By Ted Belman
I had lunch with Mike Wise today. He originated the One State Plan about 13 years ago. Essentially he bolstered the idea of annexing all of Judea and Samaria and offering a path to citizenship for qualified Arabs. He went so far as to list what qualifications they needed to succeed. Aside from not being a member of a terrorist organization they had to read and speak Hebrew and many more hurdles. Mike also considered requiring them to fly an Israel flag over their house for seven years.
I participated in defining the requirements at that time.
Since then Mike has convinced Caroling Glick to embrace the plan and she endorsed it in her book The Israel Solution a couple of years ago. He also convinced Nadia Matar and Yehudit Katsover (The Women in Green) to likewise support it. They now publish a monthly journal called Sovereignty Journal which is delivered to 120,000 Israelis. Nadia and Yehudit just wrote Op-Ed: Application of Sovereignty Over All of Israel – Now is the Time!. Do read it.
On Friday morning, I attended a panel discussion on the subject which they organized. I believe that the number of Mks now favouring this option are about 35.
When Mike dreamed up his Plan he put a lot of work into understanding the demographics. He discovered that the demographics were tolerable rather than a bomb to be concerned with. He brought Yoram Ettinger into the effort and Yoram continually updates the numbers which keep getting better and bettor for us. See Reality-based demography which I posted today.
I resist this plan because I prefer Martin Sherman’s Humanitarian Solution. i.e., pay the Arabs to leave. I tell Mike, they will never be domesticated. Look at Europe and look at our current violence here. I tell him not to focus on the fact that very few will get citizenship because as long as they are residents only, they can protest. And after annexation, they will represent, in the expanded Israel, 1/3 of the population.
And after annexation, we can always offer them money to leave, the Supreme Court willing.
But Mike is not deterred in his belief.
What about making it so they have to pass the citizenship requirements within a certain period of time or they have to leave. Also, conditional any citizenship on good behavior. If they act out after becoming “citizens” they can be deported. Those that don’t agree or succeed to the conditions of citizenship would go and those that do risk being thrown out also if they “rebel” against their domestication after the fact. Either way, the threat of deportation should always be over their head. It would really be up to them to become “domesticated” and stay that way or be deported. Either way again Israel would still hold the cards.
Setting the terms of citizenship is something all counties have the right to do and do in fact do. In Israel like any other state it would require loyalty to the Jewish State of Israel with all that implies at the very least. I doubt many Arabs would opt to formally join fate with the despised “Zionists Entity” and those that did would face awful ostracization and worse from their fellow Arabs. Flying an Israeli flag over their house for 7 years is a wonderful idea! Let’s see how many takers there are. At the same time the new citizenship criteria which should be at least as tough as Sweden’s, is determined the laws on treason need to enforced against any violators resulting in summary loss of citizenship and banishment at a minimum.