The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Isn't About Race
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This occupation, with its attendant injustices, is the core subject of a 280-page report released last week by Amnesty International, “Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime Against Humanity.” In the first decades after 1967, Israel described the situation on the West Bank as an “enlightened occupation.” The instruction of Palestinian farmers in modern farming techniques, the establishment of a handful of universities and the rapid appearance of modern appliances in every Arab home were touted as benefits of this experiment... Instead, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is essentially national, a struggle between two nations over the same tract of land. The Amnesty report obliquely acknowledges this when it “charges” that Israelis define Israel as “the nation-state of the Jews.” Of course, that definition is correct. Fortunately or unfortunately, the world is divided into nation-states—with a few exceptions, including the U.S.—and Israel is the Jews’ nation-state, just as the 22 member states of the Arab League are Arab nation-states. Most of them define themselves that way in their constitutions.
The failure of the charge of apartheid to capture the Israeli reality is especially clear when it comes to the 1.9 million Arabs living within the borders of pre-1967 Israel, who are full citizens. The Amnesty report charges that “while Palestinian citizens of Israel can vote in national elections, in practice their right to political participation is limited,” but this is sheer nonsense. True, during the first 18 years of Israel’s existence, its Arab citizens lived under military government and their freedom of movement and employment was strictly controlled. But since 1966, Israel’s Arabs have enjoyed “equality,” as the country’s Declaration of Independence promised. They have been and are free to express their political views, their freedom of movement is unrestricted, and they vote in national and local elections. They are fully represented in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in both anti-Zionist and Zionist parties. In fact, the Islamist-Arab Ra’am party, the United Arab List, is currently part of the governing coalition headed by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.
Israeli Arab doctors fill Israel’s hospitals, and Arab youngsters fill Israel’s universities, though there are still relatively few Arab professors. For decades, Arabs in small numbers have served in the Israeli military and border police, and the number of such enlistees is steadily growing. It used to be common for Jewish landlords to refuse to rent apartments to Arabs, but in recent years, a small but growing number of Arabs live in Jewish neighborhoods in Tel Aviv, Carmiel, Upper Nazareth and other areas. A handful of Jews live in Arab villages.
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The Amnesty report makes a series of recommendations to improve the lot of Palestine’s Arabs, both in Israel and in the occupied territories. The most far-reaching of these is to allow the mass return of Palestinian refugees—there are now some six million on the U.N. rolls. If implemented, such a return would create instant anarchy and an Arab majority and would result fairly quickly in the dissolution of Israel. The world would then have 23 Arab states and no Jewish state. In its preamble the report states: “We believe that…compassion with [sic] people everywhere can change societies for the better.” Indeed, the report abounds with compassion for Palestine’s Arabs. But no Jewish state? Where is the compassion in that?
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-israeli-palestinian-conflict-isnt-about-race-11644505041 (subscription)
By Benny Morris who is professor emeritus of Middle Eastern Studies at Israel’s Ben Gurion University of the Negev. His books include “1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War” and, most recently, “The Thirty-Year Genocide: Turkey’s Destruction of Its Christian Minorities, 1894-1924.”
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