2984. Israel Doesn’t Want to Be My State

By Sayed Kashua, The New York Times, July 30, 2018

Israelis marching at Damascus Gate in Jerusalem in May to mark the occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967.Lior Mizrahi/Getty Image

Credi

We were driving our rental car out of Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv. “Dad,” my oldest daughter said as we listened to the radio, “what’s the Nationality Law?”

“It’s a law that says Israel is a Jewish state,” I replied.

“But wasn’t it always that way?” she wondered, and rightly so.

“Yes. Bottom line, it’s always been that way.”

“I don’t get it,” my middle son said. “I thought you said we were citizens.”

“We are,” I answered.

“But we’re not Jewish, right?”

“No, we’re not.”

“Then I don’t get it,” my youngest son complained.

“It’s a little complicated,” I tried to explain. And it really was complicated to explain the law that Israel’s Parliament passed earlier this month without using terms like “racial segregation,” “discrimination” and “supremacy.” How was I going to explain to a 12-year-old that he is a citizen of a state that holds that he is inferior because of his non-Jewish origins? “Not everyone in the country is Jewish,” I said. “At least 20 percent of the citizens are not. But it’s a country where Jews enjoy rights that others don’t have. Meaning, non-Jews are less equal than Jews.”

“Can’t we be Jewish then?” my youngest son asked, as if he’d instantly solved the inequality problem.

“Sorry,” I told him, “that’s not up to me. According to Israeli law, in order to be Jewish you have to have a Jewish mother. So it’s not my fault; it’s your mom’s.”

“Great,” my wife protested, “now you’re shouldering me with your children’s inequality?”

When Israel was founded on the ruins of the Palestinian people in 1948, it was defined as a Jewish state. The Israeli flag was always a Jewish one, bearing a Star of David; the national anthem invokes the “Jewish soul,” excluding anyone who is not Jewish from these national symbols. The Palestinians who became Israeli citizens when the state was founded — like my family — have always been viewed as an undesirable demographic burden and subjected to discrimination.

So what does the issuance of the Nationality Law change? In essence, perhaps not that much. It has turned de facto racism into de jure racism.

The law asks progressive Israelis — both Jewish and Palestinian — to suspend our fantasies of equal rights and a future in which all the country’s citizens, regardless of religion, race or gender, have a sense of belonging. It seeks to legislate what Israel has been effectively telling non-Jewish minorities all along: You will never be a part of this country, you will never be equal, you are doomed to be unwanted citizens forever, to be inferior to the Jews to whom the state belongs and for whom it was founded. A state in which Judaism is the only national expression permissible by law will, by definition, reject any minority member who wishes to be part of it, even if he is, like me, fluent in its culture or, as I do, writes literature in its language, respects its laws, serves its society.  

Israel’s message to its Arab citizens is that it does not wish to be our state. Moreover, it prefers to be the state of people who were born elsewhere, who do not speak its language, have never visited it or paid it taxes or served it in any way. The State of Israel will welcome these foreigners, wherever they are from, as long as they are considered Jewish by Orthodox Jewish law. Individuals who are lucky enough to have been born to Jewish mothers can — practically overnight — receive Israeli citizenship, join the ruling race and become masters of the native population.

The Nationality Law prevents the possibility of multiculturalism in Israel and rejects any collective history or memory other than the Zionist one. By revoking Arabic’s status as an official state language, the law delivers yet another blow to the culture that has been vying for a position since Israel was founded. Article 7 of the Nationality Law, whereby the state shall regard Jewish settlement as a national value and work to advance it, has a distinctly colonialist tone, addressing Jewish settlement without any mention of the 20 percent of the population who are Arabs and who live in crowded conditions, under continuous threat of having their land appropriated.

While the message to Arab citizens within the State of Israel is unequivocal, the Nationality Law is murky when it comes to the Palestinians who reside in the West Bank and Gaza. What are the limits of the law, and to whom does it apply, in a state that avoids declaring its borders and refuses to accept those determined by international law? Doesn’t the fact that Israel controls the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories through military rule mean that it is now a state in which one population has civil rights and a second population is under occupation and lacks civil rights?

The powerful right wing in Israel wishes to annex the West Bank, or large parts of it, and some voices have been saying that Israeli law should be instated in the Occupied Territories, too. If this were to occur, how would the Nationality Law apply to the millions of Palestinians under occupation? Would there still be a prohibition against any definition other than the national-Jewish one? Does this law not aim to prevent any possibility of national Palestinian fulfillment in the State of Israel as conceived by the right wing — namely, one Jewish state from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, in which only Jews are permitted self-actualization and granted a national identity?

It seems the only hope for the remaining millions of Palestinians to avoid losing what is left of their home is to find a Jewish mother who will agree to adopt them.

Sayed Kashua is a Palestinian citizen of Israel and the author, most recently, of “Native: Dispatches From an Israeli-Palestinian Life.” This essay was translated by Jessica Cohen from the Hebrew.

2560. Donal Trump Ended the Myth of the "Middle East Peace Process"

By Rashid Khalidi, The Guardian, February 18, 2017

Netanyahu and Trump at the White House press conference.  Photo: Xinhua/Yin Bogu

“I’m looking at two-state and one-state, and I like the one that both parties like.” With these words at a joint press conference with Benjamin Netanyahu, Donald Trump may have finally dispelled the already receding mirage of any just solution. 

Trump was clearly seeking to please his guest, spurred by the zealots in his government, four of whom, Public Safety Minister Gilad Erdan, Education Minister Naftali Bennett, Sports Minister Miri Regev, and Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovley, just publicly came out against the creation of a Palestinian state.

For decades, Israeli governments, pursuing the colonization of the entirety of “Eretz Israel,” have systematically destroyed the prerequisites for a solution involving a contiguous, sustainable, sovereign Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital. Nevertheless, the myth that a real Palestinian state is on offer, and that there actually is a genuine “peace process,” endures as one of the greatest examples of magical thinking in modern times. 

That myth has been crucial for the continuation of Israel’s permanent occupation and unending colonization of the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem, shielding it from any serious international pressure.

The final interment of the already moribund “two-state solution” would force all concerned to face what is obvious to any honest observer. For decades, an imposed reality of one-state – the only sovereign entity enjoying total security control – has existed between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. This one state is Israel. Irrespective of the label one uses for it, this is the only outcome that this Israeli government will accept, whatever subaltern, or helot, or “autonomous” status it deigns to allow the Palestinians. 

Netanyahu did not mince words while standing next to Trump. He said that in any peace agreement “Israel must retain the overriding security control over the entire area west of the Jordan River.” He has long stated that he would only allow the Palestinians a “state minus;” that most Israeli settlements must remain in place; that all of Jerusalem belongs to Israel alone; and that Israel must keep 50-60% of the West Bank including the fertile Jordan River Valley. 

It matters little whether this travesty is called a one-state or a two-state “solution,” or whether the Palestinians get the right to fly a flag over such a pitiful Bantustan. 

The Trump-Netanyahu press conference, and the Senate confirmation hearings for David Friedman as ambassador-designate to Israel give us a very clear picture of how much the Israel-United States relationship has changed since January 20, 2017. 

American presidents since Clinton have insisted on a Palestinian state, have condemned settlement expansion, and have tried to rein in the most egregious excesses of the Israeli government, while financing and defending at the UN the very activities they supposedly opposed. These feeble positions are now eroding. 

Having just cast doubt on the two-state solution, Trump stood by complaisantly while Netanyahu laid out preconditions universally recognized as deal-breakers for the Palestinians: besides permanent Israeli control of their “state,” he demanded recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, a designation that no other country is required to accept, and something Israeli itself has not formally adopted. Similarly, while Trump asked Israel to “hold back on settlements a little bit,” his administration has not responded to the massive settlement expansion announced by the Israeli government in recent weeks.

In Friedman’s prepared testimony, clearly scripted by Trump administration handlers, he aligned himself closely with the largely false claims made the previous day by Netanyahu: that the Palestinians have refused to recognize Israel or to renounce terrorism, and that they pay killers of Israelis. In fact, the PLO recognized Israel and renounced violence decades ago. 

The families of the 35,000 Palestinians killed by Israel since 1967 do receive compensation, including some who have engaged in violence against Israel and its military occupation, but that very total, many times larger than the number of Israeli soldiers, settlers and civilians killed, helps to explain the violence. This is the cost of an occupation whose very existence Netanyahu and Friedman deny. 

As Netanyahu put it while standing alongside Trump: “Jews are called Jews because they come from Judea. This is our ancestral homeland. Jews are not foreign colonialists in Judea.” This is perfectly in line with the views of Friedman, who has raised millions of dollars in tax-free donations to settlements built on stolen Palestinian private property in “Judea.” Clearly, the Trump administration has moved the goalposts on Palestine, tilting even further in the direction of the most extreme government in Israel’s history.

In this brave new world, it is more urgent than ever for the Palestinians to overcome their crippling internal divisions, reject the pressures of the external powers that have helped to keep their national movement fragmented, and produce a clear strategy for a future of complete equality between Palestinians and Israelis. Perhaps Trump has provided the opportunity for them to lay out what a truly just and equal one-state, or binational, or confederal, or two-state solution would look like. 

In any case, only a complete break with the failed strategies of the feeble leaderships in Ramallah and Gaza can provide a genuine alternative to the grotesque future of unending dispossession and oppression that Trump and Netanyahu envision for them.

1630. The Zionist Apartheid as a Process and Goal: Israel's Minister of Economy's View

By Naftali Bennet, The New York Times, November 5, 2014

JERUSALEM — Recent events in the Middle East are a reminder of how the old models of peace between Israel and the Palestinians are no longer relevant. The time has come to rethink the two-state solution.

This past summer, Hamas and its allies fired over 4,500 rockets and mortars at Israel, demonstrating once again what happens when we evacuate territory to the so-called 1967 lines and hand it over to our adversaries. Peace is not obtained. Rather, we are met by war and bloodshed.

The rise of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, and other extreme elements in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, make the risks just as clear. Israel cannot afford to gamble with its security. There are no second chances in the volatile Middle East.

That is why, for its security, Israel cannot withdraw from more territory and cannot allow for the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank. If we were to pull out of the West Bank, the entire country would become a target for terrorists who would be able to set up rocket launchers adjacent to the Old City of Jerusalem and on the hills above the runways of Ben-Gurion International Airport and the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.

Take the Jordan Valley. The Palestinians demand that Israel withdraw from this narrow piece of land, which borders Jordan. But if we do so in today’s climate, we potentially open the door for the Islamic State and other extremists to flood into the new Palestinian state. We cannot take that risk.

How do I know? Because it happened. Not once, not twice, but three times.

In the mid-1990s, we pulled out of Palestinian cities as part of the Oslo agreement. In 2000, the second intifada erupted and over 1,000 Israelis were killed in attacks carried out by terrorists, many of whom came from the very cities we had evacuated.

When we pulled out of Lebanon in 2000, we saw a significant strengthening of Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militia. During the second Lebanon war six years later, Hezbollah fired more than 4,300 rockets at our cities.

And in 2005, we withdrew from the Gaza Strip and handed it over to the Palestinian Authority. We were told that Gaza would turn into the Singapore of the Middle East and that peace would grow out of the greenhouses the Jewish residents had left behind.

Instead, those greenhouses were used to cover up terrorists’ tunnels dug across the border into Israeli towns and villages. Gaza quickly turned into a fortress of terror.

But this does not mean all hope is lost. There is still much we can do to improve ties with our Arab neighbors, to generate peace and to cultivate economic prosperity for all people who live in this land.

The secret is bottom-up peace. After more than two decades of working on a single solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — the establishment of a Palestinian state — it is time to realize that coexistence and peaceful relations will not be obtained through artificial processes imposed on us from above. Instead, I propose a four-step plan.

First, we would work to upgrade the Palestinian autonomy in the West Bank, in the areas largely under Palestinian control (known as Areas A and B, according to the Oslo Accords). Ideally, this will be done in coordination with the Palestinian Authority.

The Palestinians will have political independence, hold their own elections, select their own leadership, run their own schools, maintain their own social services and issue their own building permits. They should govern themselves and run their day-to-day lives. Israel should not interfere. Much of this already exists, but we can do better.

This Palestinian entity will be short of a state. It will not control its own borders and will not be allowed to have a military.

Gaza already functions like a state, but the Hamas government in control there is bent on Israel’s destruction. As long as Gaza remains on this path, it cannot be a party to any agreement.

The second step will see the massive upgrade of roads and infrastructure, as well as the removal of roadblocks and checkpoints throughout the West Bank. The objective will be to ensure freedom of movement for all residents — Palestinian and Israeli — and to improve their quality of life.

No peace, though, can last without economic viability. So the third step will be to build economic bridges of peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

In my former career as a high-tech entrepreneur, I saw how diverse people from different backgrounds could learn to work together in pursuit of economic prosperity. Already, there are 15 industrial zones in the West Bank where Israelis work alongside about 15,000 Palestinians. These zones pump about $300 million a year into the Palestinian economy. Imagine what another 15 industrial zones could do.

Lastly, I propose applying Israeli law in Area C, which is the part of the West Bank controlled by Israel under the Oslo agreement. The Palestinians who live there would be offered full Israeli citizenship. We can start with the known settlement blocs that everyone agrees will remain part of Israel even under a final status agreement. By applying Israeli law and asserting national sovereignty in those blocs, while upgrading Palestinian autonomy in Areas A and B, we will reduce the scope of territory in dispute, making it easier to reach a long-term agreement in the future.

I am aware that the world will not immediately accept this proposal. It seems to go against everything Israel, the Palestinians and the international community have worked toward over the last 20 years. But I will work to make this plan government policy because there is a new reality in the Middle East, which has brought an end to the viability of the Oslo peace process.

The regional upheaval and disintegration of nation states oblige us to act responsibly. We must work toward realistic goals that are capable of providing real security and economic prosperity.

Naftali Bennett is Israel’s minister of the economy and the leader of the Jewish Home Party.