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.
No but preserving people's lives should be an argument to save the two-state solution.
Abunimeh is wrong.
In response to terror and shelling on civilians, some effective method to ensure safety is required.
Solidarity claims that Hamas choose terror on civilians and now lighter terror in the form of shelling civilians, as its means of dissent for Israeli actions in the West Bank.
The ONLY inequality that I regard as of any merit is expedited and supported citizenship for Jews joining their brethren.
Other forms of discrimmination on either racial or class basis should be reformed, but not to distort the reality of Israel as Israel. Its not Palestine.
The same right of return to those that have never even visited is insisted on by Palestinians.
One hopes that Abunimeh realizes that the parallel statement about his solidarity might apply.
He is one person that sounds nice and progressive, but damns the whole prospect of civil democracy by his focus on resistance RATHER than a civil goal.
You gave token relevance to the concept of consent of the governed, which in a single state, is NOT democracy if consent of only a majority governed.
Richard Witty, Palestinians would not be shelling civilians if Israel were not doing far worse on a daily basis.
And in any case, the Israeli government knows exactly the most effective way to stop the shelling, and that is to negotiate and abide by the terms of a ceasefire. It worked very, very well last year despite Israel's refusal to abide by all its obligations, and it continued to work until Israel egregiously violated it by attacking inside Gaza and killing Palestinians.
Israel is the real impediment to peace here. The Palestinians have no peace partner who will deal with them in good faith.
Shirin:
"It worked very, very well last year despite Israel's refusal to abide by all its obligations, and it continued to work until Israel egregiously violated it by attacking inside Gaza and killing Palestinians."
Very well for the Palestinian terrorists. The rockets and mortars never stopped. Did you expect Israel to allow the Palestinians to dig a tunnel into Israel to kill and kidnap Israelis. I realize the idiot Jimmy Carter called it a defensive tunnel, but I can't figure how Hamas digging a tunnel into Israel is defensive.
The so-called kidnapping tunnel was attacked 500 meters inside the Gaza border on November 4. You call that a defensive action? If it was meant to run under the border and was detected by the IDF why wouldn't they have set up an ambush on their side — or bombed it closer to the border? There is no way the story of a "defensive attack" holds up.
Why sit and wait when you can blow up the tunnel? Let Hamas choose the time and place of action, and tie down an ambush indefinitely on the other side? Why does Hamas need tunnels going towards Israel at all, when "defensive" tunnels run parallel to the border, and very much more than 500m further back? To kidnap Israelis, of course.
The fact that people in Gaza argue on blogs is a sign that Israel is much more feckless than any Arab power. Anti-Egyptian, anti-Iranian, and anti-Syrian bloggers find their blogs hacked and blocked and their protests turned to choked sobs in the dungeons of the Mukhabarat.
The concept of a 'Jewish state' is completely incoherent anyway, and purposely so: the contradictions between the reactionary-'religious' and progressive-'secular' definitions are deliberately maintained in every successive government, so as to make these governments mere shams, while the real power remains with the military, which feeds its own keynesian economy and (until now) that of the US.
While searching for something else, I ran across this on the web, news of which I had not heard before:
From ynet, in early November of last year, prior to the scheduled end of the truce, but post the Israeli incursion into Gaza at Al-Bureij.
http://www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-3619916,00.html
This provides another piece in the puzzle explaining the Israeli attack on Gaza in December, which was, as admitted by the IDF, planned months in advance. Gaza was overcoming its dependence on Israeli goods, and the blockade was starting to be ineffective, so Israel had to resort to massive bombing and destruction of Gaza's infrastructure in order to re-gain control.
Israel is currently a country that offers special and exclusive rights to its Jewish citizens based solely on their religion.
That's not really true is it? Can't you be, say, Russian of Jewish ancestry but having never practiced Judaism in any form, and still benefit from Israel's pro-Jewish laws?
David's right, see Rowan's comment above–it's always a shell game and intentionally so–under which shell is the authentic Jew? Answer: At what time?
So its almost two weeks after this conference and still no website where we can read transcripts or reports.They have dont a really poor job on getting this message out.