Jehovah's Promise
President Barack Obama, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu all played mainly to their domestic political bases at the United Nations General Assembly meeting last week. Despite the drama, nothing in the basic discourse has changed, no party shifted its bottom-line positions, and none of it brought us any closer to peace or improved the situation on the ground.
Abbas gave a rousing speech articulating the Palestinian narrative and case for independence, but didn't offer any outreach to the Israeli public. Netanyahu gave a defiantspeech, including denouncing the UN as a "house of lies" aimed mainly at securing his leadership of the Israeli right. And Obama -- who offered empathy to Israel and the Jewish narrative but none to the Palestinians -- was essentially defending himself from a relentless attack from the Republican right on his Israel policies.
All three leaders emerged from the UN meeting politically strengthened, but the prospects for peace were not. Netanyahu marshaled Israel's international assets to nip the Palestinian bid for full UN membership in the bud. The application will no doubt be referred to the 15-member Membership Committee, which meets and votes in secret and which requires unanimity to refer the application back to the Security Council for a possible vote. Past precedent shows this process can take years. Even if Palestinians decide to push for a vote in the Security Council, and can secure an at-present uncertain nine-vote majority, the Obama administration is publicly committed to vetoing their membership.
Caught between the rock of Israeli occupation and the hard place of (at least thus far) failed diplomacy, the Palestinian leadership sought recourse at the UN, knowing full well they were risking a damaging confrontation with the United States over a potential veto. By submitting a formal application for full UN membership, Abbas may appear to have taken a confrontational approach, but in fact the Palestinians have left an important opportunity for compromise open by not demanding any immediate vote or action.
That opportunity is best represented by the statement of the Middle East Quartet issued to coincide with the Abbas and Netanyahu speeches. It is clear that the Quartet has not resolved its differences which have emerged over the past year, particularly the question of Palestinian recognition of Israel as a "Jewish state," but this body remains the most promising venue for creating a new framework, and even terms of reference, for future negotiations when political realities adjust to allow for their resumption with a reasonable prospect of success.
While the resumption of such negotiations will depend a great deal on improvements in internal Palestinian and Israeli political conditions, and especially on the resolution and outcome of the US presidential election, it is imperative that the prospects for a genuine two-state solution are preserved, and even enhanced. To achieve peace, Israelis and Palestinians must move beyond binary worldviews that cast each other simply as enemies in order to appreciate the complexity and interdependence of their relationship, not only now but into the future.
This means, first and foremost, preserving, protecting and enhancing the gains made on the ground in the occupied West Bank by the Palestinian institution-building program led by Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. Many members of Congress from both parties and Republican presidential candidates have been irresponsibly calling for a cut in US funding to the Palestinian Authority and any international organizations that accord upgraded status to the Palestinians.
Nothing could be more shortsighted than threats by grandstanding members of Congress to cut US aid to the PA, the single biggest source of external funding for the Palestinians, which would undermine the legitimacy of the moderate, secular, nationalist leadership in Ramallah and ultimately threaten the viability of both negotiations and negotiators.
It would jeopardize the important cooperation between Israeli and Palestinian security forces that has greatly reduced violence and restore law and order in some key areas of the West Bank. It could undermine, perhaps fatally, the credibility not just of individual political leaders but the whole Palestinian national strategy that seeks the establishment of an independent state living alongside Israel in peace, security and mutual dignity. And it would play directly into the hands of rejectionists forces like Hamas and the extreme settler movement that cling to a zero-sum mentality that seek a total victory of one party at the expense of the other.
It is evident that the status quo is untenable, the conflict has no military solution, and a negotiated agreement is the only alternative to continued conflict. The Israeli occupation must end and, in turn, Israel must become an accepted member of the community of nations in the Middle East. No Israeli, we hope, wants to occupy another people and no Palestinian, we believe, wants to be occupied. The few benefits the Israelis accrue from occupation (e.g., arable land, settlements, water resources) can be better secured through long-term arrangements with friendly neighboring countries, including a State of Palestine. Real "strategic depth" doesn't come from belligerent occupation. It comes from an end of conflict.
Even though the presidential campaign is underway, Obama and his team should not shrink from urging Israeli and Palestinian leaders to do the right thing and resume negotiations within a specific time frame and with clear terms of reference, which becomes the basis of a just and lasting peace. The Quartet statement was a welcome indication that serious diplomacy continues and a reasonable framework for resumed negotiations can be developed in the coming weeks, even if the actual resumption of talks may have to wait for a more propitious political environment on all sides.
Abbas and Netanyahu have returned to their countries with stronger political positions and therefore more leverage and leeway to take bold moves that help lay the political groundwork for the resumption of talks aimed at a fair compromise.
Regardless of what transpires at the UN with respect to Palestine's membership, it must become the impetus towards increased commitment on the part of the international community to finally fulfill the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people and the yearning of Israelis for peace and security. The parties cannot accomplish this on their own.
Now is the time for leaders on all sides to rise above politics and use their strengthened positions to begin the difficult, and probably prolonged, process for creating a more positive political environment that can eventually produce successful negotiations. Above all, the gains that have been secured on the ground through the Palestinian institution-building program and Israeli-Palestinian security cooperation -- which are real and not theoretical -- must not be squandered, but protected and enhanced.
Saliba Sarsar, Ph.D., is professor of political science and associate vice president for global initiatives at Monmouth University, and is a member of the Board of Directors of the American Task Force on Palestine. Hussein Ibish, Ph.D., is a senior research fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine and blogs at www.ibishblog.com.
The Zionist Jews claim that Jehovah promised the whole Land of Palestine exclusively to them, as they are the Children of Abraham. The relevant scriptural verses are:
Now the Lord said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.
And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. (Genesis 12: 1-2)
And he said unto him, I am the Lord that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it. (Genesis 15:7)
And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God. And God said unto Abraham, Thou shalt keep my covenant therefore, thou, and thy seed after thee in their generations. (Genesis 17: 8-9)
Chiefly relying on a twisted interpretation of the above verses in their scripture, the Zionists claim that God's eternal covenant with Abraham and his descendants means that Israel must have undivided political sovereignty over all the land mentioned there, which according to them stretches from the Nile in Egypt to the Euphrates in Iraq.
In fact, this Zionist claim is erroneous from the Bible's own point of view, because God's covenant was given to Abraham and to all his descendants; not merely to Israel. Abraham is 'the father of many nations', not only one nation as can be seen from the following:
Then Abram fell on his face; and God said to him, "Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come forth from you." (Genesis 17:3-6)
We know that the Bible speaks of Abraham's two sons: His firstborn was Ishmael, and the second was Isaac. The Arabs are the children of Ishmael and the Jews are the children of Isaac. The mother of Abraham's son Ishmael was Hajar the Egyptian, who had received a covenant promise:
"I will so increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to count." (Genesis 16:1-15)
"Those descendants were Arabs, settling in Arab territory." (Genesis 25:13-18)
But the Zionists argue that only the children of Isaac deserve to live in the Land promised to the Children of Abraham; because Ishmael's mother Hajar was only a handmaiden of Sarah, so (they say) her children have no right to their homeland.
(Sarah) was childless for many years. She gave her handmaiden Hagar to Abraham so he could have children, and Hagar bore Ishmael. At the age of ninety, Sarah was told she would give birth and she laughed because she thought she was too old to have children. Sarah gave birth to Isaac (Yitzhak). Later Sarah drove Hagar and Ishmael away, saying "the son of this hand-maiden will not inherit together with my son, Yitzchak." (Bereshit 21:10)
The above claim of Zionism is deliberately aimed at denying their Arab brethren any right to the land of their birth. It is interesting to see how the architects and believers in Zionism twist the divine command to establish their unreasonable claim. For this, they blatantly refuse to honor this law in the Torah:
"If a man have two wives, one beloved, and another hated, and they have borne him children, both the beloved and the hated; and if the firstborn son be hers that was hated: then it shall be, when he maketh his sons to inherit that which he hath, that he may not make the son of the beloved firstborn before the son of the hated, which is indeed the firstborn: but he shall acknowledge the son of the hated for the firstborn, by giving him a double portion of all that he hath: for he is the beginning of his strength; the right of the firstborn is his." (Deuteronomy 21: 15-17)
It is obvious here that the status of the mother of the firstborn does not in any way disqualify him from inheriting his rights (which is the double of what the other son gets, according to this provision) from his father. But the Jews as well as some sects of Christians sideline this simple rule of the Torah, just for denying the Palestinians the right to the land which God gave them as well as to their brethren, the Children of Isaac (or Children of Israel).
The Jews believed in the superiority of their race, because they thought that their status as the 'Chosen People of God' could mean nothing else. The Quran (though it has sometimes been criticized by some Jews as anti-Semitic very clearly states that the Children of Israel are the Chosen People of God. But the Quran clearly denies the claim that this means that God will consider the Jews as His favorites in derogation of others. Their special status only means that God chose them as the special carriers of His Message; for He chose from them a large number of prophets, for instance.
As a community of people, the Jews were unmindful of the mission entrusted with them, and compared to others they were very 'casual' in the matter of obedience to God and His prophets. (Exodus 32:1- 9) The way the Jews treated their prophets could be understood from the experiences of those prophets, as described in the Old Testament of the Bible. Muslims and probably Christians too would say that this was the reason why God made them undergo severe hardships again and again.
The point to be made here is that the Jews, Christians and Muslims are all followers of the same religious tradition; and those in the Middle East irrespective of their religion are the Children of Abraham, whether through Ishmael or Isaac. Neither the Jew, nor the Christian nor the Muslim can deny this, since it is clearly stated in their respective scriptures. One may find in this a ray of hope for the settlement of the Middle East crisis. But of course, when the politics of racial or tribal pride or what could be crudely put as "herd instinct" rules, things get worse and worse as it happens now.
The People, the Land and the Torah
It was in the 19th century, following a trend that began earlier in Europe, people around the world began to identify themselves as citizens, parts of a 'nation-state' project, and to demand national rights. At this time, the Jews living as citizens of different countries for centuries could have remained in their respective countries, as the Christians and Muslims were doing. But two factors conspired against this. One, their consciousness of the Promised Land to which the Jewish fundamentalists had been calling all Jews to return; and two, the bitterness they felt against the lands where they had been treated as outcasts so far. (Karen Armstrong, The Battle for God, Harper Collins, London, 2001, p. 150)
The Zionist movement began in 1882, with the intention of recovering what they thought to be the land 'exclusively' promised to the Jews by God. The extremists among them believed that they could live as real Jews only if they practiced all the laws in the Torah. This would be possible 'only' if they returned to the Promised Land; because otherwise the laws regarding farming and settlement, and politics and government could not be observed, for instance. (Karen Armstrong, The Battle for God, p. 258)
The question that comes to the fore here is whether God actually wants us humans to uphold values of justice and truth in everything, while He supports His Chosen people to defy them in the matter of their unfortunate brethren. Of course, the Jews have always been able to find precedents in their own history to support their unjust policies (for instance the Book of Joshua, where Jehovah is reported to have supported a very brutal war against the Gentiles, to take away their land, their property and their lives). (Joshua 10:25)
The Zionist movement identified Palestine as the place for their new nation and started a wave of immigration from Europe for settlement there. At that time, Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire. According to Ottoman records, in 1878 there were 462,465 subject inhabitants of the Jerusalem, Nablus and Acre districts: 403,795 Muslims (including Druze), 43,659 Christians and 15,011 Jews. The great majority of the Arabs (Muslims and Christians) lived in several hundred rural villages. Jaffa and Nablus were the largest and economically most important Arab towns. (The Middle East Research and Information Project: Palestine, Israel and the Arab-Israeli Conflict)
Until the beginning of the 20th century, most Jews living in Palestine observed traditional, orthodox religious practices, spending their time studying religious texts. Their attachment to the land was 'religious' rather than 'national', and they were not involved in the Zionist movement, which began in Europe and was brought to Palestine by immigrants.
Most of the Jews who immigrated from Europe lived a more secular lifestyle and were committed to the goals of creating a Jewish nation and building a modern, independent Jewish state. Zionism, or Jewish nationalism "was influenced by nationalist ideology, and by colonial ideas about Europeans' rights to claim and settle other parts of the world." (The Middle East Research and Information Project: Palestine, Israel and the Arab-Israeli Conflict) But at the same time, the secular Zionists were cunning enough to make use of the religious fervor of the fundamentalists.
For fundamentalist Jews, the land and the people and the Torah formed a triad, each of which is holy. They considered it a religious duty to annex and occupy all the Promised Land(the borders of which God alone knows), no matter who owns it now. (The Middle East Research and Information Project: Palestine, Israel and the Arab-Israeli Conflict) They believe that in this effort Jehovah is with them, as He was with Joshua. For this reason, to the Israelis world criticisms against their atrocities, or the UN resolutions against occupation of Arab lands, do not matter, whatsoever.
Is not it a paradox that the Jews who were the victims of a racial holocaust are now inflicting a similar racial holocaust on the Palestinians? When the Zionist leaders accuse the Palestinians of religious fundamentalism and terrorism, the whole of "the civilized world" believe them. But really, who could be more fundamentalist or more terrorist than the Zionists who openly encroach on Arab lands, demolish Arab homes, kill Arab men, women and children in the name of Jehovah?
The Israeli government's current mantra is that the Palestinians must recognise a "Jewish State". Of course, the Palestinians have clearly and repeatedly recognised the State of Israel as such in the 1993 Oslo Accords (which were based on an Israeli promise to establish a Palestinian state within five years - a promise now shattered) and many times since. Recently, however, Israeli leaders have dramatically and unilaterally moved the goal-posts and are now clamouring that Palestinians must recognise Israel as a "Jewish State".
In 1946, the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry concluded that the demand for a "Jewish State" was not part of the obligations of the Balfour Declaration or the British Mandate. Even in the First Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897, when Zionists sought to "establish a home for the Jewish people", there was no reference of a "Jewish State". The Zionist Organisation preferred at first to use the description "Jewish homeland" or "Jewish Commonwealth". Many pioneering Zionist leaders, such as Judah Magnes and Martin Buber also avoided the clear and explicit term "Jewish State" for their project of a homeland for Jews, and preferred instead the concept of a democratic bi-national state.
Today, however, demands for a "Jewish State" from Israeli politicians are growing without giving thought to what this might mean, and its supporters claim that it would be as natural as calling France a French State. However, if we consider the subject dispassionately, the idea of a "Jewish State" is logically and morally problematic because of its legal, religious, historical and social implications. The implications of this term therefore need to be spelled out, and we are sure that once they are, most people - and most Israeli citizens, we trust - will not accept these implications.
Many implications
First, let us say that confusion immediately arises here because the term "Jewish" can be applied both to the ancient race of Israelites and their descendants, as well as to those who believe in and practice the religion of Judaism. These generally overlap, but not always. For example, some ethnic Jews are atheists and there are converts to Judaism (leaving aside the question of whether these are accepted as such by Ultra-Orthodox Jews) who are not ethnic Jews.
Second, let us suggest also that having a modern nation-state being defined by one ethnicity or one religion is problematic in itself - if not inherently self-contradictory - because the modern nation-state as such is a temporal and civic institution, and because no state in the world is - or can be in practice - ethnically or religiously homogenous.
Third, recognition of Israel as a "Jewish state" implies that Israel is, or should be, either a theocracy (if we take the word "Jewish" to apply to the religion of Judaism) or an apartheid state (if we take the word "Jewish" to apply to the ethnicity of Jews), or both, and in all of these cases, Israel is then no longer a democracy - something which has rightly been the pride of most Israelis since the country's founding in 1948.
Fourth, at least one in five Israelis - 20 per cent of the population, according to the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics - is ethnically Arab (and are mostly either Muslim, Christian, Druze or Bahai), and recognising Israel as a "Jewish State" as such makes one-fifth of the population of Israel automatically strangers in their own native land and opens the door to legally reducing them, most undemocratically, to second-class citizens (or perhaps even stripping them of their citizenship and other rights) - something that no-one, much less a Palestinian leader, has a right to do.
Fifth, recognising a "Jewish State" as such in Israel would mean legally that while Palestinians no longer have citizens' rights there, any member of world Jewry outside of Israel (up to 10 million people perhaps), should be entitled to full citizens' rights there, no matter wherever they may be in the world today and regardless of their current nationality. Indeed, Israel publicly admits that it does not hold the land for the benefit of its citizens but holds it, in trust, on behalf of the Jews of the world for all time. This is something that happens in practice, but that obviously Palestinians in the occupied territories - including Jerusalem - do not see as fair, especially as they are constantly forcibly evicted off their ancestral homeland by Israel to make way for foreign Jewish settlers, and because Palestinians in their diaspora are denied the same right to come and live.
Sixth, it means, before final status negotiations have even started, that Palestinians would have then given up the rights of about 7 million Palestinians in the diaspora to repatriation or compensation; 7 million Palestinians descended from the Palestinians who in 1900 lived in historical Palestine (ie what is now Israel, the West Bank including Jerusalem, and Gaza) and at that time made up 800,000 of its 840,000 inhabitants; and who were driven off their land through war, violent eviction or fear.
Seventh, recognising a "Jewish state" in Israel - a state which purports to annex the whole of Jerusalem, East and West, and calls Jerusalem its "eternal, undivided capital" (as if the city, or even the world itself, were eternal; as if it were really undivided, and as if it actually were legally recognised by the international community as Israel's capital) - means completely ignoring the fact that Jerusalem is as holy to 2.2 billion Christians and 1.6 billion Muslims, as it is to 15-20 million Jews worldwide.
In other words, this would be to privilege Judaism above the religions of Christianity and Islam, whose adherents together comprise 55 per cent of the world's population. Regrettably this is a narrative propagated even by renowned Jewish author and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, who, on April 15, 2010, took out full page ads in The New York Timesand The Washington Post and claimed that Jerusalem "is mentioned more than six hundred times in Scripture - and not a single time in the Qur'an". Now we do not propose to speak for native Palestinian Arab Christians - except to say the that Jerusalem is quite obviously the city of Jesus Christ the Messiah - but as Muslims, we believe that Jerusalem is not the "third holiest city of Islam" as is sometimes claimed, but simply one of Islam's three holy cities. And, of course, despite what Mr Wiesel seems to believe, Jerusalem is indeed clearly referred to in the Holy Qur'an in Surat al-Isra' (17:1):
"Glorified be He Who transported His servant by night from the Inviolable Place of Worship to the Aqsa Place of Worship whose precincts We have blessed, that We might show him of Our tokens! Lo! He, only He, is the Hearer, the Seer."
Moreover, Muslims wanting to take a similar, religiously exclusive narrative, could point out that while Jerusalem is mentioned 600 times in the Bible, it is not mentioned once in the Torah as such - a fact that any Biblical Concordance will easily confirm. Of course we do, however, recognise the importance of the land of Israel in the religion of Judaism - this is even mentioned in the Qur'an, 5:21 - we only ask that the Israeli government reciprocate this courtesy and allow Muslims to speak for themselves in expressing what they consider, and have always considered, as holy to them.
There is another reason, more serious than all of the seven mentioned above, why Palestinian leaders - and indeed no responsible person - can morally recognise Israel as a "Jewish State" as such. It has to do with the very Covenant of God in the Bible with Ancient Israelites of the promise of a homeland for Jews. God says to Abraham in the Bible:
On the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying:
"To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the River Euphrates - the Kenites, the Kenezzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites." (Genesis, 15:18-21; NKJ)
The ancient Israelites then go on to possess this land in the time of Moses, upon God's command, as follows:
"When the LORD your God brings you into the land which you go to possess, and has cast out many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than you, and when the LORD your God delivers them over to you, you shall conquer them and utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them nor show mercy to them. (Deuteronomy, 7:1-2; NKJ)
"Hear, O Israel: You are to cross over the Jordan today, and go in to dispossess nations greater and mightier than yourself, cities great and fortified up to heaven, a people great and tall, the descendants of the Anakim, whom you know, and of whom you heard it said: 'Who can stand before the descendants of Anak?' Therefore understand today that the LORD your God is He who goes over before you as a consuming fire. He will destroy them and bring them down before you; so you shall drive them out and destroy them quickly, as the LORD has said to you." (Deuteronomy, 9:1-4; NKJ)
The fate of many of the original inhabitants is then as follows:
And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, ox and sheep and donkey, with the edge of the sword. (Joshua, 6:21; NKJ)
And this continues even later on in time, as follows:
Samuel also said to Saul: "The LORD sent me to anoint you king over His people, over Israel. Now therefore, heed the voice of the words of the LORD. Thus says the LORD of hosts: 'I will punish Amalek for what he did to Israel, how he ambushed him on the way when he came up from Egypt. Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and do not spare them. But kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.'" (1 Samuel, 15:1-3; NKJ)
Now it is very easy to cherry-pick quotes from scripture permitting or enjoining violence. One could cite, out of context, verses such as the "sword verse" in the Holy Qur'an:
Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them, and confine them, and lie in wait for them at every place of ambush. But if they repent, and establish prayer and pay the alms, then leave their way free. God is Forgiving, Merciful. (Al-Tawbah, 9:5)
One could even cite verses - again out of context - from Jesus Christ's own words in the Gospel, as follows:
"But bring here those enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, and slay them before me.'" (Luke, 19:27; NKJ)"Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword." (Matthew, 10:34; NKJ)
Democracy or a Jewish State?
Nevertheless, it remains true that, in the Old Testament, God commands the Jewish state in the land of Israel to come into being through warfare and violent dispossession of the original inhabitants. Moreover, this command has its roots in the very Covenant of God with Abraham (or rather "Abram" at that time) in the Bible and it thus forms one of the core tenets of Judaism as such, at least as we understand it. No one then can blame Palestinians and descendents of the ancient Canaanites, Jebusites and others who inhabited the land before the Ancient Israelites (as seen in the Bible itself) for a little trepidation as regards what recognising Israel as a "Jewish State" means for them, particularly to certain Orthodox and Ultra Orthodox Jews. No one then can blame Palestinians for asking if recognising Israel as a "Jewish State" means recognising the legitimacy of offensive warfare or violence against them by Israel to take what remains of Palestine from them.
We need hardly say that this comes against a background where every day the Israeli settler movement is grabbing more land in the West Bank and Jerusalem (there are now 500,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank alone) - aided, abetted, funded and empowered by the current Israeli government - and throwing or forcing more and more Palestinians out, in so many different ways that it would take volumes to describe. Moreover, there are credible reports that despite the almost universal agreement in Rabbinical texts throughout the ages that the divine command to kill the Amalekites was a unique and isolated historical incident that applied only to the race of the Ancient Amalekites, there are now, in certain religious schools in Israel, people who draw parallels between the Palestinians of today and the ancient Amalekites and their like (this was apparently the opinion of Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu, a former chief Rabbi of Israel; see also, for example: Shulamit Aloni's article 'Murder Under the Cover of Righteousness', CounterPunch, March, 8-9, 2003).
In short, recognition of Israel as a "Jewish State" in Israel is not the same as, say, recognition of Greece today as a "Christian State". It entails, in the Old Testament itself, a Covenant between God and a Chosen People regarding a Promised Land that should be taken by force at the expense of the other inhabitants of the land and of non-Jews. This idea is not present as such in other religions that we know of. Moreover, even secular and progressive voices in Israel, such as former president of the Supreme Court of Israel, Aharon Barak, understand the concept of a "Jewish State" as follows:
"[The] Jewish State is the state of the Jewish people … it is a state in which every Jew has the right to return … a Jewish state derives its values from its religious heritage, the Bible is the basic of its books and Israel's prophets are the basis of its morality … a Jewish state is a state in which the values of Israel, Torah, Jewish heritage and the values of the Jewish halacha [religious law] are the bases of its values." ('A State in Emergency', Ha'aretz, 19 June, 2005.)
So, rather than demand that Palestinians recognise Israel as a "Jewish State" as such - adding "beyond chutzpah" to insult and injury - we offer the suggestion that Israeli leaders ask instead that Palestinians recognise Israel (proper) as a civil, democratic, and pluralistic state whose official religion is Judaism, and whose majority is Jewish. Many states (including Israel's neighbours Jordan and Egypt, and countries such as Greece) have their official religion as Christianity or Islam (but grant equal civil rights to all citizens) and there is no reason why Israeli Jews should not want the religion of their state to be officially Jewish. This is a reasonable demand, and it may allay the fears of Jewish Israelis about becoming a minority in Israel, and at the same time not arouse fears among Palestinians and Arabs about being ethnically cleansed in Palestine. Demanding the recognition of Israel's official religion as Judaism, rather than the recognition of Israel as a "Jewish State", would also mean Israel continuing to be a democracy.
Sari Nusseibeh is a professor of philosophy at Al-Quds University in Jerusalem.
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