Monday, November 16, 2009

Jewish settlers in the future Palestine


In the English language Lebanese newspaper The Daily Star, columnist Bill Glucroft has written about a possible arrangement regarding Jewish settlers in the West Bank. The article, Settlers: a Jewish minority in Palestine?, touches on the issue of the fate of those settlers after the declaration of the new Palestinian independent state. The idea is a very logical one, as a matter of fact it has been floating around for a while now, and I always believed that the solution will be along those lines. What are we talking about, then?

The simplest and most logical solution is that the settlers will become citizens of the new country, actually having double citizenship by retaining their Israeli citizenship, also, but technically living as a minority in Palestine. As long as the new Palestine will be a democracy, this arrangement would benefit both countries. Of course the settlers would run the risk of being attacked by fanatics, should Hamas-indoctrinated Palestinians manage to gain any power. But this would be a double edged occurrence because in such an event Israel would retaliate, even invade, which no right minded Palestinian would want to chance.

On the other hand, in case of properly normalized relations between the two countries, the conditions of the Israeli Arabs would be linked with the conditions for Palestinian Jews, as proposed by Gershon Baskin, which then would prevent any discrimination in either of the two countries.

Of course, there are a lot of wrinkles in this idea that will need to be ironed out before a working arrangement is reached, but adopting it could be a good basis for the progress of the peace process.