Current Affairs editor Nathan J. Robinson recently debated internet-based political commentator Steven Bonnell on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. At one point, Robinson argued that a two-state partition could be achieved if the United States used its considerable leverage with its close ally Israel to pressure the Israelis to accept a deal.

One of Bonnell’s main counterarguments was that Palestinians would hold up any such deal by insisting on a “right of return” for Palestinian refugees from the ethnic cleansing carried out by Israeli forces during Israel’s “War of Independence” in 1948 — an event Palestinians call the “Nakba” (catastrophe). Bonnell portrayed this as an obviously absurd demand which would make peace impossible. After all, allowing millions of Palestinians to migrate back to Israel would completely change the demographic composition of the country. In response, Robinson argued that Palestinian negotiators would quite likely be willing to compromise on this point.

Robinson is almost certainly right about that. Back in 2002, Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) chairman Yasser Arafat wrote in an op-ed in the New York Times entitled “The Palestinian Vision of Peace,” in which he said: