WOULD SUCH A NATION BE WORTH HAVING?

No longer the political fringe (EVELYN GORDON, 9/14/06, THE JERUSALEM POST)

MK Effi Eitam's statement on Sunday that Israel should expel West Bank Palestinians and bar Israeli Arabs from political life, since the latter are "a fifth column, a league of traitors," understandably raised a storm. Once, such statements belonged to the political fringe. But Eitam heads a nine-member Knesset faction, National Union. And another party, Israel Beiteinu, won 11 seats in March on a platform calling for transferring many Israeli Arab towns - and their inhabitants - to the Palestinian Authority. In short, about a sixth of the Knesset now backs such ideas.

Nor are these politicians disconnected from popular sentiment: In a poll last December, 40 percent of Israeli Jews said that the state should "encourage Arab citizens to emigrate." That is still a minority (52 percent disagreed), but it is clearly approaching the tipping point - especially since 63 percent termed Israeli Arabs "a security and demographic threat to the state," with only 13 percent disagreeing.

Effie’s Choice (The Forward, Sep 15, 2006)

Effie Eitam’s call for mass expulsion of Palestinian Arabs from the West Bank would be lamentable at any time and place. Coming at a pivotal moment in Middle East diplomacy, fraught with new threats and new opportunities, such a statement by an influential Israeli lawmaker constitutes a singularly mischievous assault on decency. At the same time, it can be seen as a moment of unique clarity. What, after all, are the alternatives?

Expulsion is one of the most explosive doctrines in the Israeli political lexicon. Introduced into the public discourse in the 1970s by Brooklyn-born Rabbi Meir Kahane, it was ruled “racist” by the Knesset in 1985. Kahane became a pariah, and his party was outlawed. But the notion reappeared shortly afterward in the slightly more respectable guise of “voluntary transfer,” championed by former general Rehavam Ze’evi, a certified military hero. Since then it has hovered at the edge of legitimacy.

Eitam has taken the notion back to its roots, calling not for the encouragement of mass emigration, as Ze’evi and his disciples have done, but for old-fashioned expulsion. Because he believes the West Bank must remain forever under Israeli control, and because he understands that the territory’s Arab residents will never reconcile themselves to Israeli rule, he draws the logical conclusion: Boot them out.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 14, 2006 12:01 AM