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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume. 34, Number 5. 1971

Solution 2: A Palestine with an Israeli Minority:

Solution 2: A Palestine with an Israeli Minority:

This solution is proposed by some of the Palestinian organisations because they are in a dilemma as to what to do with the 2½ million Israelis should Israel's independence be destroyed. Essentially this is a proposal to establish a binational state "in which Arabs, Jews and Christians will live together in equality". The outlines of this solution, based on the Palestinian Charter (published by the Palestinian Liberation Organisation), is as follows:
a)Palestine will be an Arab state.
b)Israelis are not a nation, but rather Palestinians belonging to the Jewish religion.
c)The majority of Israelis must be expelled "as foreigners" so that the remainder will constitute a minority within Palestine.

Advantages:

1.)To many Arabs this appears as a just and honourable solution.
2.)It gives full satisfaction to the Palestinian Arabs.
3.)It recognises the possibility that Israelis and Arabs can live together peacefully, although it does so by denying that Israelis are a nation.

Disadvantages:

1.)Israelis consider this a racialist solution since it attempts to define them as a Non-Nation and to reduce them forcibly to a minority status.
2.)This solution clearly favours the national aspirations of the Palestinians while denying any such aspirations to Israelis.

Is This Solution Possible?

This solution could become possible if there were any change of Palestinians and Israelis becoming one nation. However, there exist so many disparities that this solution is unrealistic.

Israelis and Palestinians are totally different nations with great differences as regards political habits and principal cultural ties (Israeli with the Jewish people and western civilisation; the Palestinians with Arab countries and Moslem civilisation). As regards technological development, as measured for example, by consumption of electricity per capita; by newspaper circulation, and by the relative number of doctors, Israel surpasses Jordan, and even the U.A.R. To impose upon such vast differences a so-called "supra-national Palestine" is to obscure the reality of two different nations by the myth of a non-existing entity.

No nation can be expected of its own free will to abandon its independence and agree to become a minority in another nation with which it has extremely little in common. Moreover, the record of all independent Arab states regarding larger minorities indicates a persistence of Arab nationalism at the expense of any binational concept. (N.B. The eases of the 2 million Kurds in Iraq, and the 4 million African Southern Sudanese.)

Conclusion:

Palestinian Arabs will not live in a binational Palestine where Israelis maintain their economic and technological advances. The Israelis will not give up their independence just to live as a minority in Palestine, in a style chosen by the Palestinian Arabs.

It is quite obvious, therefore, that this solution engenders more conflict, instead of resolving the conflict.