Yesterday I posted John Mearsheimer's belief that Palestinians outnumber Jews in historical Palestine right now. Well, here is Ali Abunimah's estimate from last year, that Jews are 5.15 million and Palestinians 5 million, and both are under 50 percent of the entire population.
Abunimah says that by 2010, Palestinians will outnumber Israeli Jews. (Though he doesn't take into account Mearsheimer's assertion that "reverse aliyah" has drained the country of hundreds of thousands of Jews already.)
Abunimah serves up the usual repulsive quotes from Israeli officials about the demographic threat. Quick question: Do we talk about a demographic threat in the U.S.? We used to.
And Abraham Lincoln used to use the word "niggers" in speeches, too.
Then there's this:
Ramallah, stated recently, 'If Israel wants to call it Israel from Jordan to the
Mediterranean, I accept it. So we'll be equal to them,' and, forming the
majority population, Palestinians could 'change the name of the Knesset to
Parliament and the name of Israel to Palestine. It's a democracy.'"
Shocking.
Philip,
Shocking that Erekat would actually say these words publicly, or shocking that a one-state solution has become a distinct reality, and Palestinians will argue for it, as is their right living in the only democracy in the Middle East?
Really, what do the Israelis expect after keeping a two-state solution in formaldehyde since Oslo. It's now a bi-national one state or ramp up the apartheid state, not only in the West Bank but all of Israel proper. It's Israel's decision to make.
Looks like it's time to talk about absorbing Gaza and WB into Jordan.
It's either that or a war that makes the recent Gaza sitch look like a slightly unruly soccer game.
Alternatively, the Palestinians could negotiate an end to the belligerent occupation of the West Bank, and a peace settlement. The West Bank does not become Israel after 61 years just because the Palestinians have decided to use it as a tool to destroy Israel, when both Israel (under the "missing sovereign" doctrine) and Palestine have argued for 40-odd years that A)there is no sovereign in the West Bank since '49 and B)according to the Palestinians, Israel is NOT entitled to assert sovereignty NOW. The Palestinians can decide that something is NOT Israel if Israel accepts that, but they cannot decide that something IS Israel if Israel does NOT accept that. Last time I looked, Israeli civil law was in force in Jerusalem and the Latrun Salient, and nowhere else in the West Bank. (Israeli settlers are held under military law when they cross the regime.)
Yea, that's it Suzanne. Let's see the real face of Zionism come out.
You are one disgusting excuse for a human being. War in Gaza? Last time I checked, Palestinians don't have the 4th strongest military in the world/a Navy/an Airforce/the best PR campaign the West has to offer, which means the world/money money money and a bankable tragedy (the Holocaust, as opposed to the Nakba or the many Arab massacres by the Zionist terrorists, in this case DIRECTLY related to the current conflict as opposed – once again – to something that's just supposed to make you feel sorry for a group and give them a free pass).
So, I say bring on the 1 State solution. The Palestinians can deal with ANYTHING. Let the Israeli cowards, from the IDF to the fascist freakshows who watched the destruction in Gaza with glee on their comfortable qassam stricken hilltops, try to wipe the Arabs out.
Zionism was meant to fail.
I don't believe these numbers. The Arab birthrate is dropping precipitously, and although many Israelis are moving abroad, so are Palestinians.
All sides will try to make political hay out of whatever numbers one chooses.
No solution is in sight unless outsiders squeeze both sides until they are singing soprano.
Alternatively, the Palestinians could negotiate an end to the belligerent occupation of the West Bank, and a peace settlement.
Eurosabra–isn't part of the ongoing problem though, lack of economic & political stability?
That's not the sole factor, of course. But it plays a part. That's why the idea of absorption, or confederacy with Jordan is interesting to me.
Actually mass expulsion of Palestinians since '67 has been kind of an Arab thing (Jordan, Lebanon, Kuwait, Iraq). Israel let 250,000 back into the OPT in '67 and outflows since then have been voluntary, with deportations of Hamas men to Lebanon in the 90s a singular failure.
I hope your reporting of Abunimeh's political sentiments and positions are innaccurate.
As stated, they are a prerequisite to very violent war, as others have reported.
The likely result following a war of that scale is further forced dispossession of Palestinians. And then a revised border with Israel still remaining, still strategically dominant.
Its NOT a good strategy from where I sit.
Jordan completely abrogated its claims in 1988. Kind of like how the WB can't be forced into Israel. What could the Palestinians DO to insist that Israel was the sovereign power? Cease co-operating with the PA? The PA is already largely ineffective, except for boutique "sweetheart" operations like development projects. Pay their Israeli phone/gas/electric bills? Settlers do that, and Israel is not sovereign over the settlements. Insist on paying Israeli property taxes? Only Jerusalemites do, and then only to claim city services. Cease traveling on Palestinian passports? Fine, then they can stay at home. You can insist that someone ISN'T sovereign by non-cooperation, as Syrian Golani Druze do by refusing to use Israeli passports and vote in Israeli elections, but you can't as a non-citizen non-national on disputed territory insist that you are a citizen, a national, AND that the occupier is sovereign, when the occupier itself claims belligerent occupation and not sovereignty.
There is a point to the numbers (if stated without the snarkiness). That is that the policy of incremental annexation (if not accompanied by ethnic cleansing, prospectively during a war) will result in a Palestinian majority in an annexed single-state.
The only solutions are a viable two-state solution (implying a healthy and viable good neighbor Palestine) OR a civilist oriented single-state solution.
My criticism of Abunimeh's approach is that it seems to end at the form, rather than proceeding to the substance. He ends at a "single-state", or if you think of votes alone as democracy at a "democratic single-state", but does NOT proceed to a civil humane democratic single-state.
In that goal, the civil humane would be most important characteristic among each community, and NOT which nationality is majority.
His and others similarly could carry water among Israelis, IF he emphasized the acceptance and even appreciation of the other OVER the bare political form.
"Yesterday I posted John Mearsheimer's belief that Palestinians outnumber Jews in historical Palestine"
As the historical Palestinian territory contains the major population centers of Jordan, there is no question that palestinians outnumber Jews in the historic Palestinian region.
" "reverse aliyah" has drained the country of hundreds of thousands of Jews already."
Just goes to show that though individual Jews are often very smart, the Jewish collective is very stupid and ineffective due to its apparent inability to build/maintain an independent and viable Jewish state. Modern Israel is not independent or viable because it is perpetually belligerent and depends on billions per year from the USA and elsewhere just to survive.
Which leads me to ask…are Jews even capable of thriving in their own nation or are they fated to forever live as rootless wanderers in the nations of non-Jews?