Below is an analysis of an absurd asymmetry in plans for "peace" in the Middle East.
It comes under the title "2 states for 2 peoples". Because of the implied symmmetry it sounds fair, but the name is anything but correct and the symetry is non-existent.
Most of those that support the plan do NOT mean that the Jews will get a state (Israel) and the Palestinian Arabs will get a state (Palestine).
What they actually mean is:
1) A 2nd Palestian Arab state (in addition to Jordan, which has a majority of Palestinian Arabs) and a 21st Arab state will be created where no such state existed before. All Jews currently living in what will become Palestine will be removed.
2) The one Jewish state will be made non-Jewish by the influx of millions of third generation Arab "refugees" who apparently could not possibly be settled in the new Palestinian Arab state. All Arabs already living in Israel would stay.
In short, a new, extraneous state would be created ex nihilo for the Arabs and made Judenrein; simultaneously, the one existing Jewish state would be destroyed by flooding it with hostile Arabs.
Does that sound fair to you? No? Keep it in mind the next time someone preaches that there should be 2 states for 2 peoples.
The absurdity of the whole idea was recently brought out by Binyamin Netanyahu's demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state as a prerequisite for peace, and the subsequent rejection of that prerequisite by the 2-states-for-2-peoples crowd, as explained by
The Jerusalem Post's Evelyn Gordon:
To mainstream Israelis, Binyamin Netanyahu's demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state is self-evidently just. Yet many in the West, the Arab world and even Israel's left reject it utterly.
Meeting in Luxembourg last Monday, European foreign ministers said conditions such as this were unacceptable. Former US president Jimmy Carter echoed this comment. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak declared that "nobody in Egypt or anywhere else... can recognize Israel as the state of the Jews"; pro-government papers in Jordan and Saudi Arabia published similar statements. The Palestinians said they will never accept this demand...
Specifically, they demand the right to relocate 4.6 million Palestinian refugees and their descendants (UNRWA's figure) to Israel - a demand from which they have never budged in 16 years of negotiations. This influx, combined with the 1.5 million Arab citizens, would make its 5.6 million Jews a minority in their own country, effectively eradicating the Jewish state.
Thus it is the Palestinians, not Israel, who have placed its Jewish character on the negotiating table. Netanyahu, far from raising new and irrelevant demands, is merely responding to theirs.
Moreover, far from being an obstacle to peace, Netanyahu's demand is indeed essential to it - because the Jewish state will never agree to abolish itself via a peace treaty. Hence until the Palestinians stop demanding that it do so, no treaty will be possible.
This is not exactly true -- the whole point of 2 states for 2 peoples is to trick or bludgeon Israel into suicidal self-emasculation, as was done to Czechoslovakia before World War II. But Netanyahu's demand, if met, would make the emasculation much less likely -- see below:
Since this already is a Jewish state, Palestinian recognition of this fact would in no way worsen Israeli Arabs' existing situation...
Indeed, the only effect Palestinian recognition of Israel's Jewish character could have on Israeli Arabs is forcing them to abandon the delusion of someday eliminating it via mass Palestinian immigration...
Successive Israeli governments have committed explicitly to the goal of a Palestinian state, but the Palestinians have yet to abandon their demand for the demographic elimination of the Jewish one. It has thus become increasingly clear that the real problem is not the refugees, but Palestinian unwillingness to accept the very existence of a Jewish state. And since Israel will not agree to commit suicide, further talks will be pointless unless this unwillingness changes.
Yet the justice of making recognition a precondition for talks goes far deeper than that, as a Palestinian parallel ironically demonstrates. Prior to his speech last Sunday, Netanyahu had refused to commit to the goal of a Palestinian state. The Palestinians refused to resume negotiations unless he did... Essentially, the Palestinian position was "we will not agree to negotiate about whether we have a right to exist; we are only prepared to discuss the details." But the Jewish state is also not prepared to negotiate about whether it has a right to exist. It, too, is only prepared to discuss the details: borders, water rights, compensating the refugees, etc. And despite its initial belief in Palestinian good faith, it never should have allowed the "right of return" onto the table: No sane country would agree to make its very existence a subject of negotiations.
Netanyahu, however inconsistently, is belatedly trying to correct this fatal error, and he deserves the world's wholehearted support. And this is not merely because, practically speaking, no peace deal will be possible unless the Palestinians accept the Jewish state's existence.
Primarily, it is because the Jewish state cannot be the only state in the world whose very right to exist is subject to negotiations. And the Jewish people cannot be the only people in the world whose right to a nation-state of its own is deemed negotiable.
