Newsweek
The TIP Report (PDF) In the report, Luntz describes the "best settlement argument" as one that draws a parallel between the Arab communities in Israel and the Jewish settlers in the West Bank—and refers to the idea of evacuating Jews as racist. "The idea that anywhere that you have Palestinians there can't be any Jews, that some areas have to be Jew-free, is a racist idea," he suggests saying. "We don't say that we have to cleanse out Arabs from Israel. They are citizens of Israel. They enjoy equal rights. We cannot see why it is that peace requires that any Palestinian area would require a kind of ethnic cleansing to remove all Jews. We don't accept it. Cleansing by either side against either side is unacceptable."
Simple to respond to, I should say. However, I will let PM Salam Fayyad (Fatah) respond: To the very TIPish question by former CIA director James Woolsey :
"There are a million Arabs in Israel, accounting for one-sixth of the Israeli population (...) generally they enjoy the guarantees that Americans look for in the Bill of Rights. Now, if there is to be the rule of law in a Palestinian state, and if Jews want to live in someplace like Hebron, or anyplace else in a Palestinian state, for whatever reasons or historical attachments, why should they not be treated the same way Israeli Arabs are?"the PM responded:
"I’m not going to disagree with you. And I’m not someone who will say that they would or should be treated differently than Israeli Arabs are treated in Israel. In fact the kind of state that we want to have, that we aspire to have, is one that would definitely espouse high values of tolerance, co-existence, mutual respect and deference to all cultures, religions. No discrimination whatsoever, on any basis whatsoever. Jews to the extent they choose to stay and live in the state of Palestine will enjoy those rights and certainly will not enjoy any less rights than Israeli Arabs enjoy now in the state of Israel."My own response is, that assuming the Arabs in Israel do in fact enjoy equal rights (which is not exactly obvious), then let the TIP (Aipac?) tell Israel to withdraw all its troops and police, dismantle the wall and let those jews who wish to stay in an independent Palestinian state to do so. At the very least such jews as the Samaritans around Nablus and the orthodox rabbi in Gush Etzion, Menachem Froman will do so.
In fact, the Israeli lobby has just given the Palestinians the best weapon: to consistently and persistently invite the settlers in the occupied territories to stay and become citizens of the Palestinian state, and to do so in the media. It would be good if Fatah and Hamas leaders could do that without being prompted to do so. That would neutralise what appears to be the "best settlement argument" the zionists have.
NB:
The TIP website says:
It is nonetheless interesting to note, that according to reports, Israeli PM himself used the tired old Shoah blackmail argument, telling Frank-Walter Steinmeier, german foreign minister, that the occupied West Bank mustn't be 'judenrein' (Nazi expression meaning jew-less). The German, doing his job and upholding the egocentric german guilt trip, apparently merely nodded. Furthermore, it was reported, that Netanyahu instructed his collaborators to use such blackmail, which is what the TIP report is doing. Coincidence? Maybe.
The Israel Project (TIP) is an international non-profit organization devoted to educating the press and the public about Israel while promoting security, freedom and peace. The Israel Project provides journalists, leaders and opinion-makers accurate information about Israel. The Israel Project is not related to any government or government agency.
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