Palestinians are not currently Israeli citizens, correct? If not, why not? What would happen if the Israeli government made them all citizens tomorrow? What would the ramifications of this be?
Just curious.
Thanks for your help,
Rob
You mean, annexing the West Bank and Gaza strip and proclaiming them part of Israel?
Probably Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Syria would immediately declare war on Israel.
Hamas would form a majority block government in the Knesset. 
What do they care? If Isreal said that the West Bank and Gaza were Isreali territory and that all Palestinians who lived there were now Israelis, why should the afforementioned countries or the Palestinians care? I thought that effectively being non-citizens in their own country was one of their big gripes? I know this is a complex issue, but I don’t think my visceral reaction of A Plague on Both Your Houses is a very helpful one. Thank you for helping me overcome my ignorance on this issue.
Thanks,
Rob
Because the Arab world wants (or at least says it wants) the Israeli’s to give back the West Bank, and any other land that they seized in the wars against them. Currently they are used as bargaining chips.
If Israeli’s declared the land to be part of Israel proper, and declared all Paletinians to be Citizens of the Israeli State, it would be seen as an attempt to over-ride the Palestinian Authority. And it would be correct, in a lot of ways.
Regardless, never gonna happen.
Interesting idea though…
I believe that would mean they would all have to serve in the Israeli armed forces, at least the young ones. I can’t see that working out very well.
There’s no reason on earth to think this would happen. If all Palestinians in the Occupied Territories were made Israeli citizens, it would be an Arab-majority country. Why would Jordan or Saudi Arabia attack an Arab-majority country?
Kind of an idle point, since it’s unlikely to happen.
Incorrect. Moslems who are Israeli citizens do not have to serve.
Or to put it another way, are not really allowed to serve.
If the Palestinians were Israeli cicitzens, they’d be the majority in Israel, and the whole point of Israel’s existence - to create a state run by Jews as a haven from anti-Semitism - would be nullified.
Millions of Palestinian Israelis would be tried and convicted of treason and sedition. 
That’s not entirely true. Druze and Circassians do. Bedoins and Israeli Arabs are exempt from mandatory service but are allowed to enlist. In fact, the Bedoins have a reputation as scouts and trackers.
Since I don’t see a specific factual answer to the question, let’s try GD.
Moved, samclem.
It’s not strictly correct to say that Palestinians are not Israeli citizens. The people that the world community thinks of as Palestinian are not Israeli citizens, it’s true. But an Israeli-Arab teenager I spoke to over the summer said (and I beleive this isn’t an uncommon refrain), “My country is Israel. My nation is Palestine.” In terms of national identity, many Israeli Arabs think of themselves as Palestinian, and so in those terms, there are Palestinian Israeli citizens. (This identification as Palestinian is especially the case for Arabs living in East Jerusalem. Because the whole of Jerusalem was annexed by Israel, the Israeli government granted everyone living in East Jerusalem citizenship. This understandably included many, many Arabs. Those are the only people with what is functionally dual citizenship; they can currently vote in both Israeli and Palestinian elections, though Israel isn’t happy about that. In the last Palestinian election, that East Jerusalem bloc voted overwhelmingly for Hamas.)
If Israel were to annex the West Bank and Gaza and grant citizenship to all the Palestinain Arabs living there, the main thing that would happen is that Israel would lose its character as a Jewish state. Overun by an Arab majority in a Democratic country, the government would become overwhelmingly Arab (and judging by recent electoral trends, probably led by Hamas). This would render Israel effectively yet another Arab state with a Jewish minority, albeit a more significant Jewish minority than Arab states have had in the past. That basically means the end of Israel.
This would render moot the interim issues that would come up. (Arabs serving in the Israeli military, the dissolution of the Palestinian Authority, Israel, in the eyes of many, overstepping its bounds by annexing territory functionally [or dysfunctionally] governed by another body.)
It’s also important to consider that the children of the West Bank and Gaza have been indoctrinated in PA-led schools in the ways of anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, and the idolization of “martyrs.” In the IDF intelligence museum in Herziliyah, ther is currently an exhibit that includes material culled from Palestinian schools. One assignment was to make a “shaheed (martyr) notebook,” with pictures and biographical details of the child’s favorite shaheed, cut-and-pasted pictures of the child with his favorite shaheed, etc. It could not be healthy for Israel to be flooded with rising generations of self-hating Israelis.
Earlier thread on same topic: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=353829
Why not one secular, multi ethnic, democratic state in Palestine?
Because nobody there wants one.
What area are you calling Palestine? Do you mean the West Bank and Gaza, or all areas currently under PA control, or the pre-1948 Palestine of the British mandate, including all of Israel?
(Either way, though, I thinkSam Stone’s answer is pretty much on target.
I don’t think the OP understands the absurdity of the sugestion. Look at it this way: you have two people who absolutely loathe each other locked in a bitter, acrimonious property dispute. Your offer is that they get married and move in together. Sure, that’s solve all our problems!
These days the effective way of resolving disputes in a society is representative democracy. Jewish Israelis are naturally fearful that the nation would be held to account for its crimes, if the people it subjugates were given a voice in government.