An article by Larry Derfner in Foreign Policy as to the possibility that Israel may annex the West Bank caught my attention. If indeed that happens, the article posits that Israel would be giving Israeli citizenship to 50,000 Palestinians. And with citizenship, such Palestinians will be eligible to vote.
I do not in the least believe that the current Prime Minister of Israel is seriously considering such proposal. If the aforesaid Palestinians are allowed to become citizens of Israel, they can have the potential to affect Israeli society and its very own survival as the Palestinians will now have a voice in the management of its conflicts with the rest of the Arab world. I do not believe that such Palestinians, if given Israeli citizenship, will have a solid loyalty to the Jewish state. If another war breaks between Israel and the Arab world, will they fight for example?
Demographic suicide is what will happen if Israel grants citizenship to more Palestinians. There are already Israeli Arabs, I do not think adding more Arabs to Israeli society will have a positive, long term benefit for the survival of the Jewish state. However, if Israel annexes the West Bank, it would also be bad PR if they will not grant citizenship because the alternative would be to marginalize the Palestinians. This will be another apartheid that will surely tarnish the international standing of Israel.
The government of Bibi, if he gets elected again in this months election, should not therefore annex the West Bank and to let the status quo stand. The settlements in the West Bank will have to stay in the West Bank but the West Bank itself should not have an official political status in Israel. While the current state of things suggest that the settlements in the West Bank are part of Israel, Israel should not officially annex it. It will create more problems than it benefits.
The whole of Jerusalem should be forever solidified as the capital of Israel, and the current actions of the Bibi government to do such that is a good and welcome development. I do not believe that the establishment of a Palestinian state will bring long term security guarantees for Israel. There will always be that destabilizing force in Palestinian society that will never accept a Jewish state and honestly, at the back of every Palestinian's mind, there will always be that eternal simmering desire to exterminate the Jewish state. Therefore, a Palestinian state may only be a future platform for Hamas to launch its anti-Israel diatribes. And such will not always be in words.
The Palestinians will have to unite first and must have a solid leadership structure that can speak for the whole Palestinian interests for any meaningful results to happen. In its current state, the Palestinians are ruled by two systems, a secular Fatah in the West Bank and a radical, Islamist Hamas in Gaza. A Palestinian state in the West Bank would be impotent in ensuring that Israel will live in peace.
The Palestinians will have to unequivocally reject the destruction of Israel mantra, recognize its right to exist, renounce violence as a negotiating tool, and be ruled by one system of government that is secular and moderate, unless all of these can happen, there can be no peace for Israel. Israel however, cannot and should not annex the West Bank as it will, if it will absorb its Palestinian inhabitants, be a demographic suicide for Israel. That is in itself a threat Israel's existence and integrity.
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