Academic: Israeli-Arabs want end of Jewish state
There is no way to accommodate demands of Israeli-Arabs, short of replacing Israel with an Arab state, says Dr. Dan Schueftan
There was no way of accommodating the demands of Israeli-Arabs, short of the destruction of Israel and its replacement with an Arab state, a senior Israeli academic told a stormy session of the Herzliya Conference Monday, held to discuss the Arab minority in Israel.
Dr. Dan Schueftan, deputy director of the National Security Studies Center at the University of Haifa, said a document recently released by Israeli- Arab leaders called for
"nothing short of the destruction of Jewish national state."
Schueftan said the consensus position of Israeli -Arabs, as reflected in the document "The future vision of Palestinian Arabs in Israel,' was that Israel should be "replaced with a bi-national state, alongside a mechanism to turn it into an Arab state, adding: "Otherwise, we (Israelis) are automatically not legitimate (in their eyes)." The document was published by the Higher Monitoring Committee for the Arab Population in Israel, a forum of Israeli-Arab leaders.
Schueftan said: "The signal is that even if inequality is bridged, it won't solve the problem. The lack of legitimacy of the national Jewish state is the source of the problem."
The recent Lebanon war also showed that a majority of Israeli-Arabs thought "every enemy of State of Israel should at least be understood," Schueftan emphasized. He added that the document released by the Higher Monitoring Committee said "the Jews rose as a colonialist phenomenon… who expelled… butchered… and the Palestinians have only fought for peace."
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