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Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/upfront/2018/09/netanyahu-won-180911182802925.html
Dore Gold: To Solve the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Realism Is the Name of the Game
(Al Jazeera) Mehdi Hasan - Former Israel Foreign Ministry Director General Dore Gold told Al Jazeera on Friday: Much of the recent U.S. moves against the Palestinians "is self-inflicted punishment on the part of the Palestinians. They knew that if they start playing around with the International Criminal Court, there is American legislation that was adopted in 2015 which says that will have implications for their offices in Washington. That wasn't a Donald Trump invention. That was done back then." "I have sat with Palestinians for years talking about alternative models for solving this [Israeli-Palestinian] problem. Let us get to a table and let us put those ideas out and let's try to resolve this once and for all. In one very important sense, what President Trump is doing is trying to introduce realism. Don't start believing that you are going to get five million refugees to return to Israel. It's not going to happen. And if you start believing that propaganda, you'll never negotiate a solution." Q: The nation state law passed over the summer says "The right to exercise national self-determination in Israel is unique to the Jewish people." Gold: "I suggest you read the Balfour Declaration which envisioned a Jewish homeland. It didn't talk about an Arab homeland. Did that mean that Lord Balfour and the British government were racist, prejudicial, or they were trying to help out a people who had been downtrodden, who had lost their ancient homeland but were determined to recover it?" Amb. Dore Gold is president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.