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A Palestinian People, Yes; A Jewish People, No?

(Ha'aretz) Shlomo Avineri - A deep, tragic misunderstanding characterizes Arab views on Israel's identity. In the standard Arab view, "Jews" are comparable to "Christians" or "Muslims." In other words, they are a religious group, not a nation. But the essence of the Zionist revolution is the view that the Jews are a nation, and as such, they have the right to national self-determination in a political framework. This principle was accepted by the UN in 1947 in its decision to partition British Mandatory Palestine into two states - Jewish and Arab (not Jewish and Muslim-Christian). To be sure, Jewish identity has a religious component, just as there is a Muslim dimension to Arab national identity. One of the problems that complicates attempts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the fact that the Arab side has difficulty recognizing that Jews in Israel view themselves as a nation. Identity is a matter of self-definition, not external definition. Just as Jews are not the ones who will determine whether the Palestinians are a people or not, Arabs cannot determine whether the Jews are a people or not. Anyone who rejects the Jews' right to define themselves as a nation denies them a fundamental human right, to which Jews, just like the Palestinians, are entitled. The constitutions of Syria, Egypt, and Lebanon define their countries' identities as Arab. So Arab is fine, but Jewish is not? In my dictionary, there is a whiff of racism in this distinction. The writer, professor of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, served as director-general of Israel's Foreign Ministry.
2010-08-13 09:52:42
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