By Morton Klein

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas has reiterated that a future Palestinian state, if established, will be Jew-free saying, "We have frankly said, and always will say: If there is an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, we won't agree to the presence of one Israeli in it."

Abbas' Fatah-dominated PA, as well as leading Palestinian figures, including those often mistakenly regarded in the West as ‘moderates,' have insisted that a future Palestinian state must be judenrein and all Jews currently living in communities in Judea and Samaria must be uprooted

Saeb Erekat, senior Fatah/PA official, former PA Foreign Minister said: "...nobody should agree to Israeli settlers remaining in the Palestinian [state]."

Ahmed Qurei, former PA Prime Minister and former PA senior negotiator: "There can be no peace with the presence of these settlement blocs in the West Bank ... the settlers are dangerous and ... it's impossible to live with them ... Peace can be achieved only if Israel withdraws to the last centimeter of the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967."

Dr. Sari Nusseibeh, the Dean of Al-Quds University, widely touted as a Palestinian moderate said: "The Israelis now living in the territories of the future Palestinian state should return to living within the borders of the state of Israel. No Jew in the world, now or in the future ... will have the right to return, to live, or to demand to live in Hebron, in East Jerusalem, or anywhere in the Palestinian state ... What's wrong with Taibeh [an Arab city in Israel], for example, being an integral part of an Arab Palestinian state? ... Jaffa [part of Tel Aviv] too."

Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) National Chairman of the Board Dr. Michael Goldblatt said, "Mahmoud Abbas has reiterated in stark terms the PA position that it intends to create a Palestinian state in which no Jews will be permitted to live. Whereas Israel has a large Arab and Muslim minority, the Palestinians openly demand that their state be judenrein.

"While speaking to Western audiences, Mahmoud Abbas and Salaam Fayyad might rarely - and only rarely - go through the motions of claiming to acknowledge the rights of Jews to live in Israel within the pre-1967 borders or in a future Palestinian state - they have pointedly refused ever to accept Israel as a Jewish state and daily tell their people that Jews are usurpers. In any case, to Arab and Muslim audiences, they are candid that they intend to uproot the hundreds of thousands of Jews living in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) if and when they obtain their own state.

"The Palestinian demand for a Jew-free state is not only obscene and anti-Semitic in itself, but it exposes their rejection of Israel as a Jewish state and thus the reason for the absence of peace. They refuse to accept the truth of the Jewish religious, legal and historical connection to Israel and thus the right of Jews to have their own state in their biblical homeland.

They not only refuse to accept Israel as a Jewish state - something they have stated publicly and repeatedly, even to Western audiences - but also insist that no Jews remain in Judea and Samaria. To acknowledge the right of Jews to live in these territories - as Jews are morally as well as legally entitled to do under the terms of the 1920 Sam Remo Conference, a legal right that has never superseded by a subsequent, legally binding agreement - immediately invalidates the PA's rejection of the religious, legal and historical basis of Israel's existence.

"In the interests of working towards a future peace, which the Obama Administration says is its priority, the ZOA urges it to immediately and publicly condemn Mahmoud Abbas' statement that no Israeli will be permitted in a Palestinian state and to withhold all further diplomatic support and financial aid to the PA until it rescinds this anti-Semitic, anti-peace position."

Sometimes, I wonder how well the Israelis really understand the situation that they're in. This suggests that they have a pretty good handle on the world opinion part of it.

A newly released WikiLeaks cable quotes Ron Dermer, a top adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, telling a U.S. diplomat of Israelis' frustration with the peace process.

Surprisingly, however, Dermer didn't focus primarily on Palestinian behavior. Rather, he charged, "the Israeli public is skeptical regarding the benefits of returning to negotiations" because "all the GOI [government of Israel] has received in return for its efforts [to date] was a ‘slap-down from the international community.'"

Dermer didn't offer evidence to support his claim about Israeli frustration with the "international community," but the data are shocking: according to the August Peace Index poll, fully 77 percent of Jewish Israelis think "it makes no difference what Israel does and how far it may go on the Palestinian issue; the world will continue to be very critical of it." And in fact, Israelis have good reasons for this belief.

For instance, when Hezballah continued attacking Israel even after Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, the world, far from condemning Hezballah, excoriated Israel when it finally responded to these attacks in the 2006 Second Lebanon War. Moreover, after having certified the withdrawal as 100 percent complete in 2000, the UN Security Council then rewarded Hezballah's aggression in 2006 by voting to remap Lebanon's borders, "especially in those areas where the border is disputed" by Hezballah, with an eye toward forcing Israel to quit additional territory.

Then, when Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, evacuating 25 settlements in the process, it was .rewarded. by daily rocket fire on its cities from the evacuated territory. Yet when it finally fought back, in 2008, it was slapped with the Goldstone Report, which accused it of "war crimes" and urged its indictment in the International Criminal Court.

Here's Israel's real problem with "world opinion:"

1) A lot of nations vote their pocket books and a tiny little country like Israel can't offer as much as oil producers like Saudi Arabia and Iran.

2) Anti-Semitism still runs rampant in much of the world. Is anyone surprised that nations that enthusiastically shipped their Jews off to death camps in WW2 still hate Jews today?

3) The Israelis are prosperous, civilized people. The Palestinians are evil, backward savages. Although they generally won't come out and admit it, liberals think people like the Palestinians are too primitive and stupid to be expected to act like decent human beings. The same can't be said of the Israelis. So, they expect the Israelis to give up everything because they're better people than the Palestinians, while the Palestinians can't be expected to do any better than they are because, well, look at 'em!

[It's a form of reverse racism that liberals engage in on a regular basis with all sorts of groups.]

4) See 3? It's even worse for Europeans because they feel guilty about colonialism in a way that Americans don't. So, they see an advanced Western culture in the midst of a bunch of natives and they sympathize will the natives. No, it's not the same thing at all, but it probably seems like the same thing to a lot of Europeans.

5) Because the Nazis were so thorough in their work, the number of Jews in Europe is fairly low. On the other hand, the Islamic population has increased dramatically there and if we're being honest, rabid anti-Semitism and Islam tend to go hand and hand. So, if you're a politician and 10% of your population consists of Muslims who love seeing dead Jews while 1% of your population consists of Jews who are sympathetic to Israel, well, you do the math.

6) Jews are God's chosen people and although it hasn't always been so, Christians today tend to be particularly sympathetic to Jews. Unfortunately, Christianity is dying in Europe. Outside of a few enclaves of faith, it's practically a post-Christian continent.

Put it all together and, yes, "it makes no difference what Israel does and how far it may go on the Palestinian issue; the world will continue to be very critical of it."