I’m with you for the same reason: demographics.
The entire basis of Israel’s existence is as a Jewish homeland, the last safe place on Earth for Jews. To my mind that comes first. Thus a two-state solution is the only way forward.
But then there’s also this:
Gulf Arab states cover an enormous amount of territory. Some of them could readily carve out a New Palestine and easily fund all of the construction needed to raise its cities and towns up from the desert.
Rather than fight over a tiny piece of land in an already tiny country, why not build something new and set an example?
It’s not as if the world isn’t already facing mass migrations due to other aspects of the planetary population/resource/ecology crises. A mass migration to a New Palestine could also set the example for handling the other anticipated mass migrations of the next two centuries.
Do i understand your proposal correctly? 1: one or more Gulf Arab states should 'carve out' some land in the desert. 2: they should build "cities and towns." 3: the millions of people from the land their families have lived for generations will move there? Is that about right?
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I'm not sure how this is racist?
As for the New Palestine, I'm skeptical that other countries would actually want to put up the money to fund it. Not to mention geopolitical implications and access to resources. And they don't want to give up their land in exchange for land elseehere.
It’s racist because it’s saying Jews should be subject to mass transportation to somewhere undefined with no resources (where have we heard that before?). It’s also racist because Jews have been living in what is now Israel since antiquity. Jews are indigenous to that land and nowhere else. Nobody (including the Israeli government) has the right to empty a land of its population just because that land is disputed; you might just as well talk of emptying Kosovo of Albanians, Bosnia of Bosniaks or Northern Ireland of Protestants. It’s the royal road to genocide.
The problem with this "New Palestine" idea is that nobody actually wants the Palestinians. Egypt has closed its borders to them. Jordan pretty much kicked them out once they started causing shit. And any nation in the region that doesn't directly hate them, still benefits more from keeping them around as a propaganda piece then from actually helping them. The two state solution is really the only one with any chance of working, because the Palestinians have no where else to go.
@BrassRobo
Mostly true, but Jordan hasn't kicked the Palestinians as such. Sure, they did kick out the PLO, fedayeen and some of their supporters back in 1970-1, but the Palestinian population remained. Even today over 2 million people in the country are registered Palestinian refugees (out of a total of 10 million people in Jordan), while about 60% of the total Jordanian population are estimated to be of either partial or full Palestinian origin.
By the way, Jordan is a rare example of an Arab country that actually decided to more-or-less properly integrate its Palestinian population - though even in Jordan there are hundreds of thousands of Palestinians that still don't have citizenship, and there are some instances of discrimination against them (but even so, relatively speaking, Jordan is likely the best country in the region to live in as a Palestinian).
*sigh* If worse comes to worse, then there will be no choice but to have a program where the Jordanians take in all the Palestinians.
I'd love to see Israelis and Palestinians burying the hatchet and living in harmony as equals in Israel but considering the recent shenanigans of Trump, Netanyahu and such....I'm afraid the Palestinians have not choice but to move to Jordan since Jordan's (more or less) willing to take them in.
@SpukiKitty
Not even close. Jordan doesn't want to take in any more than what they already have. After all, remember that prior to 1967 the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), now occupied by Israel, was a part of Jordan (which had formally annexed the West Bank in 1950). All Palestinians present there at that time were automatically given Jordanian citizenship.
In 1988, Jordan decided not to pursue the claim to the territory and gave it up. This, in turn, meant that the Palestinians in the West Bank lost the Jordanian citizenship they previously held.
What is worse, on the pretext of preventing Israel from causing an exodus of Palestinians from the West Bank and into Jordan, the Jordanian state actually started stripping the citizenship rights of thousands of Palestinians in Jordan (though this practice was stopped in recent years, and the citizenships restored).
Given the numerical superiority of citizens of Palestinian origin in Jordan, as well as some tensions that still exist between them and the "native" Jordanians, it's extremely unlikely Jordan will invite West Bank Palestinians to just come over.
There is no solution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem that will involve mass population transfers -- unless a particularly severe war breaks out. Just like it's naive to expect that Israel will just uproot the hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem (far too late for that...), the Palestinians in the territories -- that is, West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem -- aren't going away either (and why should they?).
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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