When the Zionists came to the Holy Land, they sought to fulfill their ideology (i.e. form a Jewish State) and create a republic. The result is Israel. With the Jews, democracy is fulfilled as Jews throughout the world are invited to come and vote as citizens (through the Right of Return). But democracy is restricted to Jews--the Arabs behind the Green Line were mostly expelled as a dangerous, hostile element between 1947-1949 while the West Bank and Gaza with their Arab majority are placed under military occupation rather than annexed to the State of Israel (which governs much of the territories anyway).
To solve this contradiction, the State of Israel initiated the Oslo Accords with the goal of returning the West Bank and Gaza to Arab rule and with the hope of convincing the Arabs to renounce any Right to Return behind the Green Line. But for the Arabs, such renunciation would be injustice and they insist on "peace with justice". So assuming that the UN takes over the Peace Process (perhaps after a devastating war), the Palestinians will be able to establish a state in the territories, negotiate (in order to stall for time) and then when the Israelis refuse to accept their Right to Return, rain down missiles on Israel. At which point, the Israelis would have to invade, renouncing the Oslo Accords once and for all. And then what? Well...
As the birthrate of rightwing, religious families of Jews remains high and as the birthrates of Arabs remains high, they become the primary sectors of the population. A variety of worst-case scenarios could easily emerge:
1. The least worst: A one-state solution in which the Jews remain but are plagued by high crime and property disputes.
2. A one-state solution in which the Arabs expel and exterminate the Jews.
3. The replacement of Israeli democracy with a far-right dictatorship. Since the Israeli far-right (the Kahanists, etc.) believe that the solution to terrorism is to expel or kill off the populations in which terrorists hide and since they believe that from the Nile to the Euphrates belongs rightfully to the Jews, I could easily see lots of warfare (which would happen anyway because of the second Nakba and destruction of the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosques). Israelis could face conscription for six years active-service and three-months per year reserve-service with rabbis ruling like the mullahs in Iran and Saudi Arabia and the economy can be warped by perpetual militarization as in North Korea.
Am I missing something in my analysis?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Well, it wasn't very democratic to remove Arabs (some say, 800,000 vs. 600,000 Jews) in order to preserve a Jewish Israel in 1948. It was probably smart because the Arabs were hostile enemies who sought to kill the Jews but it wasn't democratic. Just as when America expanded into the West, the nation-state was established first by removing much of the existing population against their will, then when the nation-state was established, democracy was allowed after the say of previous inhabitants was rendered null and void by removal (to reservations or abroad).
ReplyDeleteAnd while you are right that the goal of Oslo Accords was peace rather than Arab rule, the means by which that peace was to be achieved was by establishing Arab rule in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.