StatCounter

Thursday 28 June 2018

Corbyn’s right of return call ‘doesn’t square’ with support for two-state solution

This report in the Jewish News 

The report begins thus, can you spot the puzzling part? 

'Jewish leaders this week reacted with bewilderment to Jeremy Corbyn call for a Palestinian right of return.

Following a visit to a refugee camp in Jordan, the Labour leader said: "Palestinians obviously have rights… The siege of Gaza must end, the settlement policy must end and the right of return must be a reality."

He later used Twitter to reiterate his call for "a real two state settlement to the Israel-Palestine conflict which ends the occupation and siege of Gaza and makes the Palestinian right of return a reality".

The right of return is the principle that Palestinians are entitled to return to land they and their families lived on before 1948, inside and outside the internationally agreed borders of Israel. It's application would signify the end of Israel as a Jewish state.

Jewish leaders, including the chief executive of the Jewish Leadership Council (JLC), said Corbyn's call for a right of return for Palestinian refugees "doesn't square" with his call for a two-state solution.

JLC chief Simon Johnson noted how Corbyn had visited a camp in Jordan but turned down the chance to go to Israel, saying it was "yet another missed opportunity to broaden his understanding of the complexities of the region".

On Corbyn's comments, Johnson said: "It's the Palestinian narrative he believes in, but it poses the question – when he says he wants a meaningful right of return, how does he square that with his call for two states for two peoples? Does he genuinely believe in two states, because the right of return is inconsistent with that objective.

"Furthermore, what right of return is he calling for? To which borders? The 1948 borders, or the 1967 borders? Commitment to the Palestinian narrative is laudable, but comments like this play into the perception there is no any other side to that narrative. He's the Leader of the Opposition, and needs to realise that wording is very important."'

Why would anyone be bewildered by Jeremy Corbyn's remarks? He may call for a two state solution but his two state solution is two Muslim majority states. 

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