“I call it a Jewish state with a large Arab minority,” she said. Just how large is vigorously contested. Accepting the lower – and probably accurate – estimate of 1.6 million Palestinians in the West Bank, and adding them to the identical number of Israeli Arabs, the 6 million Israeli Jews would still retain a 2:1 demographic majority. But is that sufficient for Israel to remain, in any meaningful way, a Jewish state?
Hotovely counts on vigorous encouragement of aliya to augment the demographic balance in Israel’s favor. But from where will Jews come, and when?
Her proposal to grant “gradual citizenship to Palestinians based on loyalty tests” may not be realistic. Palestinians are not likely to relinquish “their” land – all of it, they claim, between the Jordan River and Mediterranean – to become Israeli citizens. Nor are nations that routinely vilify the Jewish state likely to jettison their conviction that Israelis are, and will remain, cruel and perfidious Jews who occupy “Palestinian” land and oppress its people.
Hotovely is understandably convinced, based on her accurate perception of Oslo failures from Rabin to Barak to Olmert to Sharon, that a new plan is necessary. She recognizes that her mentor Netanyahu has been making an effort to revive negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, “but he knows that it will fail.” (So does everyone, it seems, but President Obama.)
What then? Renewed waves of Palestinian terrorism? An international boycott of Israel, everyone’s favorite new “apartheid” state? Imposed borders with UN soldiers to enforce them?
There may be another way to achieve two states (or even three, if Gaza Palestinians remain determined to live in their own Hamastan) for two peoples. There already is a de facto Palestinian state, with a Palestinian majority population, located in most of historical Palestine. Its name is Jordan. West Bank Palestinians, as they did between 1949-67, can once again live under Jordanian Palestinian rule, perhaps this time as citizens.
For a change, why not pressure King Abdullah to be flexible? He would, after all, still preside over a state that is Judenrein. Jewish settlements would remain no less a part of Israel than the early 20th century settlement of Tel Aviv. A joint Israeli/Jordanian/Palestinian police force could patrol, and enforce, peace between communities.
It may seem preposterous to believe that such a plan could succeed. But given Israel’s current standing in the world as a pariah state, and the looming threat from Iran that arouses world indifference (precisely as a similar threat to annihilate Jews did in 1939), why not think heretical thoughts?
For that, at least, we have Tzipi Hotovely to thank. She understands, boldly articulates, and personifies the convergence of Judaism and Zionism necessary for Israel to survive as a Jewish state. Settlement in the Land of Israel is their shared historical bedrock.
Secular Zionists on the left – eager to curry Western favor as the “conscience” of Israel – believe in the “sin” of settlement. Perhaps Hotovely can guide them back to the promised land. As she boldly asserts, “The State of Israel and the Land of Israel belong to the Jewish Nation.”
Jerold S. Auerbach, author of “Hebron Jews” (2009), is completing a book about the sinking of the Altalena, to be published in 2011.