Violence Rattles Ancient Port City in Israel
The first night of rioting, Silvi Vaknin, who is Jewish, took refuge in her family’s bomb shelter.
“There was a mob, carrying clubs and stones, shattering vehicles and causing destruction. They demolished my husband’s car, threw stones and entered the house’s balcony. We turned out the lights and got into the home shelter. It was very scary,” she told the daily Yediot Achronot.
The city, once a Crusader stronghold whose Old City is a popular tourist attraction of winding stone alleyways and tunnels that gives a hint of a grander past, is today a working-class town of some 46,000. Over 25 percent are Arabs and some locals say the veneer of coexistence in the city has always been shaky at best.
“Acco was never a model of coexistence.” Arab resident Zohir Bahalul, an Acco native and television sportscaster wrote in a newspaper column on Friday, “The Arab population in Acco is groaning below the poverty line. This is a poor and despised population. … Those who didn’t bother to invest in the people reaped repressed anger and enormous frustration.”
Other local Arabs tried to downplay the tensions, saying the rampage of vandalism and property destruction was an isolated event.
But Jews, especially lawmakers from the more hawkish political parties, were quick to describe it in historical terms with special resonance to Jewish ears. Some described it as a pogrom, others even termed it a new Kristallnacht, referring to the night in November 1938 where the Nazis in Austria and Germany launched a coordinated violent attack on Jewish businesses, homes, and synagogues. It’s a loaded term as it’s considered a launching point for the atrocities that would become the Holocaust. Police should “not be surprised when Jews take up arms to protect themselves” in turn, said Arieh Eldad, a lawmaker with the National Union party.
But touring the city Friday, Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister and the prime minister-designate, warned against just that. “The state of Israel will not be a place where people take the law into their own hands, even when they are very angry,” she said. On Friday the feeling permeating the city was one of fear and uncertainty. Some 60 percent of school children were kept home by their parents. Some families left the city for the weekend.
Police officials said they had a list of the Imams behind what they said was a campaign of incitement to go extract revenge and attack Jews.
The unrest strikes a sensitive chord in Israel where some 20 percent of the population is Arab. In recent years the community has been increasingly vocal in identifying with and supporting their Palestinian counterparts, adding to Israeli jitters that they belong to a fifth column. Historically the same Palestinian people living in Israel were those who stayed within the borders after the fighting for the country’s independence came to a close in 1949. Although legally equal in status and rights to Jews, many Israeli Arabs complain of discrimination in work and services.
Meanwhile the one thing that certainly unites everyone in the city — business — is another victim of the clashes. A fringe theater festival held annually in the city, bringing in thousands of people, was postponed indefinitely because of the unrest, out of fear that the police would not be able to protect visitors. Trying to sound a note of calm, an Arab resident of the city appeared in front of the TV cameras with a simple message, “We want peace.”
One minor detail here: this column reduces the problem in Akko to an inaccurate stereotypical race problem when the “Arabs”, which can be both Christian and Muslim, causing the unrest are nearly completely of the Islamic persuasion.
For what purpose are the Israeli-Arab Christians smeared here when they play little, if any, part in this rioting? Although certainly not an accurate depiction of the unrest, is it fair to vilify the Christians?
According to what I read, the man drove into a Jewish neighborhood, was playing music loudly and smoking cigerettes.
You must understand that Jews would have also been attacked in this fashion for doing the same.
NOBODY drives on Yom Kippur in Israel… except ambulances and police. NOBODY. The highways are empty and you will find people walking the highways for fun.
THis was a provacative act.
“mike” is right – note this sentence in the article: “Police officials said they had a list of the Imams behind what they said was a campaign of incitement to go extract revenge and attack Jews.”
Imans are the clergy of Islam, not of Christianity! The reporter should have made that clear since way too many people don’t know.
Meanwhile – here’s an English translation of an eyewitness report of the situation as it happened ON Yom Kippur (published online in Hebrew by YNET
http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3607155,00.html):
“… Arabs carried out a planned attack against their Jewish neighbors on Yom Kippur. The witness, who said he was standing in the main square of the Jewish neighborhood of Akko, a city with many Muslim residents, when a taxi driven by an Arab entered the neighborhood Yom Kippur evening at high speed with music blaring and almost ran down children in the street. Surrounded by angry Jewish residents, he parked his car, cursed them, and entered a building, where he targeted residents with objects pitched from the seventh floor.
Soon after, a busload of Arabs bearing truncheons, axes and knives crying: “Death to the Jews” and “Allah u Akbar” cut a swathe through the crowd of peaceful, fasting Jews, uprooting trees and street lights, smashing car and store windows, and destroying everything in their path. Jewish residents, who were fasting and unarmed, fled, taking shelter in nearby buildings.
When the police arrived (some reported Akko police only had Arab policemen on duty and they were slow to respond, but this isn’t confirmed) and finally arrested a few of the rioters, several said that this had been a planned attack which had nothing to do with the specific incident with the cab driver. Arab residents said some of the rioters were not residents of Akko, but had come in from outside several days before. There is now a curfew on the city.”
Suzanne,
Thank you… I had guessed that the reports we had were incomplete.
Nothing to see here, move along, just an isolated incident that was certainly the result of socio-economic discrimination, having nothing to do with Islam. Angry poor people who want peace, the spokesperson said so, give them jobs and free school and they will be nice.
Surely Jews are armed. How is it possible people are on your balcony breaking things and you are not shooting them? And if you are not, who the hell cares what happens to you?
“According to what I read, the man drove into a Jewish neighborhood, was playing music loudly and smoking cigerettes.”
This report turned out to be overblown. Read this:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3607142,00.html
http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3607204,00.html (Hebrew)
“THis was a provacative act.”
And anyway, even if an act of provocation, it was wrong of the Jews to mob and stone the car. It is insupportable in a state of law and order that residents should undertake such an initiative, because something “is not done”. Is there a law forbidding people to travel on Yom Kippur? No. It’s a tradition which most people honour. But it someone does not wish to honour a tradition which means nothing to him, then he should not be punished for it by mob rule.
Is this any different from the way Muslims responded to the insult to their prophet in the Danish cartoon fiasco?
Why would anyone want to justify stupid young people who react with outrage for something that does not endanger anybody? Why give Israeli Arab Muslims the opportunity to claim, with some verity, that the Jews tried to lynch them? Livni should crack down on these seeds of insubordination quickly and summarily.
As Ami Isseroff was saying only recently something that applies just as well to this situation:
“This is not a turf war to be solved by gang brawls between rival groups of hoodlums. The war for Israel’s existence requires unity, organization, planning, self control, bravery and sacrifice, not random acts of hooliganism”
http://www.zionism-israel.com/log/archives/00000601.html
I’m just curious why I have to get the “whole” story from readers’ comments when it should have been a part of this article to begin with?
Noga – Sounds like people were being endangered, or perhaps you missed the explanation by a reader that children were playing in the streets.
james wilson – Very astute. Why did the Jews not shoot the vandals? The Israeli Army had to fight on Yom Kippur. It IS allowed, is it not? Cowering in their bomb shelters. They deserve this maltreatment. Sheeple.
Marc Malone: Your comments amount to deliberate agitation. Streets are not meant to serve as playground for kids. If the car was driving with a malicious intent to hit kids I assure you this piece of information would have been reported on the news, not by some commenter on a blog. There is ample evidence that shows the Arab driver made a foolish mistake and was saved from whatever violence by a more responsible Israeli. The way the residents behaved is indefensible. The same holds doubly true for the Muslims who blindly followed their mullahs.
There should not evolve a situation in Israel where there are no-go zones based on religious affiliations. Cooler heads should weigh in, immediately, to diffuse this tension.
What are you, Marc Malone, some bored unemployed Roman baying for some gore by way of entertainment?
Noga,
The Muslim-Arabs should not live in Israel in the first place. If they will not respect Israeli custom in an Jewish neighborhood then I want them out of my country. There are plenty of Arab-Muslim countries in which they can disrespect Jews, our traditions and our way of life. It should not be permitef in Israel. As for the taking of the law in their own hands, I agree, the Jewish residents went beyond the law. They should have captured the driver and held him until the police cane to arrest the man for reckless driving. At least he survived the lynching. The same can’t be said for Jews caught by Arab mobs.
P. Ami:
Noga,
The Muslim-Arabs should not live in Israel in the first place. If they will not respect Israeli custom in an Jewish neighborhood then I want them out of my country. There are plenty of Arab-Muslim countries in which they can disrespect Jews, our traditions and our way of life. It should not be permitef in Israel.
1. Before the Zionists arrived, the Palestinians lived in Palestine.
2. If you are arguing that Israel should have done 100% ethnic cleansing instead of the 85% cleansing of Palestinian Muslims (and Christians) – say so.
3. As for “plenty of other places” to go for Palestinians, remember that Zionists had plenty of opportunities to settle other places instead of Palestine offered by the Brits, French, Soviets – and turned them down.
“3. As for “plenty of other places” to go for Palestinians, remember that Zionists had plenty of opportunities to settle other places instead of Palestine offered by the Brits, French, Soviets – and turned them down.”
The appalling falseness of this statement, in and of itself, is enough to render anything you have to say, any fact you advance, any argument you make, null and void.
Noga – I can only take your response as willful ignorance because the history of nations offering autonomous homelands for Jews (and to allieviate their internal problems of Jewish radicalism) – is well-documented.
http://jewish-history.suite101.com/article.cfm/alternative_jewish_homelands
The other issue is that other minorities did move about and set up their own homelands or self-sustaining colonies under a larger Western Power on their own – but Jews did not make such attempts until very late in Western Civ. As such independent or autonomous new lands required Jews to “backtrack” and have Jews doing jobs they had culturally evolved to shun if they could.
There were small numbers of Jews, pre-Zionism, interested in such colonies, but not enough interest to sustain such colonies, even new independent nations. The idea of a land of Jewish farmers, laborers, conscripted soldiers doing hard physical work requiring little education and serving a Jewish Ruling Elite was simply not attractive to most Jews.
When Jews immigrated, it was mainly to be educated middlemen, in crafts long associated with Jews, or in the professions – and benefit from supplying and profiting from those services to a larger majority population.
Alternatives to settling in amongst the Palestinians were then systematically rejected by Zionist leaders, when that movement and it’s significant financial resources reached a point where nations heeded and tried to ally themselves with Zionist leaders…
The problem with “Jerusalem or Nothing” thinking was it did force Jews on a well-settled native population in Palestine that nearly instantly rejected what they saw as strange interlopers/invaders from Europe. It took them away from places where they would have had a much better reception, and resource constraints that blocked significant European Jewish immigration to Israel in the 20s and 30s.
Now, one of the myths about Israel is crumbling. That of Palestinians inside Israel being happy campers with full rights and loving the democracy. They are not so happy. They don’t want to leave their homes and move to a poorer Muslim country, but most Palestinians inside Israel appear to rue the day the Jewish colonists arrived.
“Now, one of the myths about Israel is crumbling. That of Palestinians inside Israel being happy campers with full rights and loving the democracy.”
There never was such a myth. Arabs in Israel enjoy the democracy that Israel is. They have grievances, like any other Israeli; some are justified, others are manufactured and can be attributed to Palestinian propaganda. It is an open secret that Israeli Arabs feel kind of guilty of having such a good life when their brethren are suffering. So from time to time they try to pretend they are like occupied Palestinians, not free citizens in a free country.
They like living in Israel well enough. One proof for that is their refusal to accept a plan for re-plotting the border so that it incorporates their towns and villages into a future Palestine. What reason would they have for refusing to become integrated into a Palestinian state? There is no question of transfer. They are sitting put. All that changes is their citizenship. So why object, if they are so unhappy in Israel? Isn’t it because in Israel they get all the benefits of living in a democracy? Is there any other Arab, or Muslim, country, that can offer them even remotely the rights they have in Israel?
Your “knowledge” of history reflects an education inspired by Palestinian mythology, which relies heavily on such works as The Protocols of the elders of Zion, and Mein Kampf.
The Arabs in Israel, Judea, Samaria, and Gaza are misnamed “Palestinians,” thanks to the propaganda of the Soviet Union, which founded the “Palestine Liberation Organization” (P.L.O.) in Egypt in 1964. “Palestinian” has always been synonymous with “Jew” since the Roman Emperor Hadrian changed the name of Judea to Palestina in 135 A.D. Since that time, the name “Palestine” was synonymous with “Land of the Jews” or “the Holy Land,” which is why the Zionists wanted the “Palestinian Mandate.”
The area (not country or political unit) known as “Palestine” (in the Ottoman Empire) before Zionist Jews came at the end of the nineteenth century, was sparsely populated except in Jerusalem by Jews and barren. Since Mark Twain’s description of it as well as those of other travelers. See the discussion in Joan Peters, FROM TIME IMMEMORIAL
The notion that Jews could have settled elsewhere like Britain and Russia is laughable. No country was willing to admit Jews fleeing Hitler, during World War II, or after. The Displaced Persons camps were mainly camps of Jews unable to go elsewhere until Israel was established and brought them in. Russia had pogroms and dreadful laws applying to Jews, so that 90 % were near starvation in the 1880s.
“The writer, Reland, a man of many talents – a geographer, a cartographer and a philologist – knew Hebrew, Arabic and Ancient Greek, as well as the European languages, perfectly. The book was written in Latin. In the year 1695, Reland was sent on a tour of the land of Israel or, as it was then called, Palestine. During that trip, he visited approximately 2500 places which had been inhabited and mentioned in the Bible or in the Mishnah (a collection of early oral interpretations of the scriptures compiled about A.D. 200.).”
“The land was, on the whole, empty and desolate;* the inhabitants were few and concentrated in the cities of Jeusalem, Acre, Safed, Jaffa, Tiberius and Gaza. Most of the inhabitants of the cities were Jews, the others were Christian; there were very few Moslems, mostly nomadic Bedouins. Nablus (Schem) was different, with a population of about 120 people from the Moslem Natsha family and about 70 Shomronites. In Nazareth, the capital of the Galilee, there were approximately 700 people – all Christians.
It is interesting that Reland mentions all the Muslims as nomadic Bedouin tribes who arrived in the area as seasonal workers, in both agriculture and construction. In Gaza, for example, there were approximately 550 people; fifty per-cent of them were Jews, the rest Christians. The Jews engaged in flourishing agriculture, owning vineyards and olive orchards and growing wheat (like in Gush Katif) and the Christians engaged in commerce and the transportation of the produce.
In Tiberius and in Safed there were Jewish settlements, though their occupations, on the whole, were not mentioned. The only exception was fishing in the Kinneret – a traditionally Tiberian activity. A city such as Um el-Phachem, for example, was then a village of 10 families, all Christian, consisting of about 50 people; a small Maronite church was also mentioned. (The Shehadah family)”
http://haifadiarist.blogspot.com/2008/06/maybe-lies-are-finally-to-be-exposed.html
What Mark Twain wrote and a picture of Al-aqsa, the third holiest site of Islam, a Celluloid Photo from 1877, here:
http://contentious-centrist.blogspot.com/2008/06/relands-book-via-solomonia-israel.html
The history is unassailable, except by fabricating revisions. Howver, what matters now is possession: 6 million Jews are in possession of the land. Short of genocide, they are not about to disappear or commit suicide in order to appease Palestinian aspirations. This fact seems hard for some to grasp. They really want to reverse history and force Jews back into being barely tolerated minorities…
Suppose I am a Jew or Christian or atheist who happens to drive a bunch of pigs through a Muslim neighborhood on any day, but for the sake of argument let’s say on Eid. Would people defend that person’s right to bring pigs into a Muslim neighborhood? I mean, there’s no law against pigs, is there (even assuming they are in proper pens in the back of a truck)?
This is easy to fix.
Kick the Muslim invaders out of lands that belong to Jews and Christians.
Should have been done centuries ago, but better late than never.
We are headed for a disaster in the middle east, this piece of violence a precursor.
Consider:
* Hezbollah is completely rearmed and has new weapons
* Hamas has been stocking bigger & better rockets and arms in Gaza
* Syrians have moved troops on Lebanese borders
* Iran has new anti aircraft missiles
* Bush is a lame duck and won’t do anything
* Obama is the likely next president & won’t do anything
* The Olmart government has left Israel unprepared
My predictions:
* War breaks out between Israel, Syria, Lebanon & Iran
* Tel Aviv suffers major damage, for the first time
* Internal Arab-Israeli clashes within Israeli cities
* Oil production is greatly curtailed
* Happens between US election day & inauguration day
If things get really ugly count on Tehran being Nuked by the Israelis.
Fasten your seat belts.
the mockingbird
the mockingbird had been following the cat
all summer
mocking mocking mocking
teasing and cocksure;
the cat crawled under rockers on porches
tail flashing
and said something angry to the mockingbird
which I didn’t understand.
yesterday the cat walked calmly up the driveway
with the mockingbird alive in its mouth,
wings fanned, beautiful wings fanned and flopping,
feathers parted like a woman’s legs,
and the bird was no longer mocking,
it was asking, it was praying
but the cat
striding down through centuries
would not listen.
I saw it crawl under a yellow car
with the bird
to bargain it to another place.
summer was over.
(Charles Bukowski)
JW cites the noted authorities Mark Twain and Joan Peters to make his claim that the Palestinians didn’t really exist. Which ignores that Twain wrote his travelog “The Innocents Abroad” as serially exaggerated comedy, and that Joan Peters was discovered to be an academic fraud misrepresenting Ottoman Census numbers and recycling hoary old 50′s Zionist propaganda laughed at even in Israel.
Twain generally gave a good trashing of each country he visited and peppered his book with fabulous lies. It is probably good for SLC’s reputation that he did not put subsaharan Africa on his itinerary, as he was not kindly to most cultures he visited. For example, he wrote that Napolitans were particularly likely to die of diseases like cholera because by the time doctors dug through the dirt that encrusted each resident of Naples, it was too late to save them. Milan was nice enough, Twain “documented” except all the ladies were fat and had full beards and moustaches. And the city crawled with lice.
Zionists citing Twain as a Middle East expert is like citing the Zucker Brothers (Airplane!) as experts on aviation and the “air travel experience”.
His description of Greece mirrored his Holy Land description:
From Athens all through the islands of the Grecian Archipelago, we saw
little but forbidding sea-walls and barren hills, sometimes surmounted by
three or four graceful columns of some ancient temple, lonely and
deserted–a fitting symbol of the desolation that has come upon all
Greece in these latter ages. We saw no ploughed fields, very few
villages, no trees or grass or vegetation of any kind, scarcely, and
hardly ever an isolated house. Greece is a bleak, unsmiling desert,
without agriculture, manufactures or commerce, apparently.
Of course, the Turks have no version of their own AIPAC to claim that after the Great Noted Authority Mark Twain’s visit, it was “Italians from elsewhere” that populated Greece.
The Joan Peters book is more important as it was New Age Zionism, concocted out of past discredited lies and with Peters caught out fabricating her own deceit. It was actively pushed by Zionists to the Right-Wing Christians they were busy trying to win over as Christian Zionists. To a large extent, the Zionists succeeded. THe book had 10 printings. It is thoroughly discredited in academia as evidence of Peter’s fraud emerged. But still believed by the target audience, the guillable Christian Zionists.
It contains many Big Lies, such as the Radio Broadcast lie that non-Jews voluntarily left on their own. But the most significant Big Lie she pushed was of Palestinian non-existance prior to the 20′s.
Peters’ central thesis is that a significant portion of the 700,000 Arabs residing in the part of Palestine that became Israel in 1948 immigrated to the Jewish settled areas of Palestine between 1920 and 1948. Essentially, according to Peters, the Palestinians are a fabrication, like the tooth fairy, for no such people really exist. She implies that during Jewish colonization, Palestine really was a virgin wasteland, “a land without a people for a people without a land.” The Arabs that live there now, says Peters, moved to the area during colonial times, attracted to the region by the prosperity brought by the industrious Ashkenazi settlers from across the sea. Or in other words, the Palestinians are a demographic fabrication who have no historic claim or right to the land.
Peters attempts to prove this thesis by documenting a massive wave of illegal Arab migration to Palestine during the colonial period, and more specifically during the 1920s and 30s. However, as a number of more sober-minded scholars have pointed out (Said being the first who comes to mind), the amazing thing about From Time Immemorial is that its own demographic research contradicts this central thesis. The entire legitimacy of the book revolves around the magic number 2.7, for Peters maintains that between 1893 and 1947, in both the Jewish and Arab areas of Palestine, “natural” (i.e. non-immigrant) population growth was 2.7 percent per year. The funny thing is Peters puts the indigenous Palestinian Arab population at 466,600 in 1893. Unfortunately for her, and for her second grade math teacher, 466,600 times 2.7 percent over the 54-year time span turns out to be 1,146,902. And unfortunately again, Peters confirms that the total Arab Palestinian population in 1947 was 1,303,800. This means that according to Peters’ own research, 1,146,902 of the total 1,303,800 Palestinians living in Palestine during 1947 (88%) were not immigrants, were not the descendants of immigrants, but were purely and simply the result of Peters’ magic natural growth rate of 2.7 percent. In other words, only 156,898 (12%) of the Arabs living in Palestine were immigrants, thus rendering Peters’ book, as even Ha’aretz was forced to concede, “one of the more lamentable propaganda efforts in recent years.”
I don’t buy that Jews should remain stateless, nor that Israel is now a “fact” and there is no way to turn back the clock and argue the that Soviet Oblast or Kenyan high plateau offered was a wiser choice. That is moot, now. But that does not obviate that Jews wanted their ancestral lands back and took them from the inhabitants in a way that Germany (the Ostlands) and Serbia (Bosnia, Kosovo) failed to.
The people they cleansed were never compensated for their losses and as time has passed have not grown to accept their fate, but become more and more radicalized.
Israel did not “take” their ancestral lands from the “Palestinians”. They came home after being dispersed by others. As far as I’m concerned, their claim to that land is evinced in the Bible. It’s the oldest land deed in history. The Arabs were squatters. The Jews were decent enough not to cast them out, but rather treat them as full citizens of Israel.
They have been the most free Arabs in the Mideast. A great number of these Arabs are Christian, and so have no problem living alongside the Jews. All the nonsense comes from outside agitators. If the Arabs in Israel really wnat to secede, they can use the regular political means. They can assemble. They can form parties. They can vote.
Doesn’t matter what anyone on these forums think. The Palestinians want the Israeli’s out, dead or alive doesn’t matter just out. As far as the Palestinians are concerned the Israelis are just bad diers.
Today I read where Hamas & the PLO intend to bury the hatchet and work as one. Another piece of the puzzle falling into place for the soon to come next Arab Israeli war.
The Russians of course love all of this. A decade ago Russia was a basket case, now they are a power house thanks to the price of oil. It is in their best interest to encourage a middle east war that destroys oil making capacity. And they have worked hard to do this.
Their war on the Ukraine was a test of the west to see what anyone would do if threatened. They have their answer.
cederford wrote: “However, as a number of more sober-minded scholars have pointed out (Said being the first who comes to mind),”
Humorous, so Said is a “sober-minded scholar”? This absurd statement alone reveals your comments and “data” to be no more than revisionist “palestinian” propaganda. In other words, lies.
You may hide your words under a cloak a pseudo-scholarship, but they quickly reveal you to me no more than a smooth talking bigot.
I’d like to see map of the Arab population blocs in Israel proper. Carving out some of this territory and making it part of a new Palestinian state seems a possible way to kill two or three birds with one stone (swapping land for the settlement blocs, addressing somewhat the “right of return”, Arab Israeli disaffection). It is time for Israel to recognize what hopefully will be the lesson of the 21st Century: monoethnic states are the best and most stable national entity.
The ‘Palestinians’ will never, ever make peace with Israel. Even if they sign an agreement, they’ll never keep it. Further negotiations are a waste of time.
I can see this ending two ways, one good, one bad.
Good: Egypt annexes Gaza, Jordan annexes the West Bank. Each state vigorously enforces its pre-existing peace treaties with Israel upon its new citizens.
Bad: Gaza, southern Lebanon, and troublesome portions of the West Bank become mildly radioactive glass. No more ‘Palestinians’, no more problems.
Since the ‘Palestinians’ are clearly incapable of governing themselves, a two-state solution is impossible. I’d prefer a resolution that avoids bloodshed, but I don’t see any way to achieve it.
Markus – The Arab population in Israel are Israelis. They can vote, form political parties, etc…. They are also predominantly Christian. They have no wish to join a new palestinian state where they’ll be less free. Who in their right mind would want to join an Arab state?
Marc — well this article here seems to indicate significant disenchantment by the Israeli Arabs. And it seems as if there will be more to come, particularly as they increase their proportion in the country. They will more and more agitate for equal rights, which they don’t have in any meaningful sense right now, as well as an end to the dominant Jewish character of Israel.
Of course they don’t want to be ruled by the current kleptocracy that rules the West Bank, but if Israel ever makes an agreement to allow a sovereign Arab state in the West Bank, it will be with a more stable, evolved and democratic entity, one would receive boatloads of money and investment from the rest of the world (don’t hold your breath waiting for it to happen).
The other point is, since when does Israel have the luxury of making what Arabs want a central concern? They also doubtlessly want the descendents of their former neighbors who fled in 1948 to be able to return. So what?
Good fences make good neighbors, and carving out as much as possible monoethnic boundaries seems to be the best shot at a sustainable peace in the future. IMO, multiethnic states are usually invitations for further strife. Just look at Lebanon, they haven’t been able to take a census since the 1930′s because they’re afraid (another) civil war will break out if they do.
Such a awful story, I’m not sure what to make of it.
If you don’t believe that European Jewry was offered other places to settle and legitimate in all ways except for the religious requirements I suggest you look up Charles Millers’ book “The Lunatic Express” (copyright 1971) as in it are references to the offer to settle Jews in part of what is now Kenya and Uganda. Look up those references and who was involved!