Norway’s dash for Gaza
As long as Europe allows the Arabs to fantasize about “the right of return” there can be no end to this conflict.
by Alexander Zvielli, Jerusalem Post
Why was Raymond Johansen, the Norwegian deputy foreign minister, in such a hurry to be the first European representative to meet Ismail Haniyeh, the prime minister of the new Palestinian unity government in Gaza?
What was the hurry? He certainly read Haniyeh’s March 17 speech in which the Hamas chief outlined the Fatah/Hamas government program. Haniyeh said: “The government affirms that resistance is a legitimate right of the Palestinian people.” And he knows what Haniyeh means by “resistance” - suicide bombings of cafes and buses, drive-by shootings, rocket launchings.
He knows the new government demands the “right of return” to pre-1967 Israel for millions of Palestinian Arab refugees and their descendents. He knows that means that killing Israel demographically.
Johansen knows that the Fatah/Hamas government does not renounce violence; that it will not honor previous agreements signed by the PLO, and that it will never recognize the right of a sovereign Jewish state to exist anywhere in the Middle East.
So, I asked myself, again, just what was Johansen’s rush?
