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Since the collapse of the
Oslo
accords nearly five years ago, Israeli leaders have been demanding that
the Palestinian Authority recognise
Israel
as a Jewish state in any prospective settlement of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Some Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, have even
used the concept of "state of the Jewish people", with the connotation
that
Israel
belongs not only to its citizens, but to Jews all over the world,
including potential future converts. The idea, Israeli academics and
intellectuals say, occupies "centre-stage" in
Israel's
Zionist collective thinking.
Last year, former Israeli prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu openly
called for the adoption of policies aimed specifically at reducing or at
least neutralising Arab demographic growth in
Israel.
The
growing demographic weight of Israeli Arabs, who constitute up to 20% of
Israel's
overall population, was more serious and more dangerous for
Israel
than threats posed by the Palestinians, he said.
Three opinions
But
what exactly is meant by "Jewish state" in practical terms, and what are
the long-term ramifications for a Palestinian and Arab recognition of
Israel
as a Jewish state?
This question was put recently to three intellectuals: an Israeli
professor, an Arab Knesset member and a Palestinian political scientist.
Palestinian advocates argue that given what they consider
Israel's
discriminatory policies, the world, let alone the Palestinians and
Arabs, are under no more of a legal obligation to maintain Zionism in
Israel
than it was to maintain apartheid in the
Republic
of
South Africa.
The concept of Jewish state (or, for that matter, Christian state) has
no origin in international law.
This is the view of Azmi Bishara, an Arab legislator in the Israeli
parliament, the Knesset, and an outspoken critic of Israeli treatment of
its large Arab minority.
Israel,
he said, wants the Arabs to recognise
Israel's
political legitimacy but also "Zionism's moral legitimacy".
Historical score
"Israel
is interested in settling a historical score with the Palestinians and
the Arabs. They want the Arabs to recognise Zionism and all that it did
retroactively," Bishara told Aljazeera.net. He cited two main reasons
for Israel's insistence that the Palestinians recognise it as a Jewish
state:
First, the negation and cancellation of the Palestinian right of return
on the ground that Israel is a Jewish state, and since the estimated 4.5
million Palestinian refugees are not Jews, they have no right to return
to their hometowns from which they were expelled or forced to flee amid
war when Israel was created in 1948.
Second, a formal recognition of the Jewishness of Israel would lend
"legitimacy" and "legality" to institutionalised policies and measures
aimed at maintaining a Jewish majority.
These policies and measures, Bishara says, include encouraging
Israel's
Arab citizens to emigrate, preventing them for intermarrying with
Palestinians, and seeing to it that their numbers remain within the
"safe zone".
Asked if
Israel
would ever contemplate expelling at least some of its non-Jewish
citizens in order to maintain an overwhelming Jewish majority, Bishara
said
Israel
would first seek to exhaust all other "non-dramatic means".
Most Israelis, save probably a few marginal leftist intellectuals such
as Illan Pappe of the
University
of
Haifa,
don't see any fault in insisting that their state be recognised as a
Jewish state, rather than just merely another "nation state".
No special status
"We
have been a Jewish state since 1948. This is reality. We are also a
state for all its citizens, just as
Jordan
is an Arab state and a state for all its citizens and
France
is a French state," argues Ira Sharkansky, a professor of political
science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Sharkansky argues that
Israel
should not be treated as any other normal nation state because of the
Holocaust. "I don't want to play the Holocaust card, but it is clear
that the 'Jewish state' is viewed as a sort of guarantee against the
recurrence of the Holocaust."
This is strongly rejected by Bishara, who argues that the "Jewishness"
of
Israel
doesn't correspond to the "Americanness" of the
US
or the Frenchness of France. "France,
for example, is a state for all its citizens.
France
doesn't define itself as a Catholic state or the
US
as Protestant state.
Israel
can't be Jewish and democratic at the same time. The two are oxymoron."
Palestinian political scientist Atef Odwan, a professor of political
science at
Gaza's
Islamic University, believes that
Israel's
insistence that other nations recognise it as a "Jewish state" is
attributable first and foremost to undeclared Israeli designs against
its sizeable Arab minority.
"Zionism has two sides - settling Jews in
Palestine
and uprooting non-Jews from it.
Israel's
long-term strategy is to ethnically cleanse and deport its non-Jewish
citizens," he says.
Doomsday scenario
Odwan says: "They don't say this now because it is politically incorrect
and the timing is wrong, but at one point in the future, they will tell
the Arabs of Israel 'we are a Jewish state, you are not Jews, therefore
you should leave'."
Odwan believes racist policies are adopted by successive Israeli
governments. "Look at what they are doing to the Palestinians in the
West Bank,
where every act and every move is calculated to benefit Jews and harm
non-Jews."
Sharkansky strongly rejects this "doomsday scenario", arguing that while
there are indeed Jewish racists, the vast bulk of Israelis won't allow
the occurrence of such a thing.
"Listen, we had Meir Kahane (the American rabbi founder of the extremist
Kach group which advocates the collective deportation of Palestinians),
and we outlawed his party. I would say
Israel
deals with its racists much more stringently than the Palestinians deal
with their racists."
* Khalid Amayreh is a journalist based in the occupied
West Bank.
This article was originally published by
aljazeera.net on
June 17, 2005
and reprinted on EI permission. |
