Ibn Warraq: I was thinking about how some people seem to think Palestinians don’t belong in Palestine because Israel is a “Jewish nation”, and Condoleeza Rice even suggested shipping them off to Chile, and Israeli negotiators suggested exiling Israelis or Arab heritage once the Palestinians got their own state.
I don’t see how declaring the United States a nation for a single ethnicity and a single religion would be the least bit different. After all, the Pilgrims were persecuted when they came here on the Mayflower, weren’t they? It’s the same kind of argument that’s being used right now.
Since there seems to be no hope for a two-state solution, the only reasonable solution is to make Israel a country for Jews and Palestinians alike. South Africa didn’t exactly go to hell in a handbasket just because it couldn’t be an Afrikaaner nation anymore.
I would sure as hell rather live in the Apartheid South Africa than the one now. And that’s not because I like apartheid, it’s because I don’t like astronomical rape and murder rates.
In any case I’m not sure that Israel is equivalent to South Africa in terms of demographics. South Africa was a white minority controlling a black majority. Israel has a Jewish majority, and the territories of Israel, the inhabitants of whom are called Palestinians, are obviously Arab/Muslim.
Now, if a state known as “Palestine” were created out of Gaza and the West Bank, and Israel were separate from this, then they would both keep their respective majorities. But if all the occupants of the territories were given Israeli citizenship, enough of them would probably move into Israel that Israel would have a Muslim majority.
There are already dozens of countries, many of them gigantic, with a Muslim majority. There is only one country with a Jewish majority and it is quite small. Knowing this, it behooves the Jews of Israel to want the state to remain Jewish in its character.
Other than an extremely few ultra hard line “Greater Israel” doofs no one believes that Palestinians don’t belong in Palestine. Most Israelis believe that Israel should stay a Jewish majority state. Not the same thing at all. Most Israelis have no problem with a Palestinian state so long as it’s existence came with a lasting peace and security. Allowing a great number who are not Israeli citizens to move into Israel solely on the basis that their great-grandparents had moved into the area at around the same time as the early Zionists did, many specifically to take advantage of the employment opportunities that the European Jews were offering, would eliminate that Jewish majority state and create two majority Islamic states. If you think any Israeli government is going to agree to that you are mistaken, whether or not you think such is “just”.
(Yes, there was an Arab population in Palestine before the immigration of larger numbers of European Jews, but the concept that most had been there for generations and generations in ancestral homes is as much a myth as the idea that Palestine was all empty space.)
No, violence against Jews did not start with the occupation of the West Bank. It began even before the Arab riots of the 1920s. And don’t get me wrong, not all the early Zionists were passively being attacked without attacking back.
The initial land allocated to the Jews in the Partition of 1947 was postage stamp sized. Had the Arabs accepted it the odds are that the state would have merely failed. They however did not as they felt the Jews should have no portion. The result was a larger Israel. Rinse repeat up through 1967. After that war there was the potential to hammer out a land for peace deal. Some Israeli leaders argued against it and the Arab side’s position was expressed in the infamous Khartoum Resolution, The Three Nos: “no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it.” Various Israeli leaders gave into settler demands in order to build coalitions believing that it would be transient as there would soon be a deal. Stupid. And the Arab side moved into its terror tactic phase. From there each side miscalculated over and over again and various subgroups whose personal interests were served by not having peace emerged on each side.
They growth of settlements and the rise of the terror tactics by the Arab side really did happen concurrently and it is very likely that each side would have done the same stupid thing whether the other side did their stupid thing or not. But indeed being attacked by terror groups certainly did not get the Israelis to administrate with the best welfare of the occupied as the number one concern, and building more settlements not only made achieving a peace agreement harder, but motivated a new generation to hate the Israelis as “the oppressor”.
Very little is gained by trying to cling on to either side’s mythologies or by trying to make one side into the Death Star against the other side’s nobel Rebel Alliance.
Once again, most of the serious players know what a peace agreement has to look like, in general anyway. The hard part is finding a way to get there and how to enforce it if it could be implemented. Serious suggestions would be appreciated. Proposing that there be no Jewish state will not be considered a serious suggestion.
Except reality simply doesn’t work that way. As far as the Jews go, making Palestine-the-region a multicultural secular state would be rolling back the clock to the 1930s, when a Jewish minority faced bitter opposition from the Palestinian majority. Are the same Palestinian Arabs who’ve vowed for decades to ethnically cleanse the region of Jews really going to sit down with the Israelis and sing Kumbaya? I get that Israeli ethnicism and nationalism is contrary to the progressive values many hold today; I never claimed that Israel’s position is morally right, only that it’s consistant, logical, and rationally in the Israelis’ best interests. If someone is being wronged, then the Israelis are saying “better them than us”. The Jews have taken to heart a quote from Giuseppe Mazzini: “Without a country you are the bastards of humanity”.
More about Mazzini: he was part of the movement for a united Italy in the 19th century. I just looked up the quote, and he actually uses the Israelites as an example, so it’s worth citing in full:
“Without country you have neither name, token, voice, nor rights, no admission as brothers into the fellowship of the Peoples. You are the bastards of Humanity. Soldiers without a banner, Israelites among the nations, you will find neither faith nor protection; none will be sureties for you. Do not beguile yourselves with the hope of emancipation from unjust social conditions if you do not first conquer a Country for yourselves.”
Certain radical Black factions in America in the 1960s said as much.
I don't think a symbolic presence in East Jerusalem would ever be acceptable to the Palestinians. An acceptable and reasonable solution to Jerusalem would be along the lines of the [Geneva accords](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Accord):
I don’t know whether Israelis are prepared to accept this and certainly this Israeli government isn’t.
What the fuck are you talking about? Have you even been to the West Bank or met any Palestinians?
There are more Palestinians living there now then when the Israelis took control of it after Jorndan invaded.
Aren’t ethnic cleansing supposed to reduce the population of a particular ethnic group not increase it.
Also, what comic book did you get your history from that led you to believe that the West Bank compromises 22% of “historic Palestine”?
Until the British split off 80% of the area known as “Palestine” into Transjordan(soon to become plain old Jordan) what is now Israel compromised a fraction of “Palestine.”
That’s why some Israelis insist there already is a Palestinian state and that it’s called Jordan.
For starters the idea that South Africa was “an Afrikaaner nation” prior to the fall of Apartheid?
the 40% of all Whites who were English-speaking would be a bit shocked by such a suggestion.
Second, I have have a very difficult time believing that Condoleeza Rice has ever suggested sending the Palestinians in the West Bank or Israel to Chile.
Cite please?
Third, no negotiators for the Israelis have never suggested ethnically cleansing Arab citizens from Israel. To do so is illegal and the last Israeli political party that proposed this was banned.
Now yes, some Israelis have proposed giving an independent Palestinian State control of parts of Israel that are predominantly Arab, but that’s vastly different from what you’re implying.
Also, while I’m no fan of Israel’s treatment of the 20% of its citizenry that’s Arab to compare their treatment to that of blacks in South Africa, or even the Jim Crow South is utterly moronic and anyone who compares the two is either a liar or knows nothing about the situation.
Israeli Arabs can vote and members of them serve in the Israeli Knesset, are generals in the Army, have served in cabinet positions and serve on Israel’s Supreme Court.
Kind of an odd claim to make given this particular thread’s op link.
Which doesn’t mean that the symbolic presence couldn’t look very much like those Clinton parameters. This much Israel was ready to concede to during the failed Clinton Camp David II talks:
As for the idea of a one-state solution … I have long had the fantasy that a long term plan … to be implemented in phases over several decades (heck, for the symbolism, use 40 years) … would be for a single confederated country of two (or maybe three) strong individual states. They would work together on developing and managing resources, such as water, tourism, trade, and in the near term future, natural gas. They would work together on developing industry and a national educational and health infrastructure (with strong local controls). But each would be able to maintain their own national character at the same time.
Getting to that point would need the generation in the desert however - mindsets would need to shift and trust earned by each side. The first step is two states with very codified relationships and, as Frost said, “good fences” (in a symbolic not physical sense), with the openings in the fence beginning slowly as trust and recognition of how working together more would be in each actors best interests organically emerges.
IIRC I’ve had this argument several times with Dick.
Essentially, since “ethnic cleansing” isn’t supported by the facts in Israel or the territories, seeing as how we’re not getting close to half a century of it and the Palestinians’ population keeps increasing. But “slow motion ethnic cleansing” keeps the fundamental fiction while also sounding nifty. If you google for it actually, you’ll find that “slow-motion genocide, Israel” is the more popular meme, and Dick seems to have toned it down a bit.
It’s an interesting way of turning “encroachment of Israeli citizens into land, some of which was privately owned and much of which was not, but all of which the PA wants to reserve for a future Palestinian state” into a crime against humanity.
Yep, I pointed that out to him too. He tried to handwave away the cite itself before claiming that “The 22% thing is the standard way that most people/newspapers etc. around the world refer to the bits of land currently known as the Palestinian territories.”
Which, if true, shows that most people/newspapers etc have decided that factual accuracy doesn’t matter when a good screed can be had in its stead.
Most people who are knowledgeable about the issue, of course, realize that Israel has a fraction of “historic Palestine”, but that doesn’t fit the narrative some are trying to sell. Israel has to have 78% of it, because, well, because. And Jordan isn’t bad for having the lion’s share of “historic Palestine” and for preventing the rise of an official Palestinian state in '67 and by remaining a Hashemite kingdom and not a Palestinian state because, well, because arab-arab misdeeds don’t fit the narrative and/or because the narrative is about Israel and facts about Jordan really don’t have a place there.
So we get a “slow-motion ethnic cleansing” of “the last 22% of historic Palestine that Israel doesn’t control”.
Nothing in the link or these revelations suggest that the Palestinians would be willing to settle for a “symbolic” presence in East Jerusalem, just that they would be open to giving up parts of East Jerusalem occupied by Israeli settlers. It has always been understood that any peace settlement would include Palestinian sovereignty over Arab parts of East Jerusalem which would serve as the capital of the state. This is rather less than the administration “affiliated” to the PA mentioned in that quote. Israelis and their supporters are being naive if they believe there will be a peace deal with just a symbolic Palestinian presence in East Jerusalem. That is a complete non-starter.
