Comment by insickness
2 years ago
> Most Israelis don't want that
Because it would mean the end of a Jewish state. Combine Israel and Palestine and you get roughly 50% Jews, 50% Arabs. (5.3M Arabs in Palestine, 7.1M Jews in Israel and 2M Arabs in Israel).
> Combine Israel and Palestine and you get roughly 50% Jews, 50% Arabs
It it leads to a peaceful and stable state that would be a good thing.
Is there a need for a Jewish state? Lots of ethnic groups do not have their own state. Mine does not - a much smaller number of us, and we are disappearing through mixing.
Historically, wherever Islam is in majority or has political power, they have problems with non-muslims, unless the latter become muslims. In fact, Christians have had problems with Jews too. One core element of anti-semitism stems from Christianity as a religion: for more, read James Carroll's Constantine's Sword:The Church and the Jews, A History
You’re not just wrong but also racist. There are numerous historic examples of historic muslim majority countries and empires which had thriving non-muslim minorities. An easy example is the Ottoman Empire which had Jews, Christians and Muslims living under muslim rulers. Persia/Iran has always had non-muslim minorities for over a 1000 years, some thriving more than others.
But you don’t even need to look into history. Today Malaysia and Indonesia both have non-muslim minorities. Bosnia and Herzegovina has slight muslim majarity and is doing relatively fine.
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I don’t really know, but I guess the argument is that historically Jewish minorities have not really been free from oppression in any country at any time until the end of the Second World War.
So maybe there’s no strict need for a Jewish state, but I can see how going back to a collective of (often oppressed) minorities is not appealing.
I think it's workable with a constitution that guarantees rights for Jews such that the 50% Arabs can't change that and with a long slow process of building that single state (30 years? 50 years?). There might need to be other safeguards, Arabs today don't really serve in the IDF so maybe that would need to continue.
What else is the long term trajectory here? Israel can't keep occupying Palestinians indefinitely (and I'm using the term "occupy" in the Israeli meaning, not in the Palestinian meaning, fwiw). Two states as we've seen is not going to work. Anyways, I know this is a hard time to talk about this.
Adding a larger population that doesn't serve in the army isn't going to help IMO — the non-religious Jews are already very mad about the carveouts for Haredim not serving in the army. An "equal state" where a Jewish minority are forced into the military or else imprisoned, and the non-Jews aren't, is not going to go well.
Two states are much better than one in my opinion, and the PA-led pseudo-state is much better than Hamas-controlled Gaza. Israel and Palestine need a manageable divorce, not a forced and unhappy marriage.
Regardless, the PA does not advocate for one state, Hamas does not advocate for one state, and the vast majority of Israelis do not want one state, so I think this is kind of a moot point.
They only stopped advocating for one state after the Arabs suffered humiliating losses against the Israelis in all those wars (where the Arabs were the aggressors). Given the choice between a one state Palestinian country where Jews are a repressed minority, and a two state solution with a trillion dollar aid package for Palestine, the Palestinians will still choose the first option.
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