Obama's call for Palestinian state on the pre-1967 borders was "stillborn"

A former Lebanese Prime Minister has called US President Barack Obama’s call for a Palestinian state along pre-1967 borders “stillborn due to Israel’s swift rejection”. Selim El-Hoss said that Obama “relinquished previous American stances on settlements, refrained from offering an American role in mediation, and postponed the two more sensitive issues, Jerusalem and the refugees.”

In a statement published on a Lebanese website affiliated with Hezbollah, Mr El-Hoss claimed that a return to pre-1967 borders will not solve the Palestine issue: “The call to build a state on the pre-1967 borders assumes that Arabs did not have a cause in Palestine before then… What is demanded is the establishment of a Palestinian state from the sea to the river [Jordan].”

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The ex-premier agreed that there is a Jewish community in the proposed Palestinian entity, “but we don’t accept the existence of the so-called State of Israel on Palestinian territories”. This, he added, should be the Arabs’ aim. “It might take generations but that’s not a problem. Arabs must be prepared to wait because rushing isn’t justified by sacrificing the national right. The Jews did not think about the fate of Arab Palestinians when they established what they call Israel.”

Mr El-Hoss said that the proposals for settling the conflict require a “compromise which satisfies the Israelis with nothing in return”. In his view, he concluded, “The national right of the Palestinians must take priority.”