Now my question for you – and please answer my question as straightforwardly as I have answered yours. Fatah has consistently (since 1988) said that it supports the right of Israel to exist within the Green Line. Fatah has consistently (since 1988) said that they want a two-state solution, with a Palestinian state on the West Bank and a Jewish state within the Green line. These positions are substantially endorsed by the majority of the Palestinian population at large. Do they mean it or not?

You are evading the point. I don’t know (or frankly care) who these “progressives” are who say that “Arafat’s statements to his own people are not to be taken seriously”. (My suspicion is that this, like much else in your post, is largely a caricature of your own devising, but my point would stand equally even were that not the case.) What I am saying is that EVERYTHING the Palestinian leadership says is to be taken seriously, and doubly so the repeatedly expressed opinions of the Palestinians at large. It is you – and, in this thread, ONLY you – who are trying to find reasons to exclude from consideration large portions of the repeatedly and explicitly stated positions of the Palestinian leadership and population.

Remember how this started. You said (and I quote) “the biggest form of condescension (sp?) is saying “Arabs don’t really mean what they say””. There is only one person in this thread engaging in that form of condescension. You.

Over and over, “progressives” keep projecting their own values on the Palestinians…they claim to know what is “best” for them…they say “if I were a Palestinian, I would make peace with Israel”. This is arrogance of the highest order. It is time to look at the Palestinians and the rest of the Arab/Muslim world. If they truly want peace, we will meet them more than half way, but we will not fall prey to their tricks, as tragically so many Israeli governments have in the past.

I think you’ve made my point. Nothing I’ve ever read from the “Left” condescends to Palestinians one tenth as much as you have here or fails to take their repeated and explicit statements seriously one tenth as much as you have here. It’s pretty clear that you only take Palestinian statements at face value when they support a thesis of Palestinian hostility; for the rest you feel entitled to reject everything they say. As I said, the problem of condescension to the Palestinians comes from the “Right”, not the “Left”, as you amply demonstrate here.

I agree with you that there is an inconsistency between the Palestinian desire for a two-state solution and their support for the “Right of Return”. This does not show that they do not really support a two-state solution; it shows that people are sometimes inconsistent. There is a similar inconsistency on the Israeli side found in anyone who (a) wants Israel to be a Jewish state, (b) wants Israel to be a democratic state, and (c) refuses to give up the bulk of the West Bank. Such people’s views are laughably inconsistent (far more blatantly so, indeed, than the Palestinian inconsistency on the “right of return”); but it does not demonstrate that any of (a), (b), or (c) are not sincerely held. It does however mean that any solution to the problem will have to involve both sides being forced to confront the real implications of their positions and to make some hard choices between them.

I agree with you that anyone who argues that “Palestinians don’t really mean what they say” about (e.g) the “Right of Return” is being condescending – though it is not condescending to suggest that they really mean it, but might be persuaded to surrender or dilute it in the course of negotiations. (That view might well of course be deluded, but that’s another matter.)

But it is not only – or indeed primarily – the “Left” who condescend to Palestinians by refusing to believe that they mean what they say. Palestinians at large consistently say that they support a two-state solution (as measured in opinion polls such as this one: http://www.geneva-accord.org/mainmenu/-june-2008-poll-vast-majority-of-palestinians-favor-two-state-solution-over-one-state-solution); this has been the official policy of Fatah since the Algiers Declaration of 1988, and has frequently been reaffirmed by the Fatah leadership. How often have you heard people say that these statements are not to be taken seriously, and that we should not believe that Palestinians mean what they say on this subject? Do you think that the people who refuse to take such Palestinian statements at face value are mainly on the “Right” or the “Left”?