More on "the only democracy in the Middle East"

by 'Lenin' for Lenin's Tomb

The news is that Israel has banned Arab parties from standing in the upcoming elections:

Parliament spokesman Giora Pordes said the election committee voted overwhelmingly in favor of the motion, accusing the country's Arab parties of incitement, supporting terrorist groups and refusing to recognize Israel's right to exist.

This can't be a complete surprise since a) there are many Israeli politicians who would like the chance to dispose of the Arab minority permanently, and b) there are always moves to repress Arab political expression during one of Israel's periodic wars against, well, other Arabs. It will be recalled that during the 2006 Lebanon invasion, the Israeli press was filled with stories concerning the unpatriotic attitude of the country's Arab population. Ehud Olmert complained of Israeli Arab parliamentarians were guilty of treason and should be put on trial. Subsequently, some Arab parliamentarians were the subject of investigations by Israeli police, as they were accused of travelling to Lebanon and Syria and providing information to the enemy in September 2006. Reports last year showed a serious rise in racism toward Israeli Arabs, demonstrated in part by killings on the part of the police, the army, and Jewish Israeli civilians. It is increasingly clear that mainstream Israeli politicians do not view Israeli Arabs as proper citizens of the country. Only last December, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni advocated the transfer of Israeli Arabs. Her 'clarification' was interesting. She said:

I am willing to give up a part of the country over which I believe we have rights so that Israel will remain a Jewish and democratic state in which citizens have equal rights, whatever their religion.

How sweet. But even the far right Avigdor Lieberman doesn't talk about violent transfer: he talks precisely about the kinds of 'peaceful' transfer that Livni does. This has always been the way in which the Zionist idea of 'tihur' has been expressed. But what if Israeli Arabs don't want to go anywhere? What if they insist on their rights as citizens in what is supposed to be, but never has been, a democratic state? Moreover, doesn't this illustrate an inherent problem with the two-state position? Allowing Israel to exist in its current form, qua "Jewish state", is a racist proposition. It means that Israel cannot stomach too many Arabs, that Jews and Arabs can't live together.

The current repression isn't only directed against Arabs. As the Israeli philosopher Avi Ophir points out, this war has unleashed a serious crackdown on all internal dissent (his reflections on the nature of the war are also well worth taking time to read). But, seriously, after this disgrace, can anyone be left in doubt that Israel - from its inception to this denouement - is a racist state?

Israel's dead end

(thanks to Mari for this interesting contribution)

Zionist dreams of clearing "Greater Israel" of all Palestinians continue to be played out via insidious and violent means, but they won't be realized, writes Jonathan Cook in Al-Ahram Weekly.

In 1895, Theodor Herzl, Zionism's chief prophet, confided in his diary that he did not favour sharing Palestine with the natives. Better, he wrote, to "try to spirit the penniless [Palestinian] population across the border by denying it any employment in our own country... Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly."

He was proposing a programme of Palestinian emigration enforced through a policy of strict separation between Jewish immigrants and the indigenous population. In simple terms, he hoped that, once Zionist organisations had bought up large areas of Palestine and owned the main sectors of the economy, Palestinians could be made to leave by denying them rights to work the land or labour in the Jewish-run economy. His vision was one of transfer, or ethnic cleansing, through ethnic separation.

Herzl was suggesting that two possible Zionist solutions to the problem of a Palestinian majority living in Palestine -- separation and transfer -- were not necessarily alternatives but rather could be mutually reinforcing. Not only that: he believed, if they were used together, the process of ethnic cleansing could be made to appear voluntary, the choice of the victims. It may be that this was both his most enduring legacy and his major innovation to settler colonialism.

In recent years, with the Palestinian population under Israeli rule about to reach parity with the Jewish population, the threat of a Palestinian majority has loomed large again for the Zionists. Not surprisingly, debates about which of these two Zionist solutions to pursue, separation or transfer, have resurfaced.

Today these solutions are ostensibly promoted by two ideological camps loosely associated with Israel's centre-left (Labour and Kadima) and right (Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu). The modern political arguments between them turn on differing visions of the nature of a Jewish state originally put forward by Labour and Revisionist Zionists.

To make sense of current political debates, and events, taking place inside Israel and in the West Bank and Gaza, let us first examine the history of these two principles in Zionist thinking.

During the early waves of Jewish immigration to Palestine, the dominant Labour Zionist movement and its leader David Ben Gurion advanced policies much in line with Herzl's goal. In particular, they promoted the twin principles of "Redemption of the Land" and "Hebrew Labour", which took as their premise the idea that Jews needed to separate themselves from the native population in working the land and employing only other Jews. By being entirely self- reliant in Palestine, Jews could both "cure" themselves of their tainted Diaspora natures and deprive the Palestinians of the opportunity to subsist in their own homeland.

At the forefront of this drive was the Zionist trade union federation, the Histadrut, which denied membership to Palestinians and, for many years after the establishment of the Jewish state, even to the remnants of the Palestinian population who became Israeli citizens.

But if separation was the official policy of Labour Zionism, behind the scenes Ben Gurion and his officials increasingly appreciated that it would not be enough in itself to achieve their goal of a pure ethnic state. Land sales remained low, at about six per cent of the territory, and the Jewish-owned parts of the economy relied on cheap Palestinian labour.

Instead, the Labour Zionists secretly began working on a programme of ethnic cleansing. After 1937 and Britain's Peel Report proposing partition of Palestine, Ben Gurion was more open about transfer, recognising that a Jewish state would be impossible unless most of the indigenous population was cleared from within its borders.

Israel's new historians have acknowledged Ben Gurion's commitment to transfer. As Benny Morris notes, for example, Ben Gurion "understood that there could be no Jewish state with a large and hostile Arab minority in its midst". The Israeli leadership therefore developed a plan for ethnic cleansing under cover of war, compiling detailed dossiers on the communities that needed to be driven out and then passing on the order, in Plan Dalet, to commanders in the field. During the 1948 war the new state of Israel was emptied of at least 80 per cent of its indigenous population.

In physically expelling the Palestinian population, Ben Gurion responded to the political opportunities of the day and recalibrated the Labour Zionism of Herzl. In particular he achieved the goal of displacement desired by Herzl while also largely persuading the world through a campaign of propaganda that the exodus of the refugees was mostly voluntary. In one of the most enduring Zionist myths, convincingly rebutted by modern historians, we are still told that the refugees left because they were told to do so by the Arab leadership.

The other camp, the Revisionists, had a far more ambivalent attitude to the native Palestinian population. Paradoxically, given their uncompromising claim to a Greater Israel embracing both banks of the Jordan River (thereby including not only Palestine but also the modern state of Jordan), they were more prepared than the Labour Zionists to allow natives to remain where they were.

Vladimir Jabotinsky, the leader of Revisionism, observed in 1938 -- possibly in a rebuff to Ben Gurion's espousal of transfer -- that, "it must be hateful for any Jew to think that the rebirth of a Jewish state should ever be linked with such an odious suggestion as the removal of non-Jewish citizens". The Revisionists, it seems, were resigned to the fact that the enlarged territory they desired would inevitably include a majority of Arabs. They were therefore less concerned with removing the natives than finding a way to make them accept Jewish rule.

In 1923, Jabotinsky formulated his answer, one that implicitly included the notion of separation but not necessarily transfer: an "iron wall" of unremitting force to cow the natives into submission. In his words, the agreement of the Palestinians to their subjugation could be reached only "through the iron wall, that is to say, the establishment in Palestine of a force that will in no way be influenced by Arab pressure".

An enthusiast of British imperial rule, Jabotinsky envisioned the future Jewish state in simple colonial terms, as a European elite ruling over the native population.

Inside Revisionism, however, there was a shift from the idea of separation to transfer that mirrored developments inside Labour Zionism. This change was perhaps more opportunistic than ideological, and was particularly apparent as the Revisionists sensed Ben Gurion's success in forging a Jewish state through transfer.

One of Jabotinsky disciples, Menachem Begin, who would later become a Likud prime minister, was leader in 1948 of the Irgun militia that committed one of the worst atrocities of the war. He led his fighters into the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin where they massacred over 100 inhabitants, including women and children.

Savage enough though these events were, Begin and his followers consciously inflated the death toll to more than 250 through the pages of The New York Times. Their goal was to spread terror among the wider Palestinian population and encourage them to flee. He happily noted later: "Arabs throughout the country, induced to believe wild tales of 'Irgun butchery', were seized with limitless panic and started to flee for their lives. This mass flight soon developed into a maddened, uncontrollable stampede."

Subsequently, other prominent figures on the right openly espoused ethnic cleansing, including the late General Rehavam Zeevi, whose Moledet Party campaigned in elections under the symbol of the Hebrew character "tet", for transfer. His successor, Benny Elon, a settler leader and rabbi, adopted a similar platform: "Only population transfer can bring peace".

The intensity of the separation versus transfer debate subsided after 1948 and the ethnic cleansing campaign that removed most of the native Palestinian population from the Jewish state. The Palestinian minority left behind -- a fifth of the population but a group, it was widely assumed, that would soon be swamped by Jewish immigration -- was seen as an irritation but not yet as a threat. It was placed under a military government for nearly two decades, a system designed to enforce separation between Palestinians and Jews inside Israel. Such separation -- in education, employment and residence -- exists to this day, even if in a less extreme form.

The separation-transfer debate was chiefly revived by Israel's war on the West Bank and Gaza in 1967. With Israel's erasure of the Green Line, and the effective erosion of the distinction between Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories, the problem of a Palestinian majority again loomed large for the Zionists.

Cabinet debates from 1967 show the quandary faced by the government. Almost alone, Moshe Dayan favoured annexation of both the newly captured territories and the Palestinian population there. Others believed that such a move would be seen as transparently colonialist and rapidly degenerate into an apartheid system of Jewish citizens and Palestinian non-citizens. In their minds, Jabotinsky's solution of an iron wall was no longer viable.

But equally, in a more media-saturated era, which at least paid lip-service to human rights, the government could see no way to expel the Palestinian population and annex the land, as Ben Gurion had done earlier. Also possibly, they could see no way of persuading the world that such expulsions should be characterised as voluntary.

Israel therefore declined to move decisively in either direction, neither fully carrying out a transfer programme nor enforcing strict separation. Instead it opted for an apartheid model that accommodated Dayan's suggestion of a "creeping annexation" of the occupied territories that he rightly believed would go largely unnoticed by the West.

The separation embodied in South African apartheid differed from Herzl's notion of separation in one important respect: in apartheid, the "other" population was a necessary, even if much abused, component of the political arrangement. As the exiled Palestinian thinker Azmi Bishara has noted, in South Africa "racial segregation was not absolute. It took place within a framework of political unity. The racist regime saw blacks as part of the system, an ingredient of the whole. The whites created a racist hierarchy within the unity."

In other words, the self-reliance, or unilateralism, implicit in Herzl's concept of separation was ignored for many years of Israel's occupation. The Palestinian labour force was exploited by Israel just as black workers were by South Africa. This view of the Palestinians was formalised in the Oslo Accords, which were predicated on the kind of separation needed to create a captive labour force.

However, Yitzhak Rabin's version of apartheid embodied by the Oslo process, and Binyamin Netanyahu's opposition in upholding Jabotinsky's vision of Greater Israel, both deviated from Herzl's model of transfer through separation. This is largely why both political currents have been subsumed within the recent but more powerful trend towards "unilateral separation".

Not surprisingly, the policy of "unilateral separation" emerged from among the Labour Zionists, advocated primarily by Ehud Barak. However, it was soon adopted by many members of Likud also. Ultimately its success derived from the conversion to its cause of Greater Israel's arch-exponent, Ariel Sharon. He realised the chief manifestations of unilateral separation, the West Bank wall and the Gaza disengagement, as well as breaking up Israel's right wing to create a new consensus party, Kadima.

In the new consensus, the transfer of Palestinians could be achieved through imposed and absolute separation -- just as Herzl had once hoped. After the Gaza disengagement, the next stage was promoted by Sharon's successor, Ehud Olmert. His plan for convergence, limited withdrawals from the West Bank in which most settlers would remain in place, has been dropped, though its infrastructure -- the annexation wall -- continues to be built.

But how will modern Zionists convert unilateral separation into transfer? How will Herzl's original vision of ethnic cleansing enforced through strict ethnic separation be realised in today's world?

The current siege of Gaza offers the template. After disengagement, Israel has been able to cut off at will Gazans' access to aid, food, fuel and humanitarian services. Normality has been further eroded by sonic booms, random Israeli air attacks, and repeated small-scale invasions that have inflicted a large toll of casualties, particularly among civilians.

Gaza's imprisonment has stopped being a metaphor and become a daily reality. In fact, Gaza's condition is far worse than imprisonment: prisoners, even of war, expect to have their humanity respected and to be properly sheltered, cared for, fed and clothed. Gazans can no longer rely on these staples of life.

The ultimate goal of this extreme form of separation is patently clear: transfer. By depriving Palestinians of the basic conditions of a normal life, it is assumed that they will eventually choose to leave in what can once again be sold to the world as a voluntary exodus. And if Palestinians choose to abandon their homeland, then in Zionist thinking they have forfeited their right to it -- just as earlier generations of Zionists believed the Palestinian refugees had done by supposedly fleeing during the 1948 and 1967 wars.

Is this process of transfer inevitable? I think not. The success of a modern policy of "transfer through separation" faces severe limitations.

First, it depends on continuing US global hegemony and blind support for Israel. Such support is likely to be undermined by current American misadventures in the Middle East, and a gradual shift in the balance of power to China, Russia and India.

Second, it requires a Zionist worldview that departs starkly not only from international law but also from the values upheld by most societies and ideologies. The nature of Zionist ambitions is likely to be ever harder to conceal, as is evident from the tide of opinion polls showing that Western publics, if not their governments, believe Israel to be one of the biggest threats to world peace.

And third, it assumes that the Palestinians will remain passive during their slow eradication. The historical evidence most certainly shows that they will not.

Jonathan Cook is a journalist based in Nazareth. His latest book is Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East . The above text is taken from a talk delivered at the Conference for the Right of Return and the Secular Democratic State, held in Haifa 21 June.

Saker interview with the Palestinian Pundit

It is a great honour and long awaited pleasure for me to interview a real expert on Palestine and the rest of the Middle-East: Tony, the author of what is definitely one of the best Palestinian blogs - Palestinian Pundit, a "must visit daily" for anybody interested in the Palestinian drama.

I have been reading Tony's posts for quite a while already (many thanks to datta for drawing my attention to it) and I had planned to interview Tony for several months already, but the situation in Palestine took such a turn for the worse that neither Tony nor I had any time left to work on an interview. Things have not improved, Palestinians are still being murdered on a daily basis by the Israeli occupation forces, and since things are only likely to get worse, I have decided not to wait any further and ask Tony for his insight about the current situation and its likely development.

I am deeply grateful to Tony for taking the time to answer my questions. I know that he is immensely busy in his professional life and that, on top of that, he still manages to be a (quasi) full time "blogging machine" (as datta once put it to me) on his 'free' time.

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Tony, please introduce yourself to our readers and tell us under what circumstances you decided to start a blog which became one of the most informative and interesting blogs among all the Palestinian blogs. For the sake of full disclosure, how would you define your political sympathies in the Palestinian context.

I am a Palestinian who was born in Jaffa Palestine in 1945; the family was expelled from there in 1948 when Israel was established and about 800,000 Palestinians became refugees. Grew up as a refugee in Gaza; went to college in Cairo, Egypt; came to California to do graduate work in 1967 (right after the so-called 6-day war), and stayed here since.

I have been, like many Palestinians, an outspoken defendant of Palestinian rights and I do what I can to expose Israeli crimes against the Palestinians and the US full complicity in these crimes.

Actually, I did not set up the blog. I used to frequently visit the blog of professor As’ad Abu Khalil (Angry Arab) and make various comments. I guess I was outspoken enough and made enough noise that one of the regular visitors, who happened to be Jewish but a supporter of the Palestinians, told me to start a blog. I told her that I was not interested and I had no time! She, on her own, set up the blog, and chose the name. In the beginning she used to contribute to the blog but she opted out later on. The blog was started in July 2006.

My political sympathies in the Palestinian context are secular, nationalist, pan-Arab and leftist. I am not opposed to nationalist, progressive anti-imperialist Islamic forces as long as they concentrate on fighting occupation and defend their own people from foreign intervention and domination.

Could you please outline your view of the situation in Palestine and, in particular, the situation in the West Bank about which so little is written. How strong and stable do you believe the power of Fatah to be there? Do you see a replacement of Abbas by either one of the Barghoutis (Mohammad or Marwan) something which could salvage Fatah's power in the West Bank? Does Hamas still operate as an organization in the West Bank or is it totally underground?

The situation in the West Bank is that of tightly controlled occupation with rapidly expanding colonization. The goal is to imprison the remaining Palestinians (after squeezing out as many as possible, through very repressive policies of arrests, confiscation, home demolitions, control of movement, outright terror by Zionist colonizers, etc) in a few cantons or reservations if you will.

The so-called Palestinian Authority (PA) has been fully inducted as a collaborating quisling entity which fully coordinates with the Israeli occupiers the hunting down, arrests, disarming and killing of Palestinian resistance elements. Through the so-called Oslo-process, ensuring the security of Israel is considered the key role of the PA. For that purpose the US, through its designated coordinator of security General Keith Dayton, arms, finances and trains puppet PA forces to assist the Israeli occupation. The policies of the PA in the W.B. have been very repressive, where journalists have been arrested, demonstrations and public opposition banned by lethal force, and key figures of the opposition arrested and tortured, some to death. Corruption is rampant in order to buy the loyalties of the few. The PA in the W.B. has best been described as a police state without a state.

Fatah is very fragmented and weak and many observers doubt if it will survive. The collaboration of its leadership with the occupation and their participation in the siege and starvation of fellow Palestinians in Gaza have totally discredited Fatah in the eyes of most Palestinians.

Since the Oslo ”process” and its Annapolis sequel have accomplished absolutely nothing, Abbas, the PA and Fatah who placed all their bets on negotiations only, are living their worst nightmares. Many observers believe that the PA is on the verge of collapse. Israel and the US might decide to keep some rump quisling entity as a replacement, but who knows. If the PA faces collapse, USrael will seek to find some younger “leader” who could be sold to the Palestinians as their new “leader.” I believe that Marwan Barghouti, who is in Israeli jail serving more than one life sentence will be that figure. Some Israeli leaders have been calling for his release; why now?

Hamas is openly fought in the W.B. by the PA, and even charities and orphanages have been closed down and their assets confiscated. There is still a lot of support for Hamas in the W.B. but the armed elements remaining had to go underground to survive.

The Hamas operation of bringing down the Wall was nothing short of brilliant and, for a while, it looked that it would be impossible to bring it back up and that Mubarak would risk his own political future if he tried to do this. Alas, he did bring it right back with and without any visible Hamas response. Why is this? Why did Hamas not fight as hard as can be to keep the Wall down? Has the Hamas leadership been corrupted/coopted by the Empire?

As you said toppling the wall with Egypt was brilliant and the jail break was breathtaking and unprecedented. Why was the momentum not maintained? One can speculate:

1. Egypt made some promises to buy time and I think that some within Hamas were a bit naive and bought those promises. After gaining the needed time to re-close the border, Egypt reneged on the promises.
2. The people in Gaza, Hamas included, are exhausted not just by the siege but by the relentless Israeli attacks which lately killed over 130 Palestinians in less than a week. So, Hamas needed a respite.
3. The US has asked Egypt to play a role in order to calm the situation between Hamas and Israel a bit. There was a concern that with the images of slaughtered Palestinians being shown day after day by Al-Jazeera, among others, that there was some risk of boiling over in the Arab street. The US wants to line up the Arab street behind its plans to attack Iran. So, Hamas was playing the game through Egypt of trying to arrange a calming down with Israel. Therefore, Hamas could not confront Egypt at the same time that Egypt was “mediating.”
4. Part of the agreement involved in a possible ceasefire with Israel is the re-opening of the Rafah crossing. This has been a Hamas demand. There has been talk of a trial opening soon with the crossing operating 3 days a week. It remains to be seen, if it is another empty promise.
5. Hamas can mobilize the people and storm the new barrier again, if all of these maneuvers lead to nothing. I don’t believe that Hamas has been corrupted or coopted. One of Hamas’ strengths is its collective leadership and decision making.

What is Hamas' game plan? What does Hamas hope to achieve with the continuing Qassam attacks on Sderot? Why is Hamas willing to risk an Israeli invasion of Gaza (and the inevitable arrest, torture and mass-murder of Hamas officials by Fatah thugs) for the sake of rocketing Sderot, but is not willing to openly engage Mubarak's forces to keep the Wall down?

There is a big difference between Hamas shelling Israeli targets and Hamas fighting the Egyptian forces. The first has contributed to the support that Hamas is receiving as the main party leading the fight against the occupation. The second would do just the opposite: it would discredit Hamas in the Arab street and be a gift to those who want to portray Hamas as agent of Iran and who is fighting fellow Arabs rather than Israel; Hamas would never do that.

Hamas, on a smaller scale is trying to copy Hizbullah through the use of simple rockets. In time, the hope is that these would become more effective. Hamas is not using the rockets without a plan. When Israel scales down its attacks, so does Hamas. Hamas is trying, by using the rockets, to deter Israel to the extent possible.

Whether Israel fully invades Gaza is a decision independent of the issue of Qassams. The Qassams are just an excuse. The problem of invading Gaza is what to do next? Israel occupied Gaza before and it could not control the situation. Now it will be much harder. Also, Israel does not want to be responsible for feeding 1.5 million Palestinians, and wants to maintain the illusion that the occupation has ended.

Do you think the Israelis will invade Gaza and what do you predict will be the consequences of such an invasion?

I think that a full scale invasion and occupation of Gaza is directly linked to a bigger question: that of the US and Israeli plans towards Iran, Syria and Hizbullah. If and when a decision is made to attack Iran, which has to be preceded by an attempt to eliminate Hizbullah in Lebanon, then it would be the time to fully invade Gaza. Until that time, the American plan is to keep the Arab street focused on Iran and not on Israeli slaughtering of Palestinians. But after the attack on Iran/Hizbullah/Syria is underway, then a full invasion of Gaza is quite likely.

After such invasion and occupation of Gaza, USrael is likely to set up some NATO/UN force in Gaza so that Israeli forces would withdraw. Similar to what happened in south Lebanon. In such an invasion, total elimination of Hamas and its leadership would likely to be a key objective. For Hamas to survive, and it will, it will go underground. By doing so, Hamas could actually become more effective.

What do you know about the situation among half a million plus Palestinians with Israeli citizenship living inside Israel proper? Are they sympathies with Fatah or Hamas? Why is there no visible resistance or show of solidarity on their part with their fellow-Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank? Do you believe that Hamas can establish itself among these Israeli Palestinians as an organization capable of organizing any type of resistance?

The situation of the Palestinians within Israel itself (so-called Israeli Arabs), who actually number about a million (20%), is quite complicated. It is not the arena for either Hamas or Fatah to operate in, for obvious reasons. There is an independent and separate Islamic organization that seeks to speak for those Palestinians and to defend their rights. They have to walk a very narrow path lest the Israeli government accuse them of treason and to try them or expel them, as happened with Knesset member Azmi Bishara.

The best contribution of these Palestinians is to struggle for their own rights as equal citizens in a secular, democratic state for all of its citizens. Ultimately, the Palestinians in the occupied areas will find themselves in the same boat, with the demise of the two-state solution, as the Palestinian citizens of Israel. Then the struggle becomes one for both groups which is the struggle for one secular, democratic state for all of its citizens, Jewish and Arab.

The Palestinians in Israel do what they can to help the Palestinians in the occupied areas. They demonstrate in solidarity and speak out. They have organized some medical and other relief for Gaza recently as well as for the W.B. before. They challenge Israel’s courts and defend Palestinians in the occupied territories. However, within the racist state of Israel there is a limit of what they can do.

It is out of the question for Israel to allow Hamas to organize and operate among the Palestinian citizens of Israel.

How do you assess the current prospects for war in the rest of the Middle-East? The Israelis have openly bombed Syria, they have murdered Mughniyeh (whether with or without Syrian help), Lebanon is at the edge of another civil war, the USA is arming the Sunnis in Iraq and Admiral Fallon has been retired due to his opposition to an attack on Iran. What does all this mean for the Palestinian people? Do they see risks or opportunities here? What do you expect Hamas to do, if anything, in case of a war involving Israel?

I personally believe that Israel wants to attack Iran and to eliminate Hizbullah and Hamas as viable organizations. Within the US there are those who share this goal and a few (like Fallon) who do not. Israel will likely get its way and drag the US into such an attack. Hizbullah will be attacked first because it represents a first strike capability for Iran. There is a question mark about Syria. So far, Syria has avoided engaging the Israelis militarily; even when a Syrian site was bombed recently. That was humiliating for Syria. A similar thing happened in the summer of 2006 when scores of Syrian workers were killed by Israeli aircraft bombing Lebanon, very close to the Syrian border. Again, Syria did nothing. So there is a question of whether Syria would again stay out if a bigger attack on Hizbullah is attempted this time.

Hizbullah will retaliate for Mughniyeh, for sure. Whether this will trigger the USraeli attack on Hizbullah is a good question. Some believe that the assassination itself was a provocation to trigger such a war.

Iran would not be involved directly if the attack focuses on Hizbullah alone. However, an incident will be created to implicate Iran and trigger a US attack on Iran. I am convinced that Israeli leaders do not want to see Iran as a competing regional power.

How does Hamas fare in all of this? As I said earlier, the USraeli objective is to eliminate any resistance and to kill the very idea of resistance. Besides the Iraqi resistance, Hizbullah and Hamas represent the only other resistance. To finalize the total dispossession of the Palestinians an attempt to eliminate Hamas will have to be made.

Hamas and the Palestinians see the solution for the Palestinians dependent on the larger Arab context. In other words the Palestinian struggle combines with the resistance in Lebanon and in Iraq, because the enemy is the same. Hamas resists but also is buying time; it is not suicidal. The dynamics in the area will bring changes we can’t clearly see now. For example the situation in Egypt is precarious, with bread riots breaking out and a lot of discontent with the regime’s oppression of its opponents, especially the Muslim Brothers. The situation in Jordan is not much better with rampant inflation, high unemployment and open collaboration by the puppet king. Opposition forces (again mostly Muslim Brothers) have been demanding the closure of the Israeli embassy and abrogation of the treaty with Israel. So, a new large scale war involving Iran/Syria/Hizbullah/Hamas has many possible repercussions.

Why does Hamas persist in holding Gilad Shalit? What can be gained by a detention which is clearly illegal whether under the terms of the law of war (which apply during an international conflict) or human rights law (which apply during an internal conflict). Would a release of Gilat Shalit not serve to give Hamas the moral high ground? Is such a detention legal under Islamic law?

Shalit was a captured Israeli soldier. His unit was involved in shelling Gaza at that time. So, he is a clear prisoner of war. In contrast, Israel holds about 11,000 Palestinians, most of them are civilians kidnapped in the middle of the night. That includes 46 Palestinian MPs!

How can you say that holding Shalit is illegal, or un-Islamic? This is not true at all. As I said he is a prisoner of war, to be exchanged for Palestinian prisoners if and when Israel agrees to negotiate terms. Releasing him without release of at least some Palestinian prisoners would amount to treason on the part of Hamas, in my opinion, not taking the high moral ground, as you put it.

Hamas is a majority Sunni organization. Have the ideas of the Muslim Brotherhood or Saudi Salafism penetrated into the Hamas worldview and policies? What is Hamas' position concerning Shia Muslims or, probably more relevant in the Palestinian context, Arab Christians? Does Hamas share the strong hostility towards the Shia and the Christians which is so obvious among the followers of Sayyid Qutb or Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab at-Tamimi ? Are there Christians inside Hamas and, if yes, what is their status?

Hamas’ roots and connections are to the Muslim Brotherhood and not Saudi Salafis. Hamas has a view that all Palestinians are in this together, including Christians. Hamas has gone out of its way to protect Christians and their churches and properties in Gaza. I do believe that Hamas’s leadership is enlightened and inclusive. I don’t think that there are Christians in Hamas, but in the last PLC elections, Hamas supported at least one independent, Christian candidate.

Hamas does not play on the Sunni-Shia divide; to the contrary it believes that all Arabs and Muslims should pool their resources and efforts to fight the common enemy and not each other. Hamas has excellent relations with the Shiite Hizbullah and has received at least some support from Iran. Hamas welcomes support from all those willing to help.

The debate on the "One State" versus "Two State" solution has recently heated up with Micheal Neumann, Jonathan Cook and others weighing in. Has Hamas taken a clear stand on this issue and, if yes, what is it? What about yourself, which side of this debate do you support?

Without using labels, I interpret Hamas’ position as supporting both solutions. While that sounds contradictory, it is not. What Hamas is saying is that it would accept a long term Hudna (truce) during which time a two-state solution, with a real independent Palestinian state, would be acceptable. After that, Hamas is calling for ultimately dismantling the racist, Zionist state, paving the way for one democratic state for all, including Palestinian Jews willing to live as equal in one Palestine.

While a one state solution is being advocated more and more, it is meaningless without dismantling Zionism. That dismantling is going to take time, and it would be unreasonable to expect the Palestinians to endure under the present horrible conditions. So, if a two-state solution can emerge in the interim, then that would be more just and humane for the Palestinians, but not as a permanent and just solution. That would not solve the problems of the refugees and their right of return nor would it address the status of Palestinians within Israel. Those issues can only be resolved within a one-state solution that would evolve after dismantling Zionism. This is my view.

Let's re-write a Ha'aretz article!

Today, I though that it would be fun to re-write an article published by the "liberal" Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz. Here is the original (excerpt):


Yesha rabbinical council chief: Don't rent houses to Arabs
By Nadav Shragai, Haaretz Correspondent

The chairman of the Yesha rabbinical council and chief rabbi of Kiryat Arba, Rabbi Dov Lior, on Wednesday issued a halakhic ruling stating that it is forbidden by Jewish law to employ Arabs or rent homes to them.

In an interview published by "Eretz Israel Shelanu" (Our Land of Israel), to be distributed this Saturday in various synagogues, Lior said that "since this is a matter of endangering souls, it is clear that it is completely forbidden to employ them and rent houses to them in Israel. Their employment is forbidden not only at yeshivas, but at factories, hotels and everywhere."
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Ok. Now keep in mind that about 20%+ of the population of Israel is composed of Arabs, including Christians and Druze. With that in mind we can now rewrite the article and transpose it to some other places:

Iran:

The chairman of the Conference of Islamic Scholars of the city of Qom, Hojatoleslam Sayyed Ali Ansari, on Wednesday issued a fatwa stating that it is forbidden by sharia law to employ Jews or rent homes to them.

In an interview published by "Our Land of Persia", to be distributed this Saturday in various mosques, Ansari said that "since this is a matter of endangering souls, it is clear that it is completely forbidden to employ them and rent houses to them in Iran. Their employment is forbidden not only at seminaries, but at factories, hotels and everywhere."

Russia:

The chairman of the Conference of Orthodox Bishops of the Russian Federation, Metropolitan Vladimir, on Wednesday issued a statement stating that it is forbidden by Orthodox canon law to employ Jews or rent homes to them.

In an interview published by "Our Land of Russia", to be distributed this Saturday in various churches, Metropolitan Vladimir said that "since this is a matter of endangering souls, it is clear that it is completely forbidden to employ them and rent houses to them in Russia. Their employment is forbidden not only at seminaries, but at factories, hotels and everywhere."

You get the idea: this great little article lends itself to any number of funny variations involving not only Jews, but any other ethnic group, each time with the same outrageously racist result. Let's try one more, just for fun, this time in the USA:

The chairman of the Conference of Baptist Ministers of the Southern United States, Pastor Joe Sixpack, on Wednesday issued a statement stating that it is forbidden by the Bible to employ Blacks or rent homes to them.

In an interview published by "Our Land of America", to be distributed this Saturday in various churches, Pastor Joe said that "since this is a matter of endangering souls, it is clear that it is completely forbidden to employ them and rent houses to them in America. Their employment is forbidden not only at seminaries, but at factories, hotels and everywhere."

Again, an absolutely outrageous statement, is it not?

I can just imagine how a endless stream of outraged protests would result from any of the statements above, how they would make front page news, how international human rights would express their idignation and outrage at such truly medieval racism, how the governments of the countries were such racists remarks would be made would immediately condemn the people reponsible and how they would strongly denounce any such expressions of crass bigotry.

In any country, except for Israel of course. Makes you wonder why, does it not?

Two-state Dreamers: If one state is impossible, why is Olmert so afraid of it?

By Jonathan Cook in Nazareth (from Informationclearinghouse)

If the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the world’s most intractable, much the same can be said of the parallel debate about whether its resolution can best be achieved by a single state embracing the two peoples living there or by a division of the land into two separate states, one for Jews and the other for Palestinans.

The central argument of the two-staters is that the one-state idea is impractical and therefore worthless of consideration. Their rallying cry is that it is at least possible to imagine a consensus emerging behind two states, whereas Israelis will never accept a single state. The one-state crowd are painted as inveterate dreamers and time-wasters.

That is the argument advanced by Israel’s only serious peace group, Gush Shalom. Here is the view of the group‘s indefatiguable leader, Uri Avnery: “After 120 years of conflict, after a fifth generation was born into this conflict on both sides, to move from total war to total peace in a Single Joint State, with a total renunciation of national independence? This is total illusion.”

Given Avnery’s high-profile opposition to a single state, many in the international solidarity groups adopt the same position. They have been joined by an influential American intellectual, the philosopher Michael Neumann, who wrote the no-holds-barred book The Case against Israel. He appears to be waging a campaign to discredit the one-state idea too.

Recently in defence of two states, he wrote: “That Israel would concede a single state is laughable. … There is no chance at all [Israelis] will accept a single state that gives the Palestinians anything remotely like their rights.”

Unlike the one-state solution, according to Neumann and Avnery, the means to realising two states are within our grasp: the removal of the half a million Jewish settlers living in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Both believe that, were Israel to withdraw to the pre-1967 borders, it would be possible to create two real states. “A two-state solution will, indeed, leave Palestinians with a sovereign state, because that’s what a two-state solution means,” argues Neumann. “It doesn’t mean one state and another non-state, and no Palestinian proponent of a two-state solution will settle for less than sovereignty.”

There is something surprisingly naive about arguing that, just because something is called a two-state solution, it will necessarily result in two sovereign states. What are the mimimum requirements for a state to qualify as sovereign, and who decides?

True, the various two-state solutions proposed by Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert and George Bush, and supported by most of the international community, would fail according to the two-staters’ chief criterion: these divisions are not premised on the removal of all the settlers.

But an alternative two-state solution requiring Israel’s withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders might still not concede, for example, a Palestinian army – equipped and trained by Iran? – to guard the borders of the West Bank and Gaza. Would that count? And how likely do the campaigners for two real states think it that Israel and the US would grant that kind of sovereignty to a Palestine state?

Importantly, Neumann and Avnery remind us that those with power are the ones who dictate solutions. In which case we can be sure that, when the time is right, Israel and its sponsor, the United States, will impose their own version of the two-state solution and that it will be far from the genuine article advocated by the two-state camp.

But let us return to the main argument: that the creation of two states is inherently more achievable and practical than the establishment of a single state. Strangely, however, from all the available evidence, this is not how it looks to Israel’s current leaders.

Prime minister Ehud Olmert, for example, has expressed in several speeches the fear that, should the Palestinian population under Israeli rule -- both in the occupied territories and inside Israel proper -- reach the point where it outnumbers the Jewish population, as demographers expect in the next few years, Israel will be compared to apartheid South Africa. In his words, Israel is facing an imminent and powerful “struggle for one-man-one-vote” along the lines of the anti-apartheid movement.

According to Olmert, without evasive action, political logic is drifting inexorably towards the creation of one state in Israel and Palestine. This was his sentiment as he addressed delegates to the recent Herzliya conference:

“Once we were afraid of the possibility that the reality in Israel would force a bi-national state on us. In 1948, the obstinate policy of all the Arabs, the anti-Israel fanaticism and our strength and the leadership of David Ben-Gurion saved us from such a state. For 60 years, we fought with unparalleled courage in order to avoid living in a reality of bi-nationalism, and in order to ensure that Israel exists as a Jewish and democratic state with a solid Jewish majority. We must act to this end and understand that such a [bi-national] reality is being created, and in a very short while it will be beyond our control.”

Olmert’s energies are therefore consumed with finding an alternative political programme that can be sold to the rest of the world. That is the reason he, and Sharon before him, began talking about a Palestinian state. Strangely, however, neither took up the offer of the ideal two-state solution -- the kind Avnery and Neumann want -- made in 2002. Then Saudi Arabia and the rest Arab world promised Israel peace in return for its withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders. They repeated their offer last year. Israel has steadfastly ignored them.

Instead an alternative version of two states -- the bogus two-state solution -- has become the default position of Israeli politics. It requires only that Israel and the Palestinians appear to divide the land, while in truth the occupation continues and Jewish sovereignty over all of historic Palestine is not only maintained but rubber-stamped by the international community. In other words, the Gazafication of the West Bank.

When Olmert warns that without two states “Israel is finished”, he is thinking primarily about how to stop the emergence of a single state. So, if the real two-state camp is to be believed, Olmert is a dreamer too, because he fears that a one-state solution is not only achievable but dangerously close at hand. Sharon, it seems, suffered from the same delusion, given that demography was the main impulse for his disengaging from Gaza.

Or maybe both of them understood rather better than Neumann and Avnery what is meant by a Jewish state, and what political conditions are incompatible with it.

In fact, the division of the land demanded by the real two-staters, however equitable, would be the very moment when the struggle for Israel to remain a Jewish state would enter its most critical and difficult phase. Which is precisely why Israel has blocked any meaningful division of the land so far and will continue to do so.

In the unimaginable event that the Israel were to divide the land, a Jewish state would not be able to live with the consequences of such a division for long. Eventually, the maintenance of an ethnic Israeli state would (and will) prove unsustainable: environmentally, demographically and ultimately physically. Division of the land simply “fast-forwards” the self-destructiveness inherent in a Jewish state.

Let us examine just a few of the consequences for the Jewish state of a genuine two-state solution.

First, Israel inside its recognised, shrunken borders would face an immediate and very serious water shortage. That is because, in returning the West Bank to the Palestinians, Israel would lose control of the large mountain acquifers that currently supply most of its water, not only to Israel proper but also to the Jewish settlers living illegally in the occupied territories. Israel would no longer be able to steal the water, but would be expected to negotiate for it on the open market.

Given the politics of water in the Middle East that would be no simple matter. However impoverished the new sovereign Palestinian state was, it would lose all legitimacy in the eyes of its own population were it to sell more than a trickle of water to the Israelis.

We can understand why by examining the current water situation. At the moment Israel drains off almost all of the water provided by the rivers and acquifers inside Israel and in the occupied territories for use by its own population, allowing each Palestinian far less than the minimum amount he or she requires each day, according to the World Health Organisation.

In a stark warning last month, Israel’s Water Authority reported that overdrilling has polluted with sea water most of the supply from the coastal acquifer -- that is the main fresh water source inside Israel’s recognised borders.

Were Palestinians to be allowed a proper water ration from their own mountain acquifer, as well as to build a modern economy, there would not be enough left over to satisfy Israel’s first-world thirst. And that is before we consider the extra demand on water resources from all those Palestinians who choose to realise their right to return, not to their homes in Israel, but to the new sovereign Palestinian state.

In addition, for reasons that we will come to, the sovereign Jewish state would have every reason to continue its Judaisation policies, trying to attact as many Jews from the rest of the world as possible, thereby further straining the region’s water resources.

The environmental unsustainability of both states seeking to absorb large populations would inevitably result in a regional water crisis. In addition, should Israeli Jews, sensing water shortages, start to leave in significant numbers, Israel would have an even more pressing reason to locate water, by fair means or foul.

It can be expected that in a short time Israel, with the fourth most powerful army in the world, would seek to manufacture reasons for war against its weaker neighbours, particularly the Palestinians but possibly also Lebanon, in a bid to steal their water.

Water shortages would, of course, be a problem facing a single state too. But, at least in one state there would be mechanisms in place to reduce such tensions, to manage population growth and economic development, and to divide water resources equitably.

Second, with the labour-intensive occupation at an end, much of the Jewish state’s huge citizen army would become surplus to defence requirements. In addition to the massive social and economic disruptions, the dismantling of the country’s military complex would fundamentally change Israel’s role in the region, damage its relationship with the only global superpower and sever its financial ties to Diaspora Jews.

Israel would no longer have the laboratories of the occupied territories for testing its military hardware, its battlefield strategies and its booming surveillance and crowd control industries. If Israel chose to fight the Palestinians, it would have to do so in a proper war, even if one between very unequal sides. Doutbless the Palestinians, like Hizbullah, would quickly find regional sponsors to arm and train their army or militias.

The experience and reputation Israel has acquired -- at least among the US military -- in running an occupation and devising new and supposedly sophisticated ways to control the “Arab mind” would rapidly be lost, and with it Israel’s usefulness to the US in managing its own long-term occupation of Iraq.

Also, Israel’s vital strategic alliance with the US in dividing the Arab world, over the issue of the occupation and by signing peace treaties with some states and living in a state of permanent war with others, would start to unravel.

With the waning of Israel’s special relationship with Washington and the influence of its lobby groups, as well as the loss of billions of dollars in annual subsidies, the Jewish Diaspora would begin to lose interest in Israel. Its money and power ebbing away, Israel might eventually slip into Middle Eastern anonymity, another Jordan. In such circumstances it would rapidly see a large exodus of privileged Ashkenazi Jews, many of whom hold second passports.

Third, the Jewish state would not be as Jewish as some might think: currently one in five Israelis is not Jewish but Palestinian. Although in order to realise a real two-state vision all the Jewish settlers would probably need to leave the occupied territories and return to Israel, what would be done with the Palestinians with Israeli citizenship?

These Palestinians have been citizens for six decades and live legally on land that has belonged to their families for many generations. They are also growing in number at a rate faster than the Jewish population, the reason they are popularly referred to in Israel as a “demographic timebomb”.

Were these 1.3 million citizens to be removed from Israel by force under a two-state arrangement, it would be a violation of international law by a democratic state on a scale unprecedented in the modern era, and an act of ethnic cleansing even larger than the 1948 war that established Israel. The question would be: why even bother advocating two states if it has to be achieved on such appalling terms?

Assuming instead that the new Jewish state is supposed to maintain, as Israel currently does, the pretence of being democratic, these citizens would be entitled to continue living on their land and exercising their rights. Inside a Jewish state that had offically ended its conflict with the Palestinians, demands would grow from Palestinian citizens for equal rights and an end to their second-class status.

Most importantly, they would insist on two rights that challenge the very basis of a Jewish state. They would expect the right, backed by international law, to be able to marry Palestinians from outside Israel and bring them to live with them. And they would want a Right of Return for their exiled relatives on a similar basis to the Law of Return for Jews.

Israel’s Jewishness would be at stake, even more so than it is today from its Palestinian minority. It can be assumed that Israel’s leaders would react with great ferocity to protect the state’s Jewishness. Eventually Israel’s democratic pretensions would have to be jettisoned and the full-scale ethnic cleansing of Palestinian citizens implemented.

Still, do these arguments against the genuine two-state arrangement win the day for the one-state solution? Would Israel’s leaders not put up an equally vicious fight to protect their ethnic privileges by preventing, as they are doing now, the emergence of a single state?

Yes, they would and they will. But that misses my point. As long as Israel is an ethnic state, it will be forced to deepen the occupation and intensify its ethnic cleansing policies to prevent the emergence of genuine Palestinian political influence -- for the reasons I cite above and for many others I don’t. In truth, both a one-state and a genuine two-state arrangement are impossible given Israel’s determination to remain a Jewish state.

The obstacle to a solution, then, is not about dividing the land but about Zionism itself, the ideology of ethnic supremacism that is the current orthodoxy in Israel. As long as Israel is a Zionist state, its leaders will allow neither one state nor two real states.

The solution, therefore, reduces to the question of how to defeat Zionism. It just so happens that the best way this can be achieved is by confronting the illusions of the two-state dreamers and explaining why Israel is in permanent bad faith about seeking peace.

In other words, if we stopped distracting ourselves with the Holy Grail of the two-state solution, we might channel our energies into something more useful: discrediting Israel as a Jewish state, and the ideology of Zionism that upholds it. Eventually the respectable façade of Zionism might crumble.

Without Zionism, the obstacle to creating either one or two states will finally be removed. And if that is the case, then why not also campaign for the solution that will best bring justice to both Israelis and Palestinians?

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His new book, “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” is published by Pluto Press. His website is www.jkcook.net

What is a Jewish state? (updated)

By Khalid Amayreh in Occupied West Jerusalem for the Palestinian Information Center

Seeking to perpetuate institutionalized racism and systematic discrimination against its non-Jewish citizens, the apartheid Israeli state has been incessantly trying to blackmail the weak and vulnerable Palestinian Authority (PA) into recognizing the Zionist state as “an exclusively Jewish state.”

Some Israeli officials have used terms such as “a state of the Jews, for the Jews, and by the Jews.” Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has been quoted as saying that Israel wouldn’t recognize a prospective Palestinian state on the West Bank unless the PA recognized Israel as “a state of the Jews.”

Israeli leaders are reluctant to tell the world what they exactly mean by “a state of the Jews,” ostensibly to save themselves the embarrassment of the implied racism inherent in the concept.

However, the implications in such a recognition are abundantly clear for those who have even rudimentary knowledge of the Israeli mentality.

To make a long story short, “Jewish state” means that Israel has an inherent right to discriminate against its non-Jewish citizens, especially the sizeable Palestinian minority, and, if need be, expel them from the country in order to preserve the “Jewishness” of Israel.

In other words, Israel simply wants to obtain from the Palestinian leadership a recognition that it has a legal and moral right to carry out ethnic cleansing of its Christian and Muslim citizens on the ground that Israel is and must always remain a Jewish state.

Of course, Israel is deliberately evasive and vague about its manifestly fascistic designs regarding its non-Jewish citizens. Israeli leaders and apologists claim ad nauseam that Israel is a Jewish and democratic state. But this is a defensive reflex at best and is as mendacious as claiming that apartheid is compatible with democracy.

The truth, however, is that Israel can’t be Talmudic and democratic at the same time. Hence “Jewish” and “democratic” are an eternal oxymoron that should never be used in the presence of an honest audience.

The reason for that is amply clear. Ask any Jew in Israel or abroad which comes first “Jewish” or “democratic” and he or she wouldn’t to tell you that “Jewish” always overrides “democratic.” Which really shows that “democratic” is no more than a cosmetic façade that is meant to blur or conceal the brutal ugliness of the fascist nature of the “Jewish state.”

Another important, even paramount, aspect of this issue is the Israeli insistence on obtaining recognition as Jewish state in order to permanently bar millions of Palestinian refugees deported from their homeland from time immemorial from repatriation.

In other words, Israel wants to legalize and legitimize ethnic cleansing by getting the victims, or at least their supposed representatives, to bless the greatest act of theft in the history of mankind.

Thus, recognition of Israel as a Jewish state would be tantamount to a double national suicide of immense catastrophic proportions for the Palestinian people.

First, it implies that Israel has the right to expel all or most of its Arab citizens or at least check their demographic growth by all means necessary to maintain Israel as a Jewish state.

And, second, it implies that Israel has the right to prevent Palestinian refugees uprooted from their ancestral homeland from returning to their homes and villages in what is now Israel. In other words, Israel wants to make sure that ethnic cleansing will win at last.

In light, one is prompted to ask: Can there be a greater national suicide for the Palestinian people?

In addition, there are a number of other practical implications which a recognition of Israel as a Jewish state would entail. These include the following:

1- That only “Jews” can be considered complete citizens of Israel, and that if an incomplete citizen, e.g. a non-Jew, wanted to be “complete” he or she would have to convert to Judaism. This is very much like the situation many Jews in mediaeval Europe faced, forcing them to convert to Christianity in order to enjoy equality and find acceptance in their contemporary societies.

2- That the Israeli citizenship per se is ultimately inconsequential and doesn’t guarantee holders all rights and privileges, since Israel is defined as “state of the Jews.” Hence, in order to enjoy full and complete and permanent citizenship, one has to be Jewish.

3- That whenever there is the slightest disharmony between the Jewish and democratic aspects of Israel, the Jewish aspect will override and take priority over the democratic aspect.

4- That Jews all over the world, including potential converts to Judaism, are citizens of Israel and may well be allowed the right to vote in national elections, especially if non-Jewish citizens, gain political influence in Israeli politics.

More to the point, recognizing Israel as a Jewish state also implies a recognition of the moral legitimacy of Israel’s criminal history, particularly the genocidal ethnic cleansing of the bulk of the indigenous Palestinian people from their ancestral homeland.

In other words, a recognition as such by the PA would also imply that the Palestinians would effectively though compulsively embrace and accept the Zionist narrative in its entirety.

This would mean that the victims of Zionist supremacy and racism would have to transform themselves into a sort of Arab Zionists, very much like Christian Zionists.

It is for these reasons that no dignified Palestinian under the sun will be able to recognize Israel as a Jewish state since such a recognition would be incompatible with basic morality and fundamental human decency.

Indeed, even if such a recognition were to be arrogated through blackmail and coercion, it would be utterly rejected by the vast bulk of Palestinians, and treated like a marriage under duress, which is no less than an act of rape.
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UPDATE:

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas reiterated his refusal on Saturday to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, Israel Radio reported.

"Historically, there are two states - Israel and Palestinian. Israel has Jews and other people, and this we are ready to recognize, but nothing else," the radio quoted Abbas as saying shortly after he landed in Saudi Arabia after brief stops in Egypt and Jordan.

(read the rest of Abbas' statements in Ha'aretz)

11 year old Israeli boy shot and killed, and nobody cares

I should have made clear the reason why nobody cares: the 11 year old boy was not a Jew, but a Palestinian Israeli citizen. Under Israeli law, that makes him an "Arab" (the word "Palestinian is not used), and since Israel is a self-declared "Jewish state" that make the murder of this boy something utterly irrelevant. Welcome to just one scene of the Apartheid of the "only democracy in the Middle-East". This kind of thing happens daily (sometimes several times a day). And nobody seems to care. And why should anyone care? Over 500'000 Iraqi kids were killed by sanctions, many more were killed by the US occupation (see counter on the lower right of this page), many more Lebanese kids were killed by Israel over the past decades and it looks like the Iranian kids are next on the Neocon Empire's slaughter list. One more dead Arab child really does not matter at all, does it?

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Tulkarem – Ma'an – The Israeli occupying forces shot intensively at a child on Friday, while he was sitting in a fig tree in Seida village, near the northern West Bank town of Tulkarem.

11-year-old Mahmoud Al Qarnawi was left bleeding on the ground by the Israeli troops. When his mother asked the soldiers if her son was alive, they said "maybe".

The child had Israeli citizenship, but was visiting his relatives in the Palestinian West Bank village.

Ma'an's correspondent in Tulkarem met with Mahmoud's family. They said that Israeli Special Forces had shot and killed the child.

Mahmoud's sister, 16-year-old Ruqaiya, said she had watched as Mahmoud was murdered.

"Terrifying"

Ruqaiya said, "I heard the sounds of intensive shooting behind the house, I opened our gate to see what was happening and one of the soldiers shot at me. But I wasn't hurt. I sat in a room and minutes later my mother came.

"I went outside with my mother to witness the most terrifying thing I have seen in my life."

Ruqaiya continued, "Mahmoud was on the ground under the fig tree. He was moving but without sound or speech. There was a lot of blood around him.

"My mother asked one of the soldiers "is my son alive?" and he answered her in an ironic way in Arabic "maybe he is still." They stayed until he died and then left," she said.

Ruqaiya added that the soldiers refused to allow her to drag her brother's body away. "They threatened me, they said they will kill me, but I insisted on removing him from under the tree.

"His head was open because of the bullet wounds. The scene was terrible.

"The soldiers then asked me to remove my other brother, Siddiq, aged 22, who was also injured and bleeding. The soldiers then dragged him for seven metres before treating him."

A local lady said that the soldiers interrogated one of the other boys from the Al Qarnawi family, Safwat. "They questioned him and beat him. After that they got a football and began playing in the garden."

The Israeli forces alleged that Siddiq is 'wanted' for resisting the occupation.