Assume for the moment that the Arab-Israeli conflict has run its course and that there now exist two independent states. The borders between Israel and Palestine have been agreed on by both sides and are secure enough that no terrorist attacks occur (farfetched I know, but stay with me).
Let’s now look at two cases: a village of mostly Jews that ended up on the Palestinian side of the border, and a village of mostly Arabs on the Israeli side. What would happen to both of these villages?
There already exist Arab villages within Israel. As near as I can tell, the denizons have Israeli citizenship, vote in elections, and are given (nearly) full rights as citizens. As an added bonus, they need not serve in the army.
But what about Jews left in Palestine? I would not bet on their surviving a year. Most other Arab nations have an extremely low Jewish population, usually because they were oppressed, forced to emigrate, or just killed. I don’t see any reason for Palestine to be an exception.
I suspect your situation would not happen without some sort of “assurances” that such people would be protected somehow, for exactly the reasons you give. Of course, whether such assurances would be lived up to is quite another matter…
Any Israeli leader who suggested leaving Jews under Arab jurisdiction would be voted out of office so fast he’d rip his pants on the sidewalk. As far as I know, the possiblility has never even been discussed in any political forum, left of right.
Every peace plan I’ve ever read or heard has stated that all Jewish settlements will be either annexed or evacuated.
Interesting that the Jews must withdraw while any Arabs in Israel are permitted to stay. I’m certainly not advocating that the Arabs be forced to leave, I’m just wondering why this double standard exists. Palestine, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, etc… should be held to the same level that Israel has repeatedly been held to–fairness to all citizens including those who explicitly condemn the existence of the country itself (for example, Palestinians).
Why is everyone suddenly so hung up on Israel’s (supposed) oppression of Palestinians when Arab countries have been doing the same or worse?
<< Interesting that the Jews must withdraw while any Arabs in Israel are permitted to stay. >>
Past experience has been that Jews living under Arab-control are persecuted, deprived of rights, and often murdered. There are no assurances that this hypothetical Palestinian state could give that would be acceptable to Israel, I suspect.
Except, for most of history up to around WWI, many Arab cities had lots of Jews living in them. Baghdad, for instance, had a very large Jewish population.
My guess is that if the Israel-Palestine agreement were solved in a way in which everyone is happy and content, Jews left on the other side of the border would likely be OK, barring a few idiots stirring up the pot (but not much worse than what happens in Europe or the US).
Further, if the Palestinian government were to actively persecute Jews in Palestine, I am betting that the full force of the massive Israeli military, the largest in the Middle East, would be immediately brought to bear–probably not in invasion at first, but certainly in intimidation. And justifiably so.
This is not a hypothetical situation. After the formation of the State of Israel, there were plenty of Jews living in Arab countries. Almst all of them were displaced.
In practise Arabs in Israel are not afforded the same civil rights as other citizens. They are subjected to persecution and fear just as those choosing to live in the illegal settlements in the occupied territories. Of course the people moving to these illegal settlements know the dangers beforehand, but being driven by religious zeal and supported by foreign imperialists through aid, military and otherwise, they boldly walk about on land they took at gunpoint with assault riles on their shoulders. Sadly, their neighbours, the Palestinians, for the most part did not choose violence or invasion of others land. These people have lived in that region for hundreds of years, violence was chosen for them when Israel invaded Palestine. The ‘extremists’ who organise suicide bombings have violent Israeli oppression to thank for their ready supply of young men and women who, having suffered the harm or death of family and friends, are willing to give up what they see as their future to draw attention to their struggle in a misguided belief that media will examine their motives, or perhaps to satisfy a need for revenge. I can’t know, what I do know is Israel has the bulk of the power, the money, the political support and the guns.
I like to think power and responsibility are directly proportional.
Here is an example of unequal civil rights in practise I found first search, you should do some searching for yourselves.
The thread deals with Palestine and Israel. Apart from using it as a platform from which to launch your mealy-mouthed and decrepit arguments about how every thing wrong in the world is Israel’s fault, how about sticking to the subject. Your link deals with the following main subjects (I’m quoting) :
.deteriorating relationship between Israel and the Palestinian Authority and neighboring states
.Knesset voted to extend the fifty-two-year-old state of emergency until January
.girls, from FSU countries have been trafficked to Israel to work in the sex industry.
the rest of the page goes on to talk about abuses of trafficked women.
The single relevant reference in the page, to the status of Palestinians in Israel, says that the Supreme Court has ruled that State has no right to discriminate against them in matters of land acquisition. Did you here that … no right to discriminate. How about doing another search and looking to see what rights Jews have to acquire land in Palestinian territory. Don’t bother. I’l save you the effort. They have no rights. It is forbidden in Palestinian law!
Since you’re so hot on numbers, please do another bit of research for me. How many Palestinians have been executed by their own government for the heinous crime of co-operating with Israel. How many Palestinian civillians have been murdered by terrorist gangs for this crime. How many of these murderers have been brought to justice in the Palestinian legal system (there’s a laugh!).
Now it seems to me that if you can execute some-one for co-operating with another State, then you are saying that, by definition, that State is your enemy. If Israel is Palestine’s enemy, then any actions taken by the Israeli army are goverened the rules of engagement in warfare, not the civil rights clap-trap you excrete. Any flaws in my logic here?
For the record, I don’t agree with anything Halo13 said, in case that may slip by in this discussion.
In the 1950s, the US executed several of its citizens for co-operating with the Soviet Union. Did it follow that any actions taken by the US army would have been governed by “the rules of engagement in warfare, not the civil rights claptrap”? No, it did not.
You are essentially arguing that, if State A outlaws and punishes co-operation with State B, a state of war then exists between State A and State B. Not many people would share this view.
The people executed by the US (I’ll assume you’re talking about the Rosenbergs et al) were convicted of spying. I’ll remind you that there sits in US jails as we speak a gentleman convicted of spying (for Israel). The crime is spying, no matter for which country. You could be convicted as a spy in the USA even if you are Irish! In Palestine, however, the crime is “co-operating with Israel”.
Without getting into the question of whether Israel invaded Palestine or not ( and actually it is definitionally hard to make that argument in precisely those terms as you’ll see in a moment ), the question of whether or not a country called “Palestine” ever existed is immaterial. A region called Palestine did ;).
I see this “no country called Palestine” argument all the time and it perplexes me. No matter whose side ( if any ) you’re on, what in the world does this have to do with anything? Israel didn’t exist as a country for thousands of years either and the fact that it once did in pre-Roman times is fairly meaningless because in no way is modern Israel a lineal political descendant of ancient Israel.
Now like I said, you can hardly say “Israel invaded Palestine”, at least in reference to 1948, because Israel was already in the British Mandate of Palestine. I suppose if you stretch the definition of invasion to include earlier Jewish immigration you could call that an “invasion” - But that’s quite a stretch ( and at any rate “Israel” didn’t exist at that point, so that would still be an invalid statement ).
Anywho, while “Israeli” ( pre-Israel Zionist groups included under that rubric ) actions weren’t uniformly exemplary both before and during the 1948 fighting, I do think the evidence is reasonably clear that it was the Arab states that resorted to large-scale hostilities first. Though namby-pamby moderate that I am, I’d be the first to say that there is blame to be shared all the way around. But that issue has already been argued in this forum innumerable times.
I think the “Israel invaded Palestine” bit was referring to 1967 - I certainly read it that way, and my argument is with that concept. Time and again you’ll read here that Israel was the instigator of the '67 war (made purely on the grounds that it attacked first). Of course, this simply shows complete ignorance both of the facts, and of international law, since by closing the Straights to Israeli shipping, and ordering the UN peace-keeping troops out of Sinai, Nasser had given Israel a casus belli
I’ll quote from the book written by the renowned historian, Sir Martin Gilbert. (Gilbert, Martin. Israel, New York: William Morrow and Co., Inc., 1998.)
Well, to be fair earlier American anti-immigrant parties did make that argument - Seen Gangs of New Yourk yet :)?
But I think it would be reasonable of us to dimiss the ravings of 19th century bigots ;).
Ah, well in that case, it still wouldn’t hold. Not only because I agree with you that Israel was not the prime instigator of that war, but also because Gaza and the West Bank were at that time de facto possesions of other countries, which are the ones that should actually be cited as having been invaded.
I think that is usually an inarticulately expressed idea. It is in reaction to this idea/myth of a Jewish Western imperialist power usurping a land from its longtime peoples with deep historic ties to it for thousands of years. More meaningfully expressed it goes that there was no such entity as “a Palestinian people” before 1948. It is pointing out that such is recent group identification created by the situation of war refugees unabsorbed for generations by any country freindly to them or their plight. It is reaction to the mythology of a unified Palestinian people with deep historic ties to this particular area because such was never the case before 1948. It gets even more silly when such a myth gets raised over the PA getting every inch back of pre-1967, as if those borders had some deep historic significance other than just being where the last war had stopped, and forgetting, as you remind them, that those “Palestinian” territories had been annexed by Arab neighbors after 1948. That it was the Arab countries that never gave an independent Palestine a chance to exist, not Israel.
Still, there is now a group identification of a Palestinian people, and denying that reality would be counter-productive.