Comment by runarberg
1 year ago
The West Bank holds the forth largest Jewish population in the world, after France. Now the West Bank is occupied territory, controlled by Israel, so perhaps that doesn’t count.
According to this Wikipedia article[1] there are around 2-3000 jewish people living in Morocco, 1-2000 in Tunisia, and about 100 in Syria and Lebanon (not including the Golan Heights).
I am aware that there were persecutions in the past in many Arabic countries, but the same is true of Europe. Beirut even restored one of their last Synagogues in 2010 after it was damaged, ironically, in an Israeli airstrike.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_population_by_country
My point was specific to Palestinian Authority controlled areas of the west bank.
My second point (maybe not so obvious) was about human rights situations in the Arab world and under Palestinian rule. e.g. the Jews living in Morocco can't elect their government because Morocco is a dictatorship ("Monarchy"), ruled by a king.
I.e. there's no Jews living under Arab rule while meeting those two conditions. Being able to live in a democratic, free, country with human rights, and under Arab or Palestinian rule. I was well aware there is some (tiny) Jewish population in some Arab countries.
You could say the same of Europe prior to 1945. However today hundreds of thousands of Jewish people live in Europe enjoy equal rights and democracy.
What makes you think that Palestine can’t become one of those countries if ever allowed to be democratic and independent?
Sure. We can say the same about the middle ages and prehistoric societies. It's entirely possible that one day Palestine (or we can call it Israel who cares what the country is named) can become a country where all these people that want to kill each other today and lay their claims to the land can be more like Switzerland. The likelihood of that happening in the immediate future is pretty slim. These are long term processes. If we want to experiment let's pick another location in the region that's less complicated, like Syria, Yemen, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt- pick one. when those become like the UK or Switzerland or France or Germany, i.e. prosperous, free, democratic countries, then we can try this in "Palestine"/"Israel". And really, if we turned the entire middle east into the EU then the tiny little piece of land people are fighting over becomes less of a problem anyways because there's not the same shortage of land/resources. I'm sure many Jewish people would prefer to live and work in Beirut for example or live in some remote area in Syria or Iraq and grow weed. "A wolf will reside with a lamb, and a leopard will lie down with a young goat; an ox and a young lion will graze together, as a small child leads them along." - beautiful.
The US tried to bring democracy to Iraq ... and Russia. That didn't quite end up as expected.
Seriously though, I think it could become. One day. It's been going the opposite direction. These are processes that are measured in generations. There are some major issues that would need to be addressed (like being a safe haven for Jews from persecution) even if the middle east emerges from it's "dark ages". Also I don't think the parties here really want this sort of solution right now (i.e. they wouldn't even be willing to work towards it and they're actively working against it).
1 reply →
Would it be democratic if it became independent, though?
Hamas specifically came to power via elections, but hasn't held any elections since then under various excuses, so they clearly aren't champions of democracy.
3 replies →