Channel 10 reporter, Barak Ravid, reported this week that during U.S. President Donald Trump's meeting with Jordan's King Abdullah, the former told the latter that if Israel ever becomes a binational state, it would have an Arab prime minister within a matter of years.
Every few years or so, the demographic threat rears its head. Likud MKs Amir Ohana and Yehuda Glick were right to respond to Ravid's report by tweeting one such demographic prognostication: In 2000, according to a headline written in 1987, Israel will "no longer be a Jewish state." Yet here we are in 2018 and Israel is more Jewish than ever. Indeed, for years the Israeli Right has advocated ignoring false demographic warnings, claiming they are mostly inaccurate calculations that don't account for actual fertility trends in the Arab and Jewish sectors and incorrectly measure the Palestinian population.
No less predictable was the reaction from elected officials and pundits from the other side of the political aisle. Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, one of the more prominent opposition voices these days, was quoted in Ravid's report that we should listen to Trump and "most Israelis," and called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to immediately cease this "dash toward the abyss!" Zionist Union MK Ayelet Nahmias-Verbin angrily tweeted that the Israeli government is "forcing us into this reality." MK Eitan Cabel, also from the Zionist Union, added that Trump and Abdullah understand that Netanyahu, in his weakness, is "closing the curtain on the Zionist vision," no less.
Barak, Nahmias-Verbin and Cabel are not alone. For years, leftist and centrist mouthpieces – from Yossi Beilin and Yair Lapid to Tzipi Livni and Avi Gabbay – have warned that failing to partition the land into two states would mean the end of Israel as the national home of the Jewish people. This worldview, encapsulated in the belief that "they're over there and we're over here," has been propagated for years by many on the Left. And yet, it's unclear how these same mouthpieces can on the one had champion a diplomatic plan entirely based on the separation of Arabs and Jews, and at the same time vehemently oppose the nation-state law, which seeks to promote and anchor this separation and grant it legal validation.
What guides the Israeli moderate Left and Right is the assumption that Jews and Arabs cannot live together in the State of Israel. These populations are so fundamentally different that they must live apart. The difference, however, is that while the Left believes in an expulsion plan to officially segregate the two populations into two nation-states, the Right believes this segregation should be anchored in the state's laws – thereby allowing for a situation wherein one large state, with even a minimal Jewish majority, Jewish preferential rights will be preserved.
It is incumbent upon us to unequivocally reject this joint basic assumption. People who are sickened by the possibility that "an Arab will be prime minister" should not be protesting against the nation-state law and the government. A Left that seeks expulsions and whose worldview is utterly predicated on population segregation – and is therefore frightened by the idea that any citizen from any religion or nationality can be elected in democratic elections – simply isn't left.
It would be best if the fight against the nation-state law was waged by a joint Jewish-Arab camp, which believes the different populations in this country can and should live together – despite their differences and perhaps because of them. In such a country, an Arab can also be prime minister.
