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Mahmoud Abbas' Minority Report

(i24 News) Emmanuel Navon - Shortly after negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians resumed, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas declared that he wouldn't tolerate the presence of a single Jew in the future Palestinian state. Imagine if Scotland, which is supposed to hold a referendum on its independence next year, would declare that it shall not tolerate any Englishman (or Jew, for that matter) on its sovereign territory. The partition (or two-state) model has been applied to partially solve conflicts in other parts of the world, but nowhere does this model entail the absence of minorities. Since the Second World War, there have been many cases of partition and of territorial withdrawal. But in most cases, minorities were not asked to leave as part of a peace deal. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, newly independent countries such as Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania asked the Russian settlers to leave, but the EU took the side of the Russian minorities, claiming that their forced transfer would constitute a human rights violation. In the end, the Russian minority was allowed to stay. So why should the Arab-Israeli conflict be an exception? If there is true peace, why should there be an Arab minority in the Jewish state, but no Jewish minority in the Arab state? The writer teaches international relations at Tel Aviv University and at the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center.
2013-08-09 00:00:00
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