Israel's 'solution' for Palestinians

Column

10 August 2007

By As'ad Abdul Rahman

So, it is fascism that we have now. Israel is a rogue, brutal, imperial and powerful state that lacks spiritual purity, and is self-introverted.

The repeated calls by the parties of the government coalition for killing Palestinians, demolishing their homes and legislating their transfer, demonstrate the surge of fascism.

We have already gone beyond many red lines in recent years, to an extent that I don't rule out the possibility that the Knesset [Israel's parliament] would, in the coming years, pass legislations against the Arabs comparable to the racist Nuremberg Laws".

This was the concluding statement by Abraham Borg, the former President of the Knesset and Chairman of the Jewish Agency, which shocked Israeli society. The most important question is: what does Israel really want? What are its solutions to becoming a "normal state" in the region?

Israelis have long probed answers, and have adopted plans that were perceived as leading the Jewish state to safety. In fact, they have endorsed several solutions simultaneously, all aimed at having an "exclusively Jewish" state.

But all these solutions have, however, failed, whether they be the expulsion of the indigenous Palestinian Arabs, through "transfers" or through apartheid/racist discrimination or "one state for both peoples".

Systematic intimidation

Indeed, "transfer" of Palestinians was the primary Israeli plan. Since the UN Security Council resolution on the partition of Palestine in 1947, the Zionist gangs began - in coordination with the British forces - the evacuation of Palestinian civilians from the land allotted to the Jewish state.

The plan included systematic intimidation that forced Palestinians to flee their homeland. This policy of intimidation was extended to seize large parts of land assigned by that resolution to the Palestinian state.

Accordingly, Israel usurped 78.5 per cent of historical Palestine, and 850,000 Palestinians became refugees.

For decades, the eviction of the Palestinian natives and their "transfer" to Arab countries constituted an essential point in the Israeli political planning. It has been conceived as the "only" solution to the "Arab question" in Palestine.

The Israeli scheme of transferring Palestinians was later revealed in Zionist documents. With Israel's "completion" of Palestinians' forced migration from their homeland, and its dealing with those who stayed behind through racist laws, the refugee problem emerged ("inside" and "outside" Israel) as an international issue, with regional dimensions.

On the legal level, and in stark contravention of international norms, Israel has enforced the aforementioned laws, and thereby confiscated Palestinian properties. This is nothing but a demographic restructuring of the country by plucking out its Arabic character.

Of course, Israel has refused to re-instate the Palestinian refugees inside and outside it under the pretext of security and Jewish colonisation.

In March 1957, several Israeli leaders declared that "the Gaza Strip remains a source of problem unless the Palestinian refugees are settled somewhere else".

These leaders pursued the implementation of a scheme that continuously aimed at undermining the refugee problem, and subsequently established the "creeping annexation" idea of removing the Palestinian refugees in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and settling them in Arab countries.

Since June 1967, one of Israel's most basic problem in retaining its dominance of historical Palestine has been the Arab minority inside its 1948 borders, without adding to it new millions of Palestinians.

Though both Palestinians and Israelis have recognised each other in the 1993 Oslo Accords, Israel continues to call for the transfer of Palestinians.

And all this is taking place at a time when new Israeli historians have revealed the absurdity of such a solution, emphasising that Israel's evacuation of Palestinian citizens, the demolition of their villages and towns and establishment of new Jewish colonies in their place, and making geographic and demographic changes in Palestine in order to create an exclusive "Jewish state" are futile endeavours due to their deep implications.

What Israel regards as a historical "achievement" - the destruction of more than 532 Palestinian villages between 1948 and 1952 - is nothing more than a blind emulation of the Nazi policies from which the Jews and others suffered.

It was further proved that Israeli transfer operations were systemic, involving huge funds with direct supervision from the office of many Israeli prime ministers.

The Palestinians' "right of return" is now totally rejected by what may be called an Israeli consensus, and is seen as being destructive to the Jewish identity of the state of Israel.

But many in Israel have recently realised that transfer is not the proper solution, and the refugee problem will not be settled by imposing solutions, but rather by offering "reasonable" options.

Nevertheless, the Israeli right-wing forces still hold on to the transfer policy as estimates show the Palestinian populations in 2050 will be twice that of the Jews in historical Palestine.

In this context came former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's call for a strategy that secures "an apparent Jewish demographic superiority in Israel". Such a solution won't be the last Zionist "invention" in the course of evicting more Palestinians.

Professor As'ad Abdul Rahman is the Chairman of the Palestinian Encyclopedia.