A single Israeli-Palestinian state, in which Jews live as a minority alongside Arabs, would invite a revival of the oppression that Middle East Jews faced before they had an independent country, an advocate for Israel told "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner on
Newsmax TV Wednesday.
"References to one 'bi-national' state are basically a euphemism for gerrymandering the area so that the Jews are no longer in the majority" and "no longer have the political power as a self-determining people," said Gilead Ini, senior research analyst with the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA).
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Ini appeared on "MidPoint" with a political science professor, Ian Lustick, who has argued in the media that Israel must ultimately open up its political system to full Democratic participation by the Arab and Palestinian populations living under restrictions in Gaza, the West Bank and parts of Jerusalem.
Israelis and Palestinians in Gaza fought one all-out war this year, and Palestinians are on the brink of another uprising, with
attacks on individual Israelis increasing amid a dispute over Jerusalem's holy sites.
Lustick told Berliner that the goal of democracy is more important than whether it is achieved through a two-state solution — with Israelis and Palestinians in adjoining nations — or a bi-national state combining both populations, or a collection of administrative regions known as "cantons."
"What we have really now is a one-state outcome in which Israel is the one and only state between the Jordan River and the sea," said Lustick, who teaches at the University of Pennsylvania School of Arts and Sciences in Philadelphia.
"It can do whatever it wants virtually throughout the area," Lustick said of Israel. "But that's not the kind of a state that's going to be a basis for peace and stability in the region."
Ini countered that before Israelis established a state, "There wasn't a single place where Jews were the minority in the Middle East where it ended well.
"My father was personally expelled from Iraq, along with his entire family, because Jews were a minority in Iraq without political power," he said.
Ini said that a return to minority status for Jews as part of a democratization project for Arabs would likely produce bloodshed. He said that Lustick has admitted as much in his writing on the subject.
"It's just wrong to sit in your comfortable ivory tower in Pennsylvania and call for other people's blood," said Ini.
"I'm not calling for anybody's blood," Lustick replied. "But anyone who does insist that an unjust and oppressive order must remain permanently is calling for lots of blood in the future.
"The fact is that democracy anywhere in the world, including in the United States, is not something that comes easy," said Lustick, adding, "And yet, we are committed to it, and equality and democracy are the only ways in the long run that Jews will be safe in the Middle East."
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