U.S. would have a zero-tolerance policy toward terrorism. The world would have to decide, he said, if they were with us or with the terrorists. Just days later, Bush rewarded the oldest and most celebrated terrorist in the world, Yasser Arafat, with his statement in support of a Palestinian state… Arafat was clearly emboldened to permit much higher levels of terrorism as a result of that statement. How else can one explain the timing of the suicide bombing campaign, the takeover of the Church of the Nativity, the shootings, the ambushes, the child-martyr crusades?… It\'s time for Bush to cut all aid to the Palestinian Authority.\"
-- from “Bush\'s Big Mideast Mistake,” by Joseph Farah, May 1, 2002, WorldNetDaily.com
\"After nearly half a century of futile attempts by the world community to make work the delusional idea of creating a second state for the Palestinian Arabs on a meager 2,268 sq. miles of territory, a prominent American political leader has finally offered the only sane approach to solving the conflict. In an interview with MSNBC, House Majority leader Dick Armey, a Texas Republican, said that he supports the idea that Israel should expand her sovereignty to the lands of Judea, Samaria and Gaza and that the Palestinian Arabs should be resettled in the Arab countries. He said, \"There are many Arab nations that have many hundreds of thousands of acres of land and soil and property and opportunity to create a Palestinian state.\"… Armey\'s suggestion is the only pragmatic approach to the solution of a seemingly irreconcilable problem… It is easy to demand the creation of a new \"Palestinian state\" but for some reason, no one pauses to consider that it is a crime to try to cram over 10 million people (expected population there by 2025 at the current population growth rate) into two tiny, disconnected parcels of land. Especially since these territories are both water-scarce areas…\"
-- from “With Honor and Wisdom,” by Boris Shusteff, May 3, 2002, Freeman Center for Strategic Studies
\"On the one hand, people asking the state of Israel to accept the possibility of a Palestinian state in the hands of what appears to me quite frankly to be a bunch of terrorist thugs who will build up their position to launch attacks on the very existence of Israel. That seems to me to be an unacceptable security situation. And frankly, given the present leadership on the Palestinian side, I don\'t see how one avoids it...
\"…way back when, when Israel was originally founded and declared its independence [the] Arabs had a position in which they said, \'We\'ll accept some kind of Jewish homeland, but in the context of an Arab federation in which the Jewish people would have… a limited autonomy. At the time, they thought that that would be a fair arrangement for Jewish people to live in an autonomous region... within an Arab confederation… They thought that was fair. What I\'m suggesting is that that historical precedent would actually mean that the Arabs don\'t see it as an unfair situation to have an autonomous area within a state that is comprised of a different majority. At least they didn\'t see it as unfair then. … The historical precedent was, on their part, a preference for this arrangement if it was Jews who would be in the minority. They thought that was fair. Well, if it was fair when Jews were going to be in the minority, why is it simply unfair if Palestinians, Arabs, are going to be in the minority?\"
--Alan Keyes, Host of MSNBC show \"Making Sense,\" May 13, 2002