- The Palestinian refugee problem was a result of a war that was started by the Palestinian and Arab side in an attempt to wipe out the newborn State of Israel – a situation that prompted subsequent Israeli security measures.
- Similarly, Munayyer never mentions security or terrorism as possible reasons for the status of his wife and other Palestinians.
- Irrespective of the above, every country, including Israel, has the sovereign right to determine its own citizenship rules. After all, marriage does not automatically confer citizenship or residency rights to a non-citizen, which is also the case in the US and many other countries.
Munayyer doesn’t miss the opportunity to bring in the apartheid charge:
Tragically for Palestinians, Zionism requires the state to empower and maintain a Jewish majority even at the expense of its non-Jewish citizens, and the occupation of the West Bank is only one part of it. What exists today between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is therefore essentially one state, under Israeli control, where Palestinians have varying degrees of limited rights: 1.5 million are second-class citizens, and four million more are not citizens at all. If this is not apartheid, then whatever it is, it’s certainly not democracy.
It’s certainly not apartheid and the area that exists today between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is not one state. Munayyer may, instead, be alluding to his vision for the disappearance of Israel as a Jewish state in favor of a Palestinian one by virtue of simple demographics.
Further resources: The Apartheid State Libel
That this particular focus on the rights or otherwise of Israeli Arabs marrying residents of the Palestinian territories has appeared both in The Australian and New York Times in quick succession would indicate a concerted and organized effort by Palestinian activists to use this issue as a stick with which to beat Israel. That the New York Times has consented to be part of this campaign is not a surprise and is yet another indicator of the Gray Lady’s bias towards Israel.
Send your considered comments to the New York Times – [email protected]. In order for your letter to be considered for publication, it should be no longer than 150 words and must include the writer’s address and phone numbers.
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Image: CC BY-SA HonestReporting.com, flickr/davedugdale
