Abbas: We don't want to 'flood' Israel with millions of Palestinian refugees

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met on Sunday with around 300 Israeli students at Muqata, his presidential compound in Ramallah, and told them that: “[W]e do not seek…to flood Israel with millions [of refugees] or to change its social composition.” He also expressed his preliminary approval of recognising Israel as a Jewish state.

Abbas stressed that the refugee issue has to be settled in accordance with the Arab peace initiative, which calls for “a just solution to the problem of Palestinian refugees to be agreed upon in accordance with the UN General Assembly Resolution 194.”

The news of Abbas’s meeting with an Israeli delegation that included a number of extremists raised widespread debate and discontent among the Palestinian people; however, the Palestinian Authority’s security personnel prevented Palestinian journalists from covering a sit-in staged in protest of the meeting.

The Israeli news website Walla! quoted Abbas as saying: “We don’t want to re-divide Jerusalem. We would leave the city open, and have two municipalities with one governing body above them. This is the meaning of coexistence.”

He also noted that Israel is harming the peace process by constructing settlements on land that will become the Palestinian state.

In response to a question from a student regarding any future agreement about the Gaza Strip, Abbas expressed his belief that in the event of a peaceful agreement with Israel, the majority of the Palestinian population would support it, undermining the strength of his opponents, including those in Gaza Strip.

He added that if the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank were to support the agreement, then Hamas’s leadership would have to support it as well.

Abbas vowed that the PA will not resort to “violence” even if the negotiations fail: “If peace does not happen at the end of these nine months, we are not going to go back to violence.”

In addition, President Abbas touched on the Israeli demand to be recognises as a Jewish state, explaining that, “If Israel heads to the United Nations and asks for such a label, we won’t disagree as we have already recognised Israel,” but also adding that each time the Palestinians give in to Israeli demands, Israel asks for more concessions.

During the meeting, Abbas acknowledged that the PA, its media and its educational institutions all promote incitement; however, he pointed out that Israel is doing the same thing, alluding to the PA’s offer to Israel to restore the work if the anti-incitement committee that existed years ago, which Israel refused.