×
Matt on the Israel/Palestinian conflict and Marty Peretz's claim that the Palestinians may not be prepared for citizenship:
I really don't think it's viable to support independence for every ethnic minority group everywhere around the world. So why Palestine? What makes the Palestinians so special that they deserve their own country when the Catalans and the Québécois and all the rest don't have them? The answer is pretty simple -- the alternative to independence is citizenship. The Québécois don't have an independent country, but they are citizens of Canada. Catalans are citizens of spain. Flemish and Walloons are both citizens of Belgium. Komi are citizens of Russia. When you see legal discriminatory treatment against citizens -- as with African-Americans in the United States until very recently -- that's a problem. People are owed equal citizenship.It's clear, though, that granting Israeli citizenship on terms of equality to residents of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is incompatible with the idea of Israel as a Jewish state. Thus, Palestinian independence emerges as a reasonable, practical, and moral alternative. Basically, there are four things you could do with Israel-Palestine. One option is partition and independence. Another option is equal citizenship and the end of Israel. A third option is "transfer" and ethnic cleansing. And a fourth option is apartheid. I wonder which of the alternatives to Palestinian independence Peretz favors?You can either figure out a solution to the question of Palestinian equality or you can give up on the Israeli project. The latter is, I'd hasten to add, a viable position. Run a google search on diasporism if you're interested in ideological alternatives. But insofar as folks don't want to give up on the state of Israel, then you have to figure out an equitable solution for the individuals in the Occupied Territories. You can, as Matt notes, make them citizens of Israel, but within a generation, Israel would cease to be a Jewish state. Alternatively, you can make them citizens of their own state, or do some sort of land transfer with a neighboring country that makes them citizens of, say, Jordan. You could also exterminate them. But those are your choices. Unlike Matt, I don't think continual apartheid is even an option. Instead, every day that the problem remains unresolved is a day that the probability inches closer to one that the situation ends in a murderous spasm of terrorist violence and, possibly, Jewish retribution. The least bad option -- by far -- is a viable, generous Palestinian state. It is, at the end of the day, the only outcome capable of protecting Israel.
