Soccer Dad

It is not correct to say the Netanyahu accepted a Pal-State as part of the Oslo Accords.

There is nothing in the Oslo Accords that supports an independent Pal-State. Even Yitzhak Rabin was opposed to any such thing.

"no agreement was possible without the Palestinians accepting Israel as a Palestinian state."

Is that a typo? I suspect the Palis would more than gladly accept Israel as a Palestinian state, but not as a Jewish state.

Arab refusal to accept Jewish right of self-determination is old news, very old news (about 11th century). Palestinian demand of 'right of return' is the elephant in the room, it makes Western diplomats and journalists uncomfortable to acknowledge it will mean the end of Jewish independence.

If Israel creates a Palestinian state, then Palestinian citizens who want to emigrate to Israel must go through normal immigration channels. (Personally, I think the demand for a right to return is pretty reasonable, as long as they don't then have a problem with living in a majority-Jewish place and think they can whine that Jewish women aren't covered from head-to-toe and say it somehow violates their rights.) An even bigger issue, however is the Israeli rebuttal to Ahmedenijad's claim that Zionism is racist, or the lack of a non-comedic one, anyway. Don't get me wrong - I believe that Iran is one of those places where anyone born Muslim can be put to death for renouncing Islam, effectively establishing a religion-ist (theist means something totally different), Islamic State. Would it be so difficult, however, to say "Yes, the concept of a Jewish state is utterly and completely racist, but what is an officially Islamic State doing throwing stones?"

construcivecritic,

The "right of return" means there soon won't be a Jewish majority since the Palestinian birth rate is far higher than the Israeli birth rate and the UN definition of Palestinian refugees is unusually broad and inclusive in a way that is unique to the Palestinian case. (On the other hand, nobody pays attention to the fact that a similar number of Jews fled/were expelled from Arab countries). And in Israel there's already a pretty large and increasingly radical Arab minority with their (not quite moderate) Islamic Movement and national movement. If the "right of return" into Israel is accepted then at first stage it will turn Israel into a bi-national state with two hostile populations and within a couple of decades and a bloody civil war into another Arab-Muslim state where the Jews will be lucky if allowed to humbly live like the other non-Arab and/or non-Muslim populations in the Middle East (see the Kurds, the Berbers, the Copts, Lebanon, Sudan etc.).

That is the core problem of the conflict and why there's no peace yet. Jerusalem is also a very difficult issue, but more profoundly - what makes it completely impossible - is that the Palestinians demand both an Arab-Palestinian state next to Israel and an Arab-Palestinian state instead of Israel even if they don't say so explicitly, but that is what's meant by the demand for the "right of return" into the state of Israel. Otherwise there would have been a Palestinian state years ago since Ehud Barak offered them almost the entire territory plus territorial exchange and to divide Jerusalem.

That is the real story behind everything. A majority of Israelis think now the Oslo process was a Trojan horse designed not to reach a peaceful solution, but to reach the end of the Jewish state by either violence or demography - if the Jews won't accept ceding their sovereignty peacefully by turning into a (persecuted) minority in an Arab-Muslim state then there would be suicide bombing and rockets and missiles until the Jewish state collapses under both external and internal pressure. If Israel will unilaterally withdraw from the west bank the way it did with Gaza, it will be used to launch rockets and missiles into Israeli towns the way Gaza was used, but from the west bank they can target almost the entire Israel even with short-range rockets. That's why the Israeli vote went so much to the right in the last elections.

What the west needs to decide is whether to recognize the most difficult issues behind the failure, namely the refusal of the Palestinians to accept a REAL 2 state solution and the hard anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish incitement, or just keep putting the entire pressure only on Israel. Because I can tell you there won't be a peaceful solution if the only options for the Israelis are to either accept turning into an Arab-Muslim state or being targeted with terror and missiles.

That is the reality. The west can either recognize it or dream on while the bloodshed continues for generations to come.

BTW, I don't think the Israeli insistence not to become a minority in an Arab-Muslim state qualifies as racism. Let's see how the European countries cope with 40% Muslims and then turning into a minority in an Islamic state. My bet is that they won't let it go that far. At some point you have to recognize this process isn't leading to a secular liberal multi-cultural democracy, but to Muslim dominance. Not the entire world is on the same page and has the same ideologies and mentality as the west. And the Jews have a particularly harsh experience at being a minority at the mercy on non-Jews. The State of Israel was supposed to solve that.

All very well stated somegal. Liberals are unable to grasp the issue you touched upon. Or rather more likely those who insist that Zionism is racism are themselves racists who believe that Jews and only Jews have no right to self-determination. For them only Jewish nationalism is illegitimate.

Whenever I hear someone claim that a Jewish State is racist, I quickly point out that they have never set foot in Israel. As soon as you recognize the racial diversity of those Israelis who call themselves Jewish, and add to that the racial diversity of Israel's non-Jews, you realize that Israel is far more diverse than most European liberal societies. The concept of a Jewish State refers not to disenfranchising non-Jews. Rather, it refers to the state giving official recognition of Jewish laws and customs, and eliminating obstacles to observant Jews who choose to practice various forms of Judaism. The UK is an Anglican State. Does that bother anyone?

Excuse my ignorance but what is the difference between a "Jewish State" and a "Islamic State"
An Islamic state is a country that recognizes Islam as the central moral and social pillar of society.
For those of use to living in democracies, the term Islamic State and Democratic state are mutually exclusive. You can either be one or the other but not both.
In a democratic state no religion would be given special preference.
So when Israelis say they want to be recognized as a Jewish state
1. How does that affect the rights of Arab and Christian minorities who live in Israel
2. How does that affect the rights of Jewish people who are non orthodox

To Norris Hall:
Perhaps you have heard of Turkey? It is both Islamic and democratic. It may not be my ideal country, but I give them credit for trying. As for your questions:
1) Arabs and Christians have the full rights of citizenship in Israel. True, they are a minority. So they probably feel like us Jews feel when we live in any other country in the world. That's the whole point. Don't you get it? Some of us Jews are tired of always being in the minority.
2) It is disingenuous of you to try to drive a wedge between religious and secular Jews, but I'll humor you non-the-less. Just as various religious groups in the US try to inject religion into government, Israel has a similar phenomenon. Religious Jews in Israel, for whom I have complete respect, comprise at most 10% of the parliamentary seats. Their political efforts are minimally effective. Israel is overwhelmingly a secular state. When Israelis say they want to be recognized as a Jewish state, it is symbolic more than substantive. We want recognition for all we have suffered through to get so far. In just three to four generations we have moved from the impoverished ghettos of Europe, North Africa, and the Arabian peninsula, to create an ultra-modern, technologically advanced independent state. We pulled ourselves up by the bootstraps in a region of the world that has only known poverty for hundreds of years.
Finally, as for your comparison of the "Jewish State" to other Islamic states, I offer these simple observations. Israel has hundreds of mosques and a million Arab citizens. Arabic is an official language of the state. Arabs are in the government, academia, the judiciary, healthcare, etc. An Arab was even chosen to run the Jewish National Fund in Israel! By contrast, the Arab nations drove out 900,000 Jews from their countries. There are hardly any Jews left. Cairo has one synagogue. There are no synagogues in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq. Do you still think there is no difference between a "Jewish State" and an "Islamic State?"