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| Hamas’s election and the Implications on the Israeli State’s legitimacy |
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The size and geography of Israel and the occupied territories, as well as the dispersion of the Jewish settlements across the West Bank, mean that Jewish and Arab societies are very closely tied together. It remains relatively easy for Palestinians or Arabs who intend to harm Israel to carry-out attacks on Israel territory given the proximity of the two societies. Given this situation, a major challenge that Israeli policymakers now face is how to guarantee the safety of their own citizens if the Muslims and Arabs persist in their defiance and resistance against Israeli occupation. Many Israelis also believe that they have a problem with Israel-Arab citizens who make up approximately 15% of Israeli society. In a poll of Israeli Jews undertaken by the Geocartography Institute, released in March 2006, 40% of Jewish residents felt that Israeli-Arabs should be encouraged to emigrate and 63% felt that Israeli-Arabs posed a security and a demographic threat. Another major challenge that Israeli politicians acknowledge they now face, is the rapid natural population growth amongst Palestinians in the occupied territories as well as amongst Israeli-Arabs. Some forecasts indicate that the Arabs in the region between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea will become a majority by 2020. Some Israelis fear that if Israel is to remain both Jewish and democratic it will have to move out of the major Palestinian population centres.
Israel’s changing demography and the continued resistance of Israel’s occupation by Muslims, as well as their opposition to peace on her terms, has led some Israel politicians such as those in the Kadima party to propose a unilateral disengagement plan. In this plan, some Jewish settlements in the West Bank, particularly those that are difficult to defend, would be disbanded and a security fence would be built around the major Palestinian centres. The location and route of the fence would be solely determined by Israel. The assembly of such a fence, though it may have some impact on preventing some Palestinian attacks on Israel, is effectively an admission that Jews and Arabs cannot live together and for the foreseeable future will be at war. It is hard to imagine any positive impact of this fence upon the lives of Palestinians who live behind it fence; they will practically live in large prison camps whose perimeters will be patrolled by Israeli guards. The suffering and humiliation this fence will cause will act only to increase the anger that Arabs and Muslims throughout the world feel against Israel The likely outcome may well be that calls for action against Israel from within the Muslim world will only escalate.
Israel’s situation is very different to the colonial settlements that led to the creation of countries such as the United States or Australia. In the United States, settlers from Europe came in such large numbers that they were very quickly able to become a majority, by taking control of land from American Indians and confining many of them into small reservations without fear of any major consequences. Through the growth of its economy, population and military, the United States was in a position to dominate the whole continent with surrounding countries such as Canada and Mexico having no desire or capability to threaten it. From a demographics perspective, American Indians became an insignificant proportion of American society.
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