Mr. Abbas, Tear Down This Wall!

This historical and political absurdity—unique in the experience of the world’s tens of millions of refugees displaced by modern war and political conflict—helps explain why Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas walked away from the best deal his people have ever been offered. It happened in November 2008, when Ehud Olmert, then the prime minister of Israel, presented him with a detailed map of a future Palestinian state that, with land swaps, would constitute close to 100 percent of the territory of the West Bank and Gaza prior to the June 1967 war. Olmert also offered to divide Jerusalem, enabling the Palestinians to locate their capital in the eastern half of the city. The only thing he would not agree to was a right of return for Palestinian refugees—for the obvious reason that this would mean the end of the Jewish state.

You may now place "settlement" construction on the list it belongs - the long list of red herrings that the Palis have used to scuttle negotiations.

Why not, at long last, break up the awful refugee camps and encourage their residents to integrate themselves into West Bank civil society? The rationale for doing so is not merely political expediency. There is an overwhelming human-rights imperative to deal with the issue now. For the past decade, an array of peace and human-rights groups has been protesting Israel’s “brutal” West Bank occupation and the military checkpoints restricting the movement of innocent Palestinians. Now, many of the checkpoints have been closed, and Palestinians are building their economy and policing their own cities. In these circumstances, where are the human-rights advocates demanding that the Palestinian refugees be freed from their crowded camps, allowed to build their own homes anywhere on the West Bank, and permitted to send their children to regular Palestinian schools? Why aren’t peace demonstrators marshaling outside the Balata refugee camp with signs saying, “Mr. Abbas, tear down this wall”?

That's why it's a game. That's just another example of the world playing Israel. That's the reason why Israel doesn't listen to "pronouncements" from the UN, the ICC, or any other quarter of the Kangaroo Court of World Opinion.

As soon as the Arabs are called to task for taking care of their own, the playing field will level, and true negotiations can take place.