Palestinians: Settlement Expansion Means 1 State [View all]
Source: ABC News
The Palestinians will ask the U.N. Security Council to call for an Israeli settlement freeze, President Mahmoud Abbas and his advisers decided Tuesday, as part of an escalating showdown over Israel's new plans to build thousands more homes on war-won land in and around Jerusalem.
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The Palestinians say E-1 and Givat Hamatos are particularly problematic because they would cut off east Jerusalem, the intended Palestinian capital, from the rest of the West Bank.
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"Don't talk about peace, don't talk about a two-state solution ... talk about a one-state reality between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean," Erekat said, referring to the land that the international community hopes will one day accommodate both Israel and a Palestinian state.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague sounded a similar warning Tuesday, telling Britain's parliament that Israel's building plans would make a Palestinian state alongside Israel "almost inconceivable."
Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/israel-advance-east-jerusalem-building-plans-17872893#.UL8BymdN-S4
Much more at the link!
Okay so let's say Israel gets everything it wants, builds the 3,000 housing units in East Jerusalem, annexes huge swaths of Palestinian territory. What, exactly, are the Israelis planning to do with all the Palestinians who happen to exist in parts of Palestine which Israel decides to call Israel?
A great question posed by William Pfaff a few hours ago from the Chicago Tribune:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/sns-201212041800--tms--wpfafftr--v-a20121204-20121204,0,4026805.column
[div class="excerpt" style="border: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-bottom: none; border-radius: 0.3846em 0.3846em 0em 0em; box-shadow: 2px 2px 6px #bfbfbf;"]What exacly would Israel like to do with its Palestinian population?[div class="excerpt" style="border: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-top: none; border-radius: 0em 0em 0.3846em 0.3846em; background-color: #f4f4f4; box-shadow: 2px 2px 6px #bfbfbf;"]But to return to the original question, which few seem willing to pose: When Israel wins its campaign to create a single, unchallenged Jewish state on all of the land given by the U.N. in 1948 to make parallel Jewish and Arab homelands (a plan which the Arab states fought and lost), what happens to the Palestinian people left in the country?
There will not be quite as many of them as there currently are, if they persist in their sporadic and unsuccessful outbursts of resistance, revenge or retaliation, since it is Israel that, like the imperialist powers of the past, has "the Maxim gun, and they have not" - taking the form of F-16s, cluster bombs and nuclear weapons, if necessary. However, the Palestinian birthrate is much higher than the overall rate of Israel's Jewish population.
What do Prime Minister Netanyahu and his colleagues intend to do with the Palestinians? For the present, the latter are penned up in walled or barricaded enclosures on what they consider to be their own land, but the whole purpose of Israel's national policy is to take that land away from them.
More at the link, this is just a snippet which directly addresses the question. And that's one hell of a question, really. If you noticed, I bolded the fact that the Palestinian birthrate is much higher than the overall Jewish birthrate.
The "problem" Netanyahu faces by granting citizenship to the Palestinians goes like this. It's very simple: Israel defines itself as a "Jewish and Democratic State". Both Jews and Arabs are citizens of Israel and both groups are given equal voting rights and, of course, equal rights to have babies. So...What happens if the Arabs have enough babies that they one day become the majority?
It's a question there is no comfortable answer to.
Almost thirty years ago, Ted Koppel hosted a landmark debate between two prominent Israeli figures: Ehud Olmert, who would wind up becoming the Prime Minister of Israel in 2006, and Rabbi Meir Kahane, an emigre from the United States and founder of the popular Kach political party, which was later outlawed by Israel as racist.
The whole 8-minute segment is worth watching, but you only need to see the first 18 seconds to hear the question no Israeli politician can answer, nor wants to. Astoundingly, Netanyahu's Israeli government is courting that situation- but what is his solution to the inevitable situation that follows?
Olmert's response at the time was a reasonably safe "Oh, it will never happen." Kahane's response at the time was ethnic cleansing- which is why his party was banned in Israel and why his "Kach" and related organizations are listed on the FTO (Foreign Terror Organization) list by the United States, right along with al-Qa’ida and HAMAS.
Israel's Netanyahu government is turning a problem...into a potential nightmare. Not just for the Palestinians, but for the very nature of Israel as both a Jewish and Democratic state.
PB
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