This week Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was in Jordan visiting refugee camps. There he met with Palestinian refugees and posted a video online where he called for both a “viable two state settlement” as well as making “the Palestinian right to return a reality”.
The only problem with these two statements is that they contradict each other.
Corbyn tweeted, “We must work for a real two state settlement to the Israel-Palestine conflict, which ends the occupation and siege of Gaza and makes the Palestinian right to return a reality.”
A two-state settlement would mean giving land to the Palestinians to live in alongside Israel. The right of return means to move Palestinians out of the Palestinian territories and put them back into Israel.
Labour Friends of Israel chair, Joan Ryan MP, wrote to the Labour leader to “urgently clarify remarks” that he made.
She says “the “right to return” is highly contentious and cannot be reconciled with a two-state solution, as this would simply create two majority-Palestinian states” and it “would effectively turn Israel into a Palestinian state and destroy the Jewish people’s right to self-determination.”
She concludes by saying she hopes Corbyn and the Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry “immediately clarify what you understand by a “right to return” and, in the future, ensure any language you use concerning it helps to advance, not hinder, the cause of peace, reconciliation and coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians.”
Unfortunately, Corbyn has a long history of opposing Israel’s existence.
Corbyn was a regular speaker at the Al-Quds marches in London which were established by Iran and call for the destruction of the Jewish state. He has in the past called the Balfour Declaration both “infamous” and a “historic mistake”. This is the document from the British government that paved the way for the rebirth of the modern Jewish state.
Corbyn emphasized in 2015 that the Palestinian right to return was “the key” to a solution.
Once again he is calling for the end of a Jewish state, just in a more subtle way. We are not sure if this is a delusion or an illusion from Corbyn, but it is definitely not a solution.
