On the eve of fateful decisions regarding annexation (if it happens at all, where?), the media is also reaching out to the Palestinians, asking them what they would like to see happen were things up to them. And to our surprise, yet again, many of those questioned, instead of expressing vehement objection to the annexation of parts of the West Bank, said they would want to be Israeli citizens.
In one report, Channel 13's Zvi Yehezkeli interviewed Palestinians at random (whom the Palestinian Authority has already punished for answering honestly), who said annexation was the best thing that could happen to them and that they'd be very happy were Israel to make them citizens or grant them permanent residence.
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These positions, however, should surprise no one. They live in poverty, under a system that doesn't grant them even a tiny portion of what the Israeli welfare services provide, and spend a considerable portion of their time at the checkpoints trying to enter Israel to work, study and receive medical treatment. The Palestinian Authority is inefficient and its corruption makes the most basic services hard to come by. Naturalization in Israel, a country based on modernity and progress, isn't a punishment from their perspective, it is a reward.
The Palestinians have historically opposed splitting any part of the land west of the Jordan River with the Jews, because they struggled to understand why they were being asked to share the land on which they'd lived with the Jews, who represented less than 10% of the population compared to them, and who deigned to speak on behalf of many others who had yet to even step foot here.
The Palestinian Liberation Organization's agreement to adopt the two-state solution was only born in 1988, and was the organization's compromise with reality. Traditionally speaking, the position of the Palestinian national movement was that all land on both banks of the Jordan River must be under Palestinian rule and that only Jews who had arrived prior to the Balfour Declaration could stay if they wished. The two-state solution, which appeared to many of us as a Palestinian demand, was, essentially, the demand of the Zionist movement, once it realized in 1937 (the Peel Commission) that it would struggle to create a Jewish majority west of the Jordan River.
The willingness of many Palestinians to be part of Israel is simply a return to the one-state solution, born from reading the demographic map and understanding that if Israel wants to preserve its democratic identity they wouldn't have to tolerate life under its flag for long and – due to the consequent Palestinian majority – can realize the dream of sovereignty west of the Jordan.
But is this an Israeli interest? The answer is obvious. The numerous voices on the Palestinian street favoring annexation shouldn't be viewed as an endorsement of this capricious endeavor – rather as a stark warning against it. These voices could form the basis of a calculated Palestinian decision to formally declare the PLO's abrogation of its 1988 decision and demand, in its place, one very simple thing: One person, one vote.
The Palestinian demand for a sovereign Israeli-Palestinian state, where all citizens have equal rights, is the most logical alternative to the Oslo Accords from the Palestinian viewpoint, which from their perspective has become a trap because the interim agreement has become a final-status agreement.
It will be very difficult for Israel to also convince its friends in the world that it rejects the demand for one equal state as well. It will enter a new battle in the international arena. This time it won't be a battle to explain our rights over the Land; it won't be to prove that Zionism isn't racism; it won't be to persuade them that the West Bank is a disputed territory, not an occupied territory; nor that a Palestinian state will be a base for terrorism. Israel will have to explain that the most fundamental principle of democracy – one vote per person – doesn't apply in our case. It will be a completely hopeless fight. The annexation of large or small swathes of land in the West Bank is a dangerous step toward falling into this trap.
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