The Key is the Key
The Root of the Conflict
In his speech to the UN, where he professed a desire to reach a peaceful settlement with Israel, Abbas is wearing a pin of a key. The key is a prominent symbol in Palestinian culture. It recalls how Palestinians hope to return to their homes that they left during the 1948 war, locking their doors and taking the key with them. (The creation of the refugee problem is what is today referred to as the Nakba, though the term originally referred to the humiliation of the Arab defeat.)
Yet the key, worn to attest to the crimes of the Jews, actually attests to how the Arab refugee situation was the fault of the Arabs. Jews fleeing persecution in Europe generally didn’t take their keys, but Palestinians did. Why? In my book “The Lions Of Zion,” I quote none other than anti-Israel critic Robert Fisk in The Independent, who wrote that “…most of them were convinced – or thought they knew – that they would return after a week or two and re-open those front doors and walk back into the houses many had owned for generations.”
But how did they see that happening? The answer is that they left under the assumption that the Arab states would succeed in their declaration that they would annihilate the Jews, and that they would thus be able to soon return. To pick just one example, here’s the Daily Mirror, Sept 12, 1947:
It was the Arabs that forced a zero-sum game, by declaring a war of annihilation. And they are thus responsible for the result. What is called the “Nakba” today is the fault of the Arabs, not the Jews.
Fisk also interviews former UNRWA doctor Mohamed Khatib, who says that in general the Palestinians chose to leave because it was dangerous, but could and should have stayed. This unwittingly refutes the narrative that they were forced out. Some indeed were forced out, and some left under encouragement from Arab leaders, but the majority left simply because there was a war going on.
Finally, it should further be noted that the key also symbolizes the Palestinian insistence on the descendants of refugees returning to Israel. This obviously spells the destruction of the Jewish state.
And thus Abbas’ pin demonstrates both the falsehood at the core of the Palestinian position, and the falsehood of their alleged desire for peace.
"the descendants of refugees returning to Israel"
As you point out in your new Lions book, there is only one group in the world for whom descendants of refugees are still considered refugees: Palestinians. And this status is maintained by most Arab countries because of the lack of birthright citizenship even for those who would otherwise be stateless. Examples:
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2016/3/23/palestinian-syrians-twice-refugees
https://web.archive.org/web/20090303231338/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1881651,00.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20121023114503/http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/697/eg10.htm
Birthright citizenship would solve these problems. Most countries in the Western Hemisphere have it. But the League of Arab States opposed that:
https://www.algemeiner.com/2012/02/24/the-anti-palestinian-arab-nations/
Today, no country in Europe or the Middle East has birthright citizenship today -- and clueless Europeans wonder why they have a problem with assimilation of immigrants! The UK had had it from at least 1608 but Margaret Thatcher repealed it as of 1983. The two countries in the Middle East that DID grant citizenship to Palestinians were Jordan and Israel. However, Jordan has been stripping Palestinians in the West Bank of their citizenship.
The Palestinian National Authority has never enacted a nationality law. And yet over 150 countries consider it to be a sovereign state!