A multicultural state can offer Jewish Israelis and Muslim and Christian Palestinians a future free of discrimination, occupation, fear and violence
Saree Makdisi
Saree Makdisi
(Professor of English Literature at the University of California, and the author of Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation)
guardian.co.uk, Monday July 28 2008
"In order to try to create an exclusively Jewish state in what had been the culturally diverse land of Palestine, Israel's founders expelled or drove into flight half of Palestine's Muslim and Christian population and seized their land, their houses, and their property.....
.....Even while demanding – rightly – that no one should forget the Jewish people's history of suffering, and above all the Holocaust, Israel has insisted ever since 1948 not merely that the Palestinians must forget their own history, but that what it calls peace must be premised on that forgetting, and hence on the Palestinians' renunciation of their rights. As Israel's foreign minister has said, if the Palestinians want peace, they must learn to strike the word "nakba" from their lexicon......
Even if it were conceivable, the creation of a Palestinian statelet in the occupied territories would do nothing to safeguard the rights of the 20% of Israel's citizens who are Palestinian; on the contrary, its existence would further empower the likes of former deputy prime minister Avigdor Lieberman, who wants all Palestinians removed to make room for Jewish immigrants (like himself). Nor would it address the right of return of the Palestinians who were deliberately expelled to make room for a Jewish state in 1948, who have been kept out and living in limbo – or in the prison that is Gaza – solely in order to preserve Israel's tenuous claim to Jewishness.
Negation, denial and imprisonment have run their course. The future should be built on affirmation, cooperation, and the constitution of a democratic and secular state that guarantees the rights of Israelis and Palestinians, of Jews, Muslims, and Christians alike."
guardian.co.uk, Monday July 28 2008
"In order to try to create an exclusively Jewish state in what had been the culturally diverse land of Palestine, Israel's founders expelled or drove into flight half of Palestine's Muslim and Christian population and seized their land, their houses, and their property.....
.....Even while demanding – rightly – that no one should forget the Jewish people's history of suffering, and above all the Holocaust, Israel has insisted ever since 1948 not merely that the Palestinians must forget their own history, but that what it calls peace must be premised on that forgetting, and hence on the Palestinians' renunciation of their rights. As Israel's foreign minister has said, if the Palestinians want peace, they must learn to strike the word "nakba" from their lexicon......
Even if it were conceivable, the creation of a Palestinian statelet in the occupied territories would do nothing to safeguard the rights of the 20% of Israel's citizens who are Palestinian; on the contrary, its existence would further empower the likes of former deputy prime minister Avigdor Lieberman, who wants all Palestinians removed to make room for Jewish immigrants (like himself). Nor would it address the right of return of the Palestinians who were deliberately expelled to make room for a Jewish state in 1948, who have been kept out and living in limbo – or in the prison that is Gaza – solely in order to preserve Israel's tenuous claim to Jewishness.
Negation, denial and imprisonment have run their course. The future should be built on affirmation, cooperation, and the constitution of a democratic and secular state that guarantees the rights of Israelis and Palestinians, of Jews, Muslims, and Christians alike."
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