The left would have us believe that all Arabs are thrilled at the idea of living in a Palestinian state but 250,000 Arab Israelis, at least, do not want to become part of a Palestinian state for the following reasons.
- They have seen the daily human rights violations occurring under the leadership of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank.
- They have seen the daily human rights violations occurring under the leadership of the terrorist organisation Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
- They know that unless the Arab citizens of Israel elect new leaders who will promote coexistence between Arabs and Jews in Israel, nothing will change.
- “Some of the leaders of the Arab citizens of Israel, particularly a number of Knesset members, have been acting against the interests of their constituents. It is almost as if these purported leaders represent the PA and Hamas instead of the Arab Israelis who voted for them with the hope that they would work to solve problems confronting their communities, such as unemployment.”
Arab citizens of Israel, who number nearly two million, are up in arms about US President Donald Trump’s plan for Middle East peace, which proposes including some of their communities in a future Palestinian state. Since the unveiling of the plan, thousands of Arabs have been demonstrating to express their rejection of the idea of placing them under the sovereignty of a Palestinian state.
[…] The main reason Arabs in Israel are afraid of becoming Palestinian citizens is because they know that the Palestinian state will be anything but democratic. […]
In Israel, Arab citizens participate in the general elections and have their own representatives in the Knesset. In the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Palestinians have been deprived of free and fair elections since January 2006.
The continued power struggle between the PA and Hamas has denied Palestinians the right to vote for new members of their parliament, the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC). In addition, Palestinians have been denied the right to vote for a new president since January 2005, when Mahmoud Abbas was elected for a four-year term of office. Last month, Abbas entered the 16th year of the same term.
In light of the ongoing dispute between the PA and Hamas, the prospects of holding new presidential or parliamentary elections remain zero.
[…] Apart from the issue of elections, though, Arab citizens of Israel are mainly worried about having to live in a Palestinian state that suppresses public freedoms, including freedom of speech and the media.
Hardly a day passes without the Arab citizens of Israel hearing about the harsh conditions the Palestinians face under the PA in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Palestinian journalists, human rights activists, political activists and university students are targeted by the PA and Hamas on a regular basis.
That is what Israel’s Arab citizens are afraid of.
A recent report by the West Bank-based Committee of the Families of Political Prisoners revealed that the PA security forces have arrested dozens of university students in the past few months because of their political activities. The report documented at least 619 violations against university students by the PA security forces in the past two years.
Arab students who are citizens of Israel, meanwhile, are free to hold protests on campuses there without having to worry about being arrested or summoned for interrogation.[…]
Palestinian Arab university students, however, who are not citizens of Israel, and who live in the Palestinian areas of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, can only envy the Arab Israeli students who are free to hold political activities on campus. Another recently published report revealed that several students arrested by the PA security forces have been brutally tortured. […]
Palestinian students living in the Gaza Strip under Hamas, where virtually everyone is Arab and not a citizen of Israel, have fared no better. Hamas security forces have been regularly raiding university campuses and arresting students and teachers because of their political activities. […]
While in Israel, Arab citizens are free to criticize the Israeli government and leaders, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip who speak out against the PA or Hamas often find themselves behind bars.
[…] In the Gaza Strip, Hamas has arrested hundreds of its political opponents in the past few years. Even Palestinian comedians who make sarcastic remarks about Hamas have become regular targets of Hamas’s crackdown on freedom of speech. Recently, Hamas security forces arrested comedian Adel Mashoukhi after he posted a video on social media mocking the electricity crisis in the Gaza Strip.
It is no wonder that Israel’s Arab citizens are not keen on the prospect of living inside a Palestinian state. No matter how much money is put on the table, if its leaders are still the same corrupt dictators currently in control, they will be worse off not better. Some Arab leaders inside Israel have gone so far as to describe the prospect of living inside a Palestinian state as a “nightmare that cannot be implemented.”
The Legacy media will never tell you this but a 2017 survey conducted by The Israel Democracy Institute revealed that 66% of Arab Israelis see Israel’s overall situation as “good” or “very good.”
Another poll, conducted by Professor Sami Samuha of the University of Haifa, 68.3% of Israel’s Arab citizens said they preferred to live in Israel than in other countries. Samuha said that among the Arab citizens, “there is acknowledgment of convenience, freedom and stability in the State of Israel.”
“In Israel, there are a lot of benefits and a modern way of life, as well as economic and political stability. You can’t compare the lives of Arabs [in Israel] to that of Arabs in Palestine, Lebanon or Egypt. There is also the element that in Israel there is no concern of an Islamist takeover.”
gatestoneinstitute.org/15516/arab-israelis-peace-plan
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