The demand for “the recognition of Israel as a Jewish State” is the condition that Israel has been trying to impose on Palestinians and the Arab world in general. Many statements made by Israeli politicians pertaining to this condition are based on two factors. First, that a Jewish state is the greatest guarantee for the security of Israel. And second, it ensures its survival. Yet, it had created two opposing groups — one supporting the establishment of a Jewish state and the other voicing its own objections. Supporters are using it as part of the internal politics to garner more and more support from the Zionist colonists of the religious right.
Opponents of the plan believe that a Jewish state goes hand in hand with the expansion of colonies in the Occupied Territories, which destroys the peace process and makes a two-state solution impossible to attain. A second reason for their opposition is that a Jewish state terminates democracy inside Israel because Palestinians of the 1948 areas will be, as they actually are, second-class citizens, which negates the basic principle of democracy where all citizens are equal under the rule of law not the rule of men. A third reason they cite is that the failure of establishing a viable, independent Palestinian state shall make Israel a bi-national state with millions of Palestinians as citizens, which will definitely eradicate the ‘Jewishness’ of Israel, the very thing desired by the supporters of a Jewish state.
Former Israeli president Shimon Peres considered that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s insistence on the condition of a Jewish state will kill chances for a peaceful political settlement with the Palestinians and isolate Israel in the world. Israeli Finance Minister Yair Lapid agreed with Peres saying: “Prime Minister Netanyahu is dead wrong on this subject. Israel does not need Palestinian recognition to be a Jewish state.” Lapid seems to be certain that a Jewish state will negate both the future of his party and that of Israel as well. More revealing were the statements of Mayer Dagan, the former head of Mossad (the Israeli intelligence agency) who called Netanyahu’s condition “stupid and absolute nonsense”. He said: “If we review the UN resolution of 1947, we will see the endorsement of two states, a Jewish state and an Arab Palestinian state.” He heatedly argued: “Why are we insisting to get such recognition now from the Palestinians and do we really need such recognition from a Palestinian state that has not yet been established?”
Along these lines, but more revealing, came Professor Hillel Cohen of the Hebrew University with a rather insightful article in Maariv newspaper where he said that “the very recognition of the Jewish state by the Palestinians amounts to recognising the Jewish right of sovereignty over Palestine and such a recognition means that Palestinians have to accept their historical defeat as a result of the return of the real owners of Palestine.” In the Oslo agreement, he went on to say, “the Palestinian leadership recognised Israel as a political reality in which a state was established and not a religious Biblical reality that was fulfilled with Jews becoming the sovereign majority and Palestinians becoming a ruled minority”.
In the last two years, the real intention of Netanyahu’s extreme-Right government became clear to all. Indeed, it is evident and well understood now that the condition stipulated for a recognition of the Jewish state is a deal-killer that allows Israel to run away from a peaceful political arrangement with the Palestinians that requires Tel Aviv to fulfil its obligations to honour all the United Nations resolutions, including the right of return, the speedy withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Palestinian land occupied in 1967, including occupied East Jerusalem. The very recognition of the ‘Jewishness’ of the state of Israel by the Palestine Liberation Organisation and the Palestinian National Authority will open the door, sooner or later, for the transfer/expulsion of the Palestinians of 1948 areas after stripping them out of their Israeli citizenship as non-Jews in an exclusively Jewish state. This will make the Arab-Palestinian indigenous population aliens in their homeland.
Recognising the ‘Jewishness’ of Israel amounts to the recognition of the Zionist premise based on fables and fabricated arguments made up by the non-Semitic European Khazar Jews (Ashkenazis) who converted to the Jewish religion in the seventh century, according to the Universal Jewish Encyclopaedia. They cannot claim the Hebrew or the Israeli nationalities because they solely belong to the Sephardim, the Arab Semitic tribe that crossed over from Arabia. The only way to provide legal residency for non-Semitic European coverts, the Ashkenazis, is by turning the Jewish faith into a nationality which is not right or correct in any way, especially that Christianity, Islam and every known religion in our world testifies to this truth and only truth. So help us God. For all the reasons mentioned above, the recognition of the Jewish state by the Palestinians is not going to happen.
Professor As’ad Abdul Rahman is the chairman of the Palestinian Encyclopaedia.
