An ex-Israeli soldier is seeking to renounce his citizenship and live under the rule of the Palestinian authority.
Andre Pshenichnikov, a 23-year-old Jewish immigrant from Tajikistan, was recently detained by Israeli police for residing illegally in the Deheishe Refugee Camp near Bethlehem. There he told police that he wants to break all ties with Israel, give up his Israeli citizenship and obtain a Palestinian one instead.
Pshenickhnikov’s experiences in the Israel Defense Forces led him to want to disassociate himself from Israeli society.
‘I hate Zionism … I want to be part of the Palestinian resistance,’ Pshenichnikov told The Associated Press. ‘I call for other Israelis who support the existence of a state of Palestine to do the same, to come live in the West Bank or Gaza as Palestinians.’
The Palestinian authorities, however, viewed Pshenickhnikov with suspicion and turned him over to the Israelis who after a brief incarceration have released him on bail. The young would-be resistance member faces charges of living illegally in a Palestinian area.
Pshenickhnikov hopes that he will be able to return to live in the refugee camp, but is philosophical about his chances of fulfilling his desires.
‘I believe everything in this world is possible and even if I’m not able to get citizenship, the process itself is very important,’ says Pshenichnikov. ‘It will show the world that Israel, not the Palestinian Authority, is really in control of the West Bank.’
It’s a beautiful thing this young man wants to do.
And historically, so right – there were jews living in what is now the West Bank and if I understand it correctly Israel forced them all to leave. So as well as the 750k Palestinians that were displaced by the Nakba there was a small number of jews displaced as well.
(Input from someone with historical & even current knowledge on this topic would be much appreciated, I note from the article [my emphasis] “The young would-be resistance member faces charges of living illegally in a Palestinian area“).
It’s a shame the PA turned him back over to the Israelis, the prospect of self-identifying Palestinian jews in the West Bank is heart-warming, but also a little sad: he is effectively a refugee from Israel seeking asylum in Palestine.
I hope others take him up on his call for more of the same, and that someone in the PA has the brains to recognise the significance of it.
yes, Dances With Palestinians. That’s the name of my blog and that may be the key to ending Israeli Apartheid – when more and more Jews will defect from the Jewish Supremacist camp and join Palestinians to abolish Israeli Apartheid since Israeli Apartheid cannot be changed from within as the Zionist left has proven for decades.
http://dancingwithpalestinians.wordpress.com/
Here’s an article in the German “Spiegel” with a photo of him. Cute guy.
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/israelischer-ex-soldat-will-palaestinenser-werden-a-839018.html
More evidence that in the West Bank, at least, support for side by side coexistence is less than hoped for in the one state movement. Palestinians do not want Israeli Jews living in the areas under their control; count me as someone who respects that wish and seeks to get Israel on board as well.
That said, if the Palestinian leadership embraces post-ethnic nationalism, opens up the Palestinian national movement formally to Israeli Jews and seeks ANC style post-ethnic unity – I’d be likely to join, even if some reservations were outstanding.
The point being that ‘joining them’ isn’t really a top priority for most Palestinians. Quite reasonably, they’d prefer a whole lot less of that from Israelis.
[yes yes Uri Davis, Jonathan Pollack, Neta, blah blah blah. Their path is in no way a model or representative of a political path for others to follow, and it hasn’t been embraced by Palestinian institutions.]
Here is the Huffington Post article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/14/andre-pshenichnikov-ex-israeli-soldier-palestinian-citizenship_n_1595937.html
Read the comments. Terrible. An example:
“Yes, live like a Pali. Marry his 15 year old cousin, keep her continually pregnant, and get violent and verbally cruel with her in the evenings. Meanwhile he is with his friends smoking and watching football all day, every day.”
If anyone wrote that about Jews, this person would scream “anti-Semitism”.