Earlier today I posted a recap of the One State for Palestine/Israel: A Country for All Its Citizens? conference from Nadia Hijab. She noted how the need to save a Jewish state will not inspire devotion to a two-state solution. In today's International Herald Tribune, Ahmed Tibi, a Palestinian citizen of Israel and member of the Israel Knesset, explains why.
Tibi's op-ed "A Harsh Reality for Palestinians," is written as a warning to the Obama administration about the danger the new Israeli government represents, but it also gives a rare view in the US media of what it means to be a Palestinian citizen of Israel. Responding to Avigdor Lieberman's proposal to force Palestinian citizens of Israel into a Palestinian state, Tibi writes:
We are citizens of the state of Israel and do not want to exchange
our second-class citizenship in our homeland — subject as we are to
numerous laws that discriminate against us — for life in a Palestinian
Bantustan.We take our citizenship seriously and struggle daily to improve our lot and overcome discriminatory laws and practices.
We face discrimination in all fields of life. Arab citizens are 20
percent of the population, but only 6 percent of the employees in the
public sector. Not one Arab employee is working in the central bank of
Israel. Imagine if there was not one African-American citizen employed
in the central bank of the United States.Israel is simultaneously running three systems of government. The first
is full democracy toward its Jewish citizens — ethnocracy. The second
is racial discrimination toward the Palestinian minority — creeping Jim
Crowism. And the third is occupation of the Palestinian territories
with one set of laws for Palestinians and another for Jewish settlers —
apartheid.
In one of my reports from the one state conference in Boston I quote Ali Abunimah as saying, "In 2009, if you support Israel's claim to be a Jewish state, you must
also in practice support its massacres, because those are the price of
maintaining it." It is also true that if you want to maintain a Jewish state under a two-state solution then you are also supporting the kind of basic inequality that Tibi writes about.
Israel is currently a country that offers special and exclusive rights to its Jewish citizens based solely on their religion. This is an anti-democratic system that will only lead to endless conflict. Even proponents of a two-state solution need to understand that Israel cannot maintain this system indefinitely. Whether there are one state or two in historic Palestine, there needs to be equal rights for all.
