Israel offers to freeze settlement building on one condition

That the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Palestinians say no (I didn't have a long enough space for the long title)

Palestinian officials have argued in the past that recognising Israel as a Jewish state would compromise the rights of 20% of the Israeli population that is not Jewish, and cancel the right of Palestinian refugees to return to Israel.

Interesting. How accurate is this argument?

edited 11th Oct '10 12:34:36 PM by silver2195

Given that Israel recently pased a law mandating that non-Jewish immigrants must swear a loyalty oath to get in, I think I can see where some of their misgivings on that count might be coming from.

And how you have to be a Jew who is born in Israel to serve in the IDF.

Shit, we let people join our military to attain citizenship when they don't have it previously.

Yeah, this was just a political maneuver, not a real concession.

This is to make the Palestinians look bad, because the Israelis know the Palestinians would never do that. The smartest thing the Palestinians could do would be to call the Israeli bluff on the condition that they not just freeze but permanently cancel the settlements and start moving them out of Palestinian territory. That would leave Israel looking mighty foolish.

...but I'd never expect such inspired leadership out of Hamas.

The only settlements are in the West Bank, which Fatah, not Hamas, controls, though I doubt Fatah would be willing to make such a demand either.

Isreal acts cocky because the US is backing them. If we had some people in the government that would actually DO something. Peace could be established.

All we'd need to do is twist Isreal's arm. Easy enough considering all the money they get from us. One little treat to take it away and they'd probably cave.

There is some sense in demanding to be recoignized as a Jewish, Democratic state as that is the entire concept of Israel. It doesn't mean it's 100% Jewish or that non-Jews are second grade citizens, it just means it follows the Jewish way of life. If this is a political maneuver, I can't really tell.

It's a political manoeuvre because only non-Jewish immigrants are supposed to swear their loyalty to this particular conception of Israel. That there's the dictionary definition of discrimination.

Except that asking to recognize that Israel has a right to be a democratic jewish state means recognizing that Israel has a right to have a jewish majority, which means recognizing that Israel has the right to take any actions necessary to prevent non-jews from out numbering jews, which opens the door to a *lot* of nastiness. Now asking them to recognize that Israel has a right to be a democratic jewish state as long as the population within Israels borders is majority jewish without population manipulation by the Israeli government would be more reasonable, and would remove any concern that the agreement would negativly affect the rights of the refugees. Still not totally reasonable though, Israeli Arabs make up twice as big a part of the population as blacks in the US, more if you count the refugees, but there's little to no chance that there will ever be an Arab prime minister of Israel and many of those who argue for Israel's right to be a jewish state would claim that it would be wrong for there to be one so there's a clear racist angle here

^^^ Amae. Since when were you under the impression that Judaism was defined by a way of life rather than, say, by blood?

When I said "Jewish way of life" I meant that these people acknowledge the fact that Israel is Jewish in the same way Croatia is catholic - Saturday is a day off, pork is forbidden, etc. The "Recognize the Jewish majority = agree to have the right to take any actions necessary to prevent non-Jews from out numbering Jews sounds awfully derivative. Israel is not going to limit births or something.

BTW, Blood has little to do with this. One can convert to and from Judaism any day.

Also, I'm one of many people who oppose this new law thingy, just so you know it's not a case of "My country right or wrong"

And how you have to be a Jew who is born in Israel to serve in the IDF.

No, other citizens can too. It's only Jews and Druze who have to.

It's also trading something which will (at the very least) have bearing for every negotiation in the coming decades with a necessarily short-lived moratorium. Not a remotely equal exchange even without all the issues surrounding Israel's Jewishness.

Frankly the entire idea of a religious state is something which sounds like a crazy, dangerous idea that people need to be disillusioned of to me.

I know there are theocracies, but how many of those have ever turned out well?

Except that Israel has already gone through one round of getting rid of people for not being Jewish, and still doesn't let those people return using them not being Jewish and threatening Israel's Jewish identity to justify it.

As long as the refugees are not allowed to return I will interpret Israel's intention in any discussion of it's Jewish identity in the worst light possible, because there's living proof they will go to those lenghts.

Also pork being forbidden because of kosher is a *big* religious freedom no-no. I would say that Israel forcing non-jews (or jews for that matter) to observe kosher is as sound morally as another state forcing it's jews not to observe it

edited 12th Oct '10 9:45:19 AM by Kzickas

Please capitalize the word Jewish; while I don't think you meant it that way, some people perceive the lack of capitalization in this context as bigoted.

What you don't seem to get is that Judaism isn't just a religion, it's a national identity. Having a Jewish state for Jewish people is just like having a French state for all the people who count themselves as French, and a Spanish country for all Spaniards. It's not a theocracy - Judaism is just a strange bird - both a religion and a national identity.

And the refugee question is a lot more complicated then that - those "refugees" nowdays include the sons and grandsons who have lived all their lives in a country that refuses to acknowledge them as citizens, and almost all of them harbor negative feelings towards Israel. Show me one country that would embrace that lot. Not even the places they live right now do it, why should Israel?

Israel should because Israel is their homeland and because it's Israel's fault they're in the situation they are in. I think that their feelings towards Israel wouldn't be so bad if Israel would treat them better, and certainly the fact that Israel would reciporate any attempt at reconciliation would be a powerful moderating force. I honestly don't care what anyone else would do, it's Israel who's in this situation and it's Israel who has to do the right thing, just as anyone else *should* do the right thing if it were them in this situation

@ Silver, Sorry, my first language doesn't capitalize national and religious adjectives and I can never remember when I write in english

Edit: oh and the refugees current countries don't give them full rights because they aren't citizens there, they're Israelis who are hiding there until the government in their homeland becomes less racist so they can go back

Edit 2: And another reason why the Palestinians shouldn't agree to this. As long as Israel will not respect the Palestinians rights any Palestinian government has a responsability to it's people to fight for those rights. As such it should not agree to anything that might limit it's freedom to do so

edited 12th Oct '10 9:58:34 AM by Kzickas

The problem lies in dividing into Israelis and Palestinians.

Europe, at least, is hopefully leaving the old national splits behind. A Spaniard can freely travel to France and become a Frenchman without problem. The situation in Palestine is an artificial division, one which ultimately must end. Either that or they need to evolve into modern countries with the same considerations as every other democratic state follows... including accepting that those not of your state religion are your people too!

Israel does not have a state religion, nor does it want one. This has nothing to do with religion. But if you're stuck on that point, I should point out that plenty of countries have state religions. Not just those zany Muslim theocracies you hear about. You'd be surprised to learn how many nations have state church while being perfectly tolerant and democratic. No one has a problem recognizing them as countries. But that's all besides the point.

Israel wants to be recognized specifically as a Jewish state because its purpose as a nation can be fulfilled only if that point is official. Its goal is to provide a safe haven for Jews around the world. In theory, Israel could simply be just another country that happened to have a majority of its citizens consider themselves Jews. But then couldn't follow many of the core policies of its founding, such as facilitating Jewish immigration, rescuing Jews from oppressive regimes, and giving the Jews a voice on the world stage. This is the "Zionist agenda" that the anti-Semites rant about. If it were not a Jewish state, but simply a state with Jews in it, then its right and commitment to do those things would be challenged from within and by other nations.

In short, Israel was founded with specific goals, and they can't be accomplished if it isn't a Jewish state. That doesn't mean that it is a state for Jews alone, or that Jews are superior citizens, or that it can't maintain the freedoms that other democratic nations have.

The problem is that no one is willing to work together. For exemple take refugees; the only two options being discussed are tomorrow and never. And yeah if the Palestinian refugees were suddenly allowed to go home tomorrow it would cause five kinds of disaster, no one can see it as a goal for both sides to work towards.

I there's pretty much no chance of traditional negotiations working in this conflict, best case scenario is people on both sides of the conflic who have a vision of what the area should be like and trying to convice everyone else of that vision and of working together to achieve it. Second best option is the Palestinians accept being bullied into whatever agreements Israel want's to bully them into to allow them independence, then come back with a vengence latter

Edit @Treblain: It can if those freedoms conflict with that goal. And at this point everything suggests that it does.

edited 12th Oct '10 11:03:16 AM by Kzickas

Now asking them to recognize that Israel has a right to be a democratic jewish state as long as the population within Israels borders is majority jewish without population manipulation by the Israeli government would be more reasonable

And this, of course, would be equivalent to recognizing Israel as a representative republic or democracy. No special concessions to Judaism would be necessary.

Israel wants to be recognized specifically as a Jewish state because its purpose as a nation can be fulfilled only if that point is official. Its goal is to provide a safe haven for Jews around the world. In theory, Israel could simply be just another country that happened to have a majority of its citizens consider themselves Jews. But then couldn't follow many of the core policies of its founding, such as facilitating Jewish immigration, rescuing Jews from oppressive regimes, and giving the Jews a voice on the world stage.

Speaking as a person of Jewish extraction, I don't consider this a particularly worthy goal for a country. There are plenty of peoples more in need of safe haven who haven't got one, and I find a country dedicated to giving Jews a voice on the world stage as suspicious as a countries dedicated to giving Christians the same.

Essentially I guess it would be a promise for the Palestinian state to keep out of Israeli internal politics.