WITHOUT ERADICATION OF JEWISH AND PALESTINIAN FUNDAMENTALISM, AND WITHOUT CITIZENSHIP FOR PALESTINIANS, JEWISH AND PALESTINIAN BLOOD WILL CONTINUE TO BE SHED

There can be no controversy in the world more disorienting and obfuscating than the one the world has witnessed recently, related to the creation or not of an independent Palestinian State. The heated debate, which has been raging for some time now, has been fraught with contradictory political visions, with an extremism bordering on the criminal, on the one hand, and even credulous compromise positions, on the other. As is very typical in these situations, the opposing parties frequently resort to slogans that are not always related to reality, avoiding addressing the basic issues that fuel the perpetuation of the conflict and seeking to reconcile those components that are essential to neutralizing it.

The current constellation

The State of Israel, in practice, today imposes its sovereignty over the entire territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Within the internationally recognized boundaries (the well-known June 4, 1967 lines) and in East Jerusalem, it has de jure sovereignty. In the territories of the West Bank and Gaza, it has de facto sovereignty. There, Israel does and undoes whatever suits it and interests it, arguing that these are territories under military rule because they are disputed. Israel controls the basic aspects of sovereignty: borders and customs, airspace, sea, water, communications, currency, creation of Jewish settlements, population registration, etc. The Palestinian local authority must primarily deal with municipal issues.

Between the river and the sea live 15 million people (not including temporary foreign workers in Israel): 7.5 million Jews and 7.5 million Palestinians.

7.5 million Jews, all full citizens of Israel, within Israel's June 1967 borders, in East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, and the West Bank.

1.9 million Palestinians, all citizens of Israel, within Israel's June 1967 borders.

300,000 Palestinians in East Jerusalem, under internationally unrecognized Israeli sovereignty, the vast majority with Israeli residency and without Israeli citizenship.

3.1 million Palestinians in the West Bank, under an Israeli legal order based on Apartheid, as established by the International Court of Justice (Advisory Opinion dated July 19, 2024). That is, different laws based on ethnic origin, unlike Palestinian citizens of Israel, who, despite having full Israeli citizenship, are discriminated against. That is, laws are equal for all, although their application deprioritizes that population.

2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza, in an order to be generated at the end of the current war, where the continued Israeli domination over most aspects that represent control and sovereignty is emerging.

The Eternal Conflict

The conflict between Jews and Palestinians over the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean dates back a century, and today it seems to be worsening with time. From its beginning, the international community felt compelled to intervene in its solution, emphasizing, time and again, the right of both peoples to the territory and the need to reach agreements on territorial division and sovereignty, provided that the civil and religious rights of each were preserved.

This continued failure was not accidental. Unfortunately, both peoples were characterized, and are still characterized today, by the predominance within their framework of supremacist political and ideological groups that demand the right to the entire territory and the need to expel the other. What's worse, the leaders of both peoples chose not to marginalize these extremist sectors, but rather, on the contrary, made them an inseparable part of their leadership. Thus, today, groups close to Ministers Ben Gvir and Smotrich, and some Likud MPs in Israel, are promoting the Greater Israel project, which includes ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population under the guise of "promoting voluntary emigration after martyring them." Similarly, the Hamas project champions the slogan "Free Palestine, from the river to the sea," whose meaning, in reverse, is exactly the same.

Any serious attempt to promote a process of rapprochement toward an agreement between Jews and Palestinians in this territory necessarily requires completely eradicating the enormous and harmful influence of these extremist groups, not just Hamas. Legitimizing these positions is the basis for perpetuating the conflict.

Citizen in an independent state

It is strange that Jews have a selective memory and only remember part of the famous 1917 Balfour Declaration. It clearly stated the rule that every state must guarantee "full civil and religious rights to all inhabitants of the territory under its dominion." In contrast, the vast majority of Israeli society, according to the political groups that represent it, believes that the Palestinians under its control, after the territorial conquest of 1967, would have to settle for living in a system with limited freedoms without basic civil rights such as full citizenship.

As long as the Palestinian-Israeli conflict resolution plans do not guarantee Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank full citizenship in an independent state (both in Israel and in the Palestinian State), the Palestinian people will rebel, even though terror, receiving massive international support as they do today, just as the Jews received it in 1948, despite the fact that they also resorted to terror in their epic struggle for national liberation.

The pretext of future mutual security dangers may well be neutralized by measures and agreements, always after having accepted the two aforementioned principles.

Without eradicating the extreme fundamentalism so deeply rooted in Israeli and Palestinian society, and without a project that guarantees the granting of full citizenship to Palestinians within the framework of an independent state, we will unfortunately continue to witness the shedding of Jewish and Palestinian blood.

Daniel Kupervaser

Herzlya – Israel 18-10-2025

https://ojalameequivoque.blogspot.com/

kupervaser.daniel@gmail.com

@KupervaserD