Until Two States Exist, Palestinians Deserve Voting Rights in Israel

Creative Commons and Oona Taper (cargocollective.com/oonataper)

The reelection of Binyamin Netanyahu, accompanied by his renunciation of the two-state solution and racist denigration of Israel’s Arab voters, has created the moment of greatest despair over Israel/Palestine that we have experienced in Tikkun’s thirty years of existence.

I first published in Tikkun in its inaugural year, 1986. At that time I joined Michael Lerner in his courageous call for negotiations with the Palestinians (then forbidden by Israeli law) and the creation of a Palestinian state side by side with Israel. Tikkun has consistently fought for that position over the years. There have been moments of hope, such as the Oslo Accords, and moments of great despair, like the Second Intifada. But no moment has held more despair than the present.

Lerner’s present proposal—to accord citizenship rights to the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza—is a product of this despair. He acknowledges that a “binational” state may not solve anything and may make things even worse. Yet he is right that absent any movement toward a Palestinian state—and there is none now—the choice is between effective apartheid and one state between the Jordan and the Mediterranean.

Netanyanhu’s racist outburst highlights the long-known fact that Israel’s Arab citizens are not treated as equals, even if they have the vote. So there is little hope that giving the vote to millions of other Palestinians would guarantee them equality. But it seems as if there is no other way to make clear the choice that Israel faces between a Jewish majority and some form of binationalism, because, like it or not, the world community is going to force it to face that choice in any case.

The history of Zionism has always revolved around this choice. David Ben-Gurion understood the necessity of a Jewish majority to guarantee a Jewish state. Although Israel’s Declaration of Independence guaranteed full equality of political participation and the equal allocation of resources to all Israel’s citizens, Ben-Gurion never lived up to that promise. He welcomed the flight of the Arabs in 1948 and, at least in the case of Lod, actually ordered their expulsion. He was not sorry to see them go. And after the war, he placed Israeli Arabs under military rule, which was not lifted until 1966 when he was no longer in power.

But whatever the cruelties and undemocratic features of Ben-Gurion’s policies, they were nevertheless intended to create a state that could eventually be both Jewish and democratic. The policies of the Israeli right, including the Likud Party and parties even further to the right, are designed to create the opposite. When a democracy rules millions who are not its citizens, it can only spell the end of that democracy. Thus, the demand to extend democratic rights to Palestinians under Israeli rule is also a demand for Israeli Jews to live in a democracy.

What tactics ought to be adopted to achieve this end? Boycotts, divestment, and sanctions are probably not tactically smart because they are associated with groups that want to dismantle the State of Israel. The goal of Lerner’s campaign is the opposite: to preserve Israel by extending citizenship to all its subjects. Thus, the campaign ought to embrace Israel’s Declaration of Independence and demand that it be applied from the Mediterranean to the Jordan. When Israeli government officials visit the United States, they should be met with this demand. Perhaps an effort should also be mounted toward a United Nations Security Council resolution to the same effect. Rather than punitive, the campaign should be affirmative—and thus force the proponents of the status quo to digest what they’ve already swallowed.