Word: israels
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Former President Jimmy Carter suffered a verbal pummeling three years ago for comparing the standoff between Israel and the Palestinians to apartheid - the South African system that meant not only segregation, but a denial of citizenship to a whole category of people. And so it was ironic that a key Israeli leader warned his people that the status quo on the territories conquered by Israel in 1967 amounts to the same thing. Barak's point was to warn that unless the Palestinians are given an independent state of their own, the world will eventually notice that their lives are controlled...
...long as between the Jordan (River) and the [Mediterranean] Sea there is only one political entity, named Israel, it will end up being either non-Jewish or nondemocratic," warned Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak last week. "If the Palestinians vote in elections it is a binational state, and if they don't vote it is an apartheid state...
...Defense Minister Barak sounds a little exasperated, that may be because he's swimming against Israel's domestic political tide in seeking to restart momentum toward a two-state solution. Whatever the long-term dangers, Israelis right now don't see any negative consequences for maintaining the status quo. The Palestinians are under siege in Gaza and walled off in the West Bank. Terror attacks are rare today and most Israelis are scarcely aware that the Palestinians exist. Israel's booming economy, increasingly integrated with those of Europe and the U.S., is knocking on the door of membership...
...even the most moderate segment of Palestinian leadership, a two-state solution would have, at the very least, involved setting the 1967 borders as the basis for negotiation, and accepting East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital. But Israel's political median has moved steadily to the right since the days of Rabin, and the minimum demands acceptable to Palestinian moderates are deemed too much for the Israelis. The militant settlers who believe they have a God-given right to build their homes in the occupied territories are now part of the mainstream, disproportionately represented in the army's mid-level...
...situation may be intolerable for the Palestinians, but for Israel there simply is no immediate downside to maintaining the status quo. Telling Israelis about the specter of apartheid and demographic "time bombs" is like telling Americans that they must fix social security. Nobody disagrees, but don't hold your breath...