Francois Hollande in Ramallah

Michael L.
The tidbit below was written by Evelyn Gordon and published by Commentary:

For the second time in two weeks, France has proven itself the most serious foreign-policy player the West currently has. First, it thwarted an abysmal nuclear deal with Iran. Now, it’s come up with the most creative idea for advancing Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy that I’ve heard in years.
Speaking in Ramallah yesterday, French President Francois Hollande essentially told Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas the following: You think Israeli settlement construction is destroying prospects for a two-state solution, and therefore want it halted. I agree. But the Israelis think these prospects are being destroyed by your demand to relocate millions of Palestinians to Israel (aka the “right of return”). So why not trade concessions on the right of return for a settlement freeze?

The point of Gordon's article is to emphasize the fact that if they truly wanted to create an atmosphere conducive toward ending the long Arab war against the Jews of the Middle East, western leaders need to pressure not only Israel, but the Arabs, as well.  Of course, Gordon also recognizes that Hollande's initiative won't bring peace, either, because the local Arabs refuse to make any concessions, period.
Furthermore, she writes:

Abbas told Hollande he has no authority to deviate from the Arab League’s stance on the refugees, begging the obvious question of what the point of the current talks are if he has no power to actually negotiate.
Nevertheless, the French proposal at least acknowledges the obvious fact that peace requires concessions by both sides, not just one. And that is a necessary first step. For as long as the world keeps pandering to Palestinian rejectionism by not demanding any concessions, as the Obama administration has, the Palestinians will never have an incentive to make any.

This neatly suggests something that I have been trying to emphasize for a long time, now.  The reason that dictator Abbas is not free to actually negotiate is because the conflict is not between the Jews of the Middle East, as represented by the State of Israel, and some local Arab entity, but between the Jews of the Middle East and the vast Arab world that refuses to accept Jewish sovereignty within the tiny Jewish homeland.  The Jews lived as a despised, persecuted minority for thirteen hundred years under Arab imperial rule, yet the Arab governments won't even go so far as to acknowledge the history of that persecution.
Can you imagine if the United States refused to even acknowledge the history of African slavery in the Americas?  That is, essentially, what we are facing.  Of course, the reason that they can get away with that is because the west, including western Jewry, is overly squeamish about criticizing the Arab world, particularly if it concerns Islam, which this issue most obviously does.  In effect, we are erasing thirteen hundred years of Jewish history so as not to discomfort our former masters.  This is how craven western Jewish discourse is on the topic of the long war.
Nonetheless, it is a step in the right direction to see a western leader recognize that everything is not always and forever up to Israel and that sometimes, perhaps, the so-called "Palestinians" should also be pressured to make concessions if we ever possibly want to see peace between the great Arab majority in the Middle East and the tiny Jewish minority there.