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Now
"I DON'T care about the principles! All
that I want is that my wife can live with me and that we can
raise a family!" cried out the engaging young man on the
TV talk show.
Sammy is an Arab citizen from
Acre, studying for a doctor's degree at Haifa University. Something
terrible happened to him: he fell in love with the wrong woman
- a Palestinian from Jenin in the occupied territories. He had
met her by accident in Ramallah, obtained for her (on false pretences,
he admits) a permit to stay in Israel for one day and married
her. Since then he can visit her only once every few weeks in
Jenin.
She cannot come to live with
him in Acre, because the Knesset has enacted a "temporary"
law that forbids categorically, without any exceptions, Palestinian
women in the occupied territories from joining their husbands
in Israel. (That applies equally, of course, to the Palestinian
husbands in the occupied territories of Israeli Arab women.)
The freedom of love and marriage
is one of the basic human rights. Its denial to 1.4 million Israeli
citizens, solely because they are Arab, is a severe violation
of the international Bill of Rights that has been signed by Israel.
It also attacks the roots of Israeli democracy.
The pretext - what else could
it be? - is "security". Among the 105,000 Palestinian
women from the occupied territories who, in the course of the
years, have married Israeli citizens, 25 have taken part in terrorist
acts. 25 (twenty-five!) as against 104,975 (one hundred and four
thousand nine hundred and seventy-five!)
But, as usual with us, "security"
is serving here as camouflage for the real reason. Behind the
prohibition lurks the demographic demon, a demon with a sinister
power over the brains of Israelis, that can twist their thoughts,
extinguish the last spark of decency and morality and turn quite
normal human beings into monsters.
His emissaries scour the world
for Jews, real or imagined. They have discovered (and brought
to Israel!) Indians who claim to be descended from the tribe
of Manasseh, one of the ten tribes that were exiled by the Assyrians
- according to the Bible - from Palestine some 2720 years ago.
In New Mexico they have discovered families whose ancestors were
supposedly Jews baptized 500 years ago under the threat of the
Spanish Inquisition. They bring Russian Christians, who have
a tenuous connection with Jewish families, and the Falashmura
from Ethiopia, whose Judaism is rather dubious. All of these
are dragged to Israel and obtain immediate citizenship and a
generous "absorption subsidy". But a young woman from
Jenin, whose family has lived in this country for centuries,
is not allowed to live here with her husband, whose forefathers
have lived in Acre for generations. All because of that fearful
demon.
* *
*
A HUNDRED and twenty years
ago Asher Ginsburg, known as Ahad Haam ("One of the People"),
a great Jewish thinker, visited Palestine and was horrified by
the way the Jewish settlers treated the native Arabs. Since then,
many pretexts for pushing Arabs out have been invented. Almost
every year the pretext in vogue has changed. Now a new one has
become fashionable: "the Nation State". Tsipi Livni
was perhaps the first to use it.
Israel is a "Nation state"
of the Jews, and therefore it has the right to do anything that
serves Jews and harms non-Jews, even when they are Israeli citizens.
"The good of the individual has to give way to the common
good!" a respected professor said about the case of Sammy,
"and the common good forbids allowing the Palestinian wife
of Sammy to enter Israel, which is the Jewish Nation State."
That sounds simple and logical.
The Nation State exists for the nation. But it is not simple
at all. It raises several intractable questions. For example:
What is the nation in question?
A world-wide Jewish nation? An Israeli-Jewish nation? Or just
an Israeli nation?
And what kind of nation state
are we talking about? The French nation state at the end of the
18th century? The Polish nation state that came into being at
the end of World War I? Or the American nation state as it exists
today? All these are models of a nation state - but very different
from each other.
* *
*
ANYONE WHO argues that Israel
is the state of the world-wide Jewish nation is emptying the
word "nation" of all content. This would mean that
our state belongs to a community most of whose members do not
live in Israel, are not Israeli citizens, do not pay Israeli
taxes and have no vote in Israeli elections. American Jews like
Henry Kissinger, Paul Wolfowitz and Thomas Friedman, while committed
body and soul to Israel, would vigorously deny that they belong
to the Jewish "nation" rather that to the American.
Years ago, the Knesset enacted
a law that denies anyone the right to run for elections without
publicly accepting that Israel is "the state of the Jewish
people". However, it is Israeli citizenship alone that decides
who can vote.
So perhaps our nation-state
really belongs to a Jewish-Israeli nation? Is Israel the nation
state of its Jewish citizens only? Many Israelis may feel that
way. But that is contrary to Israeli legislation, which says
that all citizens are equal before the law. According to the
Supreme Court and official doctrine, Israel is a "Jewish
and democratic state". A sort of square circle or round
square.
Israeli identity cards record
the holder's "nation". Cards belonging to Jews say:
"Nation: Jewish". Years ago, the Supreme Court rejected
the petition of a citizen for the entry "Nation: Israeli".
Now the court is dealing with another petition of dozens of citizens
(myself included) who want the item in their cards to read "Nation:
Israeli".
Is this country really an Israeli
nation state? If so, does the Israeli nation include all Israeli
citizens, much as the American nation includes all US citizens?
In particular - does this nation include the 1.4 million Palestinian-Arab
citizens, about a fifth of the state's population?
* *
*
ISRAEL'S ARAB citizens suffer
discrimination in almost all spheres of life. The list, which
is no secret, would fill several pages. Just as examples: the
education system spends on an Arab child one fifth of what it
spends on a Jewish one. The health system spends on an Arab citizen
much less than on a Jew. Almost all Arab local councils are bankrupt,
one of the reasons being that the government pays them per capita
much less than Jewish councils. An Arab citizen cannot get land
from the Land Authority, which holds almost all the land in Israel.
Not to mention the built-in official discrimination of the Law
of Return and the Law of citizenship.
Twice Israeli soldiers and
policemen have shot at Arab demonstrators who are Israeli citizens,
killing several of them - once in 1976 ("Land Day"),
the other time in 2000 ("the October Events"). They
never shot Jewish demonstrators in Israel. (Once the police shot
a Jewish demonstrator who was shooting at them from the roof
of his home.)
Now everybody understands that
a confrontation with the problem cannot be evaded anymore.
At the end of the 1948 war,
in which the state of Israel was founded, only a small number
of Palestinian-Arabs remained. Most of their compatriots had
fled or been driven out. The cultural, social and political elite
left at the beginning of the war. The pitiful remnant that was
left was subjected for 18 years to a regime of intimidation and
oppression called "military government". But the second
generation mustered up the courage to raise its head.
Now a third generation has
grown up. Many of its members, both male and female, have attended
universities and become entrepreneurs, professors, lawyers and
physicians. Recently, their representatives published a "vision"
which demands not only the elimination of all forms of discrimination,
but also religious, cultural and educational autonomy.
That is a revolutionary message,
and several similar documents are also on their way. Today the
Arab citizens are a self-confident community with their own (unrecognized)
institutions and political parties. This community is now more
than twice the size of the Jewish community that founded the
State of Israel in 1948.
The existence of a national
minority of this size cannot be ignored. It cannot be pretended
anymore that the problem does not exist, or that it can be solved
(and dismissed) by some millions of shekels more. Israel is facing
a fateful decision, which will not only determine the character
of its relations with its Arab citizens, but also the very character
of the state itself.
* *
*
THERE IS no sense in arguing
with those who hope publicly or secretly for ethnic cleansing
and the removal of all the Arabs from the state, and indeed from
the whole country between the sea and the Jordan River. Neither
is there much sense in arguing with those who want to keep the
Israeli Arabs as second-class citizens, estranged from the state
and deprived of influence. That is a time bomb.
Israeli democracy is faced
with a choice between two alternatives:
(a) A citizen's state,
in which all the citizens are equal, irrespective of ethnic origin,
nation, religion, language and gender. In Israeli political jargon,
that is called "a state of all its citizens" - an absurd
appellation, for how can a democratic state not belong to all
its citizens?
Such a state is not concerned
with ethnic origin and religious faith. Every group of parents
can decide how to educate their children (in the framework of
certain parameters fixed by the state). There will be no difference
between a Jewish, Arab or Polynesian citizen. Relations between
the individual and the state will be based solely on citizenship.
Example: the United States, where every person automatically
becomes part of the American nation upon receiving citizenship.
(b) A national state,
in which a Jewish-Israeli majority exists side by side with a
Palestinian-Israeli minority. In such a state, the majority has
its national institutions, but the minority, too, is recognized
as a national entity, with clearly defined national rights in
certain spheres, such as culture, religion, education etc. (These
rights were defined by the right-wing Zionist leader Vladimir
Ze'ev Jabotinsky as early as a hundred years ago, when he drew
up the "Helsingfors Plan" demanding rights for the
Jews in Russia.) Example: the status of the Catalans in Spain.
Some days ago, the researcher
Yossi Amitay drew my attention to an article written by Pinhas
Lavon one month (!) after the founding of the State of Israel.
Lavon (who later served as Minister of Defense and was implicated
in the infamous "Lavon Affair') analysed the problem of
the Arab minority after the war. He suggested a choice between
an "autonomist" approach which would allow the minority
to form its own autonomous institutions in a state dominated
by the majority belonging to another nation, and a "state-values"
state, in which all citizens would be treated according to universal
and egalitarian standards.
Lavon preferred the second
alternative (a state belonging to all its citizens), and so do
I.
* *
*
NOT LONG ago, Avigdor Liberman
presented a plan of his own: to give up the so-called "triangle"
region (on the Israeli side of the Green Line) together with
the dense Arab population living there, in exchange for the annexation
of Palestinian territories in which Jewish settlers are living.
The principle: Jews to Israel, Arabs to Palestine.
Liberman, the racist who immigrated
from the former Soviet Union, has learned from Stalin that whole
communities can be treated like chess figures. Only very few
people took this plan seriously. It is well known that Liberman
advocates the (so-called "voluntary") ethnic cleansing
of all the Arabs from the state and from the occupied territories.
His "plan" is quite unrealistic anyhow, because most
of Israel's Arab citizens live in Galilee and the Negev, far
from the Green Line, and Liberman does not suggest giving up
those.
The interesting part of the
ploy was not the "plan" itself, but the reaction of
the Arab citizens to it. Not one single Arab voice was raised
in favor of the idea. The Arab citizens are determined to remain
citizens of Israel, even when a Palestinian state comes into
being next to it.
This community wants to integrate
itself in the life of Israel, its economy, democratic institutions
and social fabric. It has succeeded in doing as much as it has
been allowed to. It wholeheartedly supports the creation of a
State of Palestine in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, but intends
to remain a national minority in Israel - much as most American
Jews supported the creation of the State of Israel but themselves
preferred to remain as a minority in the US.
Israel, for its part, cannot
give up 1.4 million hard-working inhabitants who pay taxes and
contribute their share to the national product. History shows
that a country that drives out whole communities always loses.
Spain has not recovered from the expulsion of the Jews and Muslims
500 years ago. France was grievously hit be the expulsion of
the Huegenots. Germany still suffers from the expulsion (and
worse) of the Jews.
* *
*
I AM an Israeli. I certainly
want to live in a State of Israel where the majority speaks Hebrew
and the Hebrew identity, the Hebrew culture and the Hebrew tradition
can be developed. That does not restrain me at all from striving
for a situation in which the Palestinian citizens of the state
are free to develop their own national identity, culture and
tradition.
The nation-state took form
some centuries ago on the ruins of the feudal and dynastic state,
in response to the needs of the era. The economic, technological,
military and cultural developments of the time demanded the organization
of larger territorial-political units, like France, Britain and
Germany. In order to consolidate such a state, every nation invented
for itself a unifying national history (more or less "imagined",
as the scholar Benedict Andersen termed it) and imposed it on
conquered or voluntarily incorporated peoples (Corsicans, Scots,
Bavarians, Basques and many others).
This kind of nation-state has
now become obsolete. Reality has changed. The United States created
a giant federal state spanning half a continent, and later Germany
and France have created the European Union and turned over to
it economic, military and even political functions that used
to be exercised by the nation-states.
The nation-state as such remains
in existence, because it fulfils a deep-seated human need to
belong to a group. But it is gradually turning into a multi-cultural,
open and liberal state, that absorbs (although not painlessly)
millions of foreigners, because it cannot exist without them.
The USA was the first to take this course, and now this is happening
even in the small countries of Eastern Europe - the very countries
where many of the early Zionists were infected with their narrow
and fanatical kind of nationalism.
If the State of Israel does
not want to explode from within, it must sooner or later become
such a state - an Israeli state in which Sammy from Acre can
live in dignity, together with his wife Lola from Jenin.
CounterPunch
Speakers Bureau Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid?
CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair
are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues,
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