Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, October 2003, page 12

Special Report

 

What if the Palestinians Reject a Separate Palestinian State?

 

By Andrew I. Killgore

The Israelis under Ariel Sharon are doing everything they can to thwart the creation of a Palestinian state. But what if the Palestinians themselves, worried that Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza might make a homeland unworkable, decide to press for equal rights within a single, democratic Israel? In other words, what if they decide to reject President Bush's "road map" based on two states living side by side?

Demographics would be behind the decision. The Palestinians are aware, probably more keenly than anyone else, that their numbers are gaining on the Israelis'. According to Washington, DC's Population Reference Bureau, Israel's population is due to double within 45 years—but this figure includes its Palestinian citizens, who increase at a faster rate. The West Bank will double in population within 21 years, while Gaza will do so within 16 years.

It is estimated that the Palestinian population within Israel will grow at about the same rate as in the West Bank—that is, doubling in 21 years. Starting with 200,000 in 1948-1949, the present Palestinian population inside Israel is now 1.48 million (22.8 percent of 6.5 million), according to the Web site of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC.

It is a given that, barring "transfer"—Israel-speak for ethnic cleansing—the Palestinian population will at some point, if it has not already, overtake the Jewish population in Israel-Palestine, consisting of Israel proper, the West Bank and Gaza. According to the Israeli Embassy in Washington, Israel currently claims a resident population of 6.5 million. There are some unknowns about this figure, however, which throw the total into doubt.

In 1980 the Jewish Agency said Israel was facing a "national emergency" because so many Jews were moving to the United States. An item carried in The New York Times on Dec. 21 of that year reported that 500,000 Israelis were residing in America.

No figures have been published since then on emigration, Jews leaving Israel for good. Much, of course, is written about immigration, Jews making aliya, or going up to Mount Zion in Jerusalem. But nothing can be published about emigrants, those who leave Israel, to whom the heavily negative term yordim—"those who go down"—is applied.

For whatever reason, Israel hides from public view the number of those who leave the country. Adding to the 500,000 who had left in 1980, it is believed that a further half-million have left the country in the last 23 years, for a total of one million Israelis actually living in the United States. If this is the case, what is Israel's real Jewish population?

The Palestinians living in Israel number 1.4 million. Subtracting the additional one million yordim leaves Israel with 4.1 million resident Jews. Of the one million Russians who came to Israel in the 1990s, an estimated 300,000 are not Jewish at all, leaving a resident population of 3.8 million Jews.

By comparison, according to the estimate of Meron Benveniste, correspondent for the Israeli daily newspaper Ha'aretz and former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, the Palestinians number 3.5 million in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. With 1.4 million Palestinians living in Israel, the total Palestinian population comes to 4.9 million.

 

Demographics are the reason Israelis overwhelmingly reject the idea of one unified state in Palestine.

Even if no Jews have emigrated since 1980, the Palestinian population in Israel/Palestine still outnumbers the Jewish. But it is hard to accept that none left, particularly after the scenes at foreign embassies in Tel Aviv a few months ago, when suicide bombers were active there and in Jerusalem.

Very large numbers clustered around the American, Canadian and Australian embassies, and even around the Polish and Czech embassies. Even the German Embassy had to limit the number who could come in each day—according to The Washington Post, 75,000 Israelis hold German citizenship.

The 10 new states that are soon to join the European Union presumably will offer opportunity to some Israelis. If Israelis could claim citizenship in any one of them, then they could travel and work anywhere in Europe—surely an enticing prospect to more than a few.

These demographics are the reason Israelis overwhelmingly reject the idea of one unified state in Palestine: because the Palestinians, if all were given the vote, soon would be, if they already are not, able to outvote the Jews. "What they're [Palestinians] saying is that their chief aim is not to create an independent Palestinian homeland but to destroy the Jewish state," said Yuval Steinitz, chairman of the Knesset's Foreign and Defense Affairs Committee, as reported in the July 21 Wall Street Journal.

Sari Nusseibi, president of Al-Quds University in Jerusalem, favors one democratic state. He was quoted in the same Wall Street Journal article as saying, "When I first said it 20 years ago…people thought I was mad. But more and more people that I come into contact with now say we should forget about the two-state solution."

 

Unscrambling an Egg

Dr. Edward Said, the brilliant Palestinian professor/author, supported the idea in a 1999 article, arguing that the two nations were so closely intertwined that "clean separation simply won't, can't really, occur or work." As Diana Buttu, legal adviser to the Palestine Liberation Organization, said in an online interview published in October 2002, "One cannot unscramble an egg." Instead Palestinians should push "an anti-apartheid campaign along the same lines as South Africa."

"It's only a matter of a year or two before it [one state] becomes mainstream," said former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, as quoted in the same Wall Street Journal article. "So we need to establish a border in which we'll have a Jewish majority for generations to come. It might be our last chance."

Israel's current policy is to impose such a harsh siege on the Palestinians that they will be forced to leave. But the policy isn't working. In spite of all their suffering, they are staying in the occupied territories, while the European Union and the individual European countries are putting in up to $3 billion to help them survive.

Unlike their American counterpart, the European media have not given Likudist Israel a "free ride" since the al-Aqsa intifada began nearly three years ago. In fact, Europe is turned off by Israel's home demolitions and "targeted killings" (assassinations). American Zionists are bitter over the European press, with New York Times columnist Frank Rich alleging that anti-Semitism in Europe has "metastasized."

The Palestinians learned their lesson when they were terrorized into leaving their homes in 1948-1949. They found that they had fled into nothingness—no shelter, food or clothing—and have lived for more than 50 years in cheerless and hopeless refugee camps. Now, Palestinian friends tell this writer, under no circumstances will they involuntarily leave their homes—even under threat of death.

Nor would the European Community permit the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Israel's connections to Europe are so important that it could not invite European wrath by trying to expel the Palestinians, with whom the Europeans sympathize in any case.

What Israel would do if the Palestinians opt for one state is anyone's guess. Israel's irrationality under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon makes anything possible.

Andrew I. Killgore is publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

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