Jewish State?

Since the recent "offer" by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to temporarily and incompletely abide by its decades-old obligation in return for Palestinian recognition of Israel as the Jewish State, and the news of a law requiring a loyalty oath for Palestinians in Israel, there has been increased discussion about this issue and the fate of Palestinians inside Israel.

I have plenty to say about this, but I think this entire discussion at this moment, which is being advanced by the Israeli government, is an attempt to distract from the clear failure of the Israeli side to abide by international law vis-a-vis the settlements, and to shift blame on the Palestinians for the failure of a process that was destined to fail to begin with. That being said, the increased focus on Palestinians in Israel because of these new Israeli provocations prompts us to bring forward resources on both of these issues. We've had numerous lectures, briefings and events at the Palestine Center in the past on this issue and a selection appears below.

One recent event which focused on the Palestinian citizens of Israel featured new polling data collected by Prof. Shibley Telhami which captured the attitudes of this population. He, along with Prof. Asad Ghanem who has authored a number of scholarly works on the Palestinian population in Israel, spoke at a Palestine Center event titled "Palestinian Citizens of Israel: Stakeholders in Limbo." Here is the video and full transcript. Here is an important excerpt but the entirety is very valuable:

Ghanem: When we say Israel is a democratic and Jewish state, we get the impression that Israel considers democracy as equal as a Jewish state. This is not the situation. When it comes to the interface between Israel and its Palestinian citizens it is 100 percent clear that Israel considers first the fact that it is a Jewish state. The key factor for the allocation of resources in the state of Israel is being Jewish or non- Jewish, rather than being citizens and non-citizens.

We also hosted a delegation from Mosawwa, the advocacy center for Arab citizens in Israel, who spoke about the challenges facing the population they serve. Here is the video and full transcript. Here is a highlight from Jafar Farah, Mosawwa's director:

The question and the challenge--this is the second issue-- is if they will accept us as full citizens with our civil and collective rights. Our collective rights are very important to us, not because we undermine civil rights but because the Jewish majority wants to have collective rights, even for the Jews that are living abroad. So, the self-determination of the Jews should not undermine our existence as Palestinians, as a Palestinian minority, as a collective. Equality should be included in the values that the State will accept. Actually, the whole debate about equality--do you know that the eleven basic laws that exist in Israel and the whole debate about [the] constitution don’t include the value of equality? It was rejected. So, we may have in Israel constitution without equality. So, the Supreme Court ordered that equality should be guaranteed and etc. But equality will not be guaranteed if you will have 30 laws that discriminate or give privileges to one group and forget about the second group.

Another event we hosted on this issue in 2006 focused on Palestinians inside Israel and the outcome of the Israeli Knesset election. Here is the transcript, but this paragraph by Yosef Jabareen was particularly prescient given this weeks events:

The other feature of this election, which I think is also drastic, is the rise of a fascist party, which is Yisrael Beiteinu's Avigdor Lieberman. This is very bad news for us - that he succeeded in bringing together many people to win twelve seats. I am happy that at the last hour he lost one seat. His main agenda is, I quote, "I want a Jewish State." For him, it's not the declaration of independence of Israel. For Israel to be defined as a Jewish state, its minority should be respected. The state should respect the minority - the Arabs. But for him, he wants a state completely clean of Arabs. So he wants to change the boundaries and transfer people from the "Triangle," from the area of Um el-Fahem, even close to Nazareth and in the south. He declared it that his first enemy is the Bedouin, the Arabs in the Negev. When he was in office as a Minister a few years ago, he was poisoning the land and the agricultural fields of the Bedouin there. So this is very important.

A decade of transcripts from previous Palestine Center events can be found here, and videos here.

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