Palestinians dupe the west...

A nice short piece by Benny Morris...

Indeed, Arafat's strategy from the late 1980s, after he realized that he wasn't going to orchestrate the destruction of Israel (Black September 1970 in Jordan and Israel's Lebanon War of 1982 were instrumental in this connection), was precisely to establish a Palestinian Arab state encompassing the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, but without recognizing Israel or making peace with it. Which is why Arafat never accepted a signed and sealed two-state settlement involving a Palestinian state side by side with Israel reduced to its 1949 borders. This, after all, was what former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak (currently Israel's defense minister) and former US president Bill Clinton had offered Arafat in December 2000 (the Clinton "Parameters") and this is what former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered Abbas in 2008—and this is what both Palestinian leaders rejected.

Palestinian strategy is rather simple (and not particularly clever, though it does manage to take in a surprising number of Westerners): Because of the demographic threat (an Arab majority in a Jewish state) and because of international pressure for self-determination for the Palestinians and an end to Israel's military occupation, Israelis will eventually accept, however reluctantly, a Palestinian state encompassing the Palestinian-majority territories of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. Israel will eventually unilaterally withdraw (as it has already done from the Gaza Strip). So why offer or give the Israelis recognition and peace in exchange?

Rather, once this mini-state is achieved, unfettered by any international obligations like a peace treaty—and having promised nothing in exchange for their statehood—the Palestinians will be free to continue their struggle against Israel, its complete demise being their ultimate target. Inevitably, the armed struggle—call it guerrilla warfare, call it terrorism—will then be resumed. And, alongside it, so will the political warfare—the delegitimization of the Jewish state and, most centrally, the demand for the refugees of 1948/1967 to be allowed to return to their homes and lands (what the Palestinians define as the "Right of Return"). The refugee issue plays well with public opinion in the West, which somehow fails to notice that such a return will mean that Israel proper will become an Arab-majority territory, i.e., no more Jewish state. In democracies, what publics accept or support eventually becomes what leaders advocate.