A Palestinian state

What arguments can you bring in for not wanting a Palestinian state right now?

The idea can be: we must add the West Bank to Israel because that is ancient Jewish territory. This is an ideological position which has for its aim to annex the area. That is simply illegal.

You can say: If Israel can no longer fly over the West Bank, it loses the military control over the airspace and it becomes harder to control the borders. I think that’s true. But I would like to connect this with another thought: if military power is so important, make sure you – unlike minister Lieberman does – maintain contacts with your neighbors in a proper way. Because the loss thereof is probably of more importance when it comes to controlling your military position.

You may think: the Palestinians want to drive in Israel into the sea. Hamas says so explicitly, and that makes negotiating quite impossible in my eyes. Abbas and his club recognizes, at least verbally, the existence of Israel. I think we should cherish that.

The thought may be: besides the rockets from Gaza we will now get them from the West Bank as well. That could very well be the case indeed because Abbas’ authority is not large enough to be able to prevent that from happening. I would not know what you can do against it, so this seems to me to be a real problem.

Thus I arrive at three arguments for and one against. Of course there are many more issues and arguments to bring in, but I think my considerations soon will follow the pattern that just came out: more arguments for the Palestinian state than otherwise.

What I fear is that for the current Israeli government the first argument has the heaviest weight, that’s to say it embraces the ideology of Greater Israel. And that all other arguments must give way to this argument. Over against that position, I like to think that if we let go of the ideology, business can be done about the rest.

Also see Thought Police