MK Tibi
Photo: Ronen Boidek
The right to annoy
Mentions of territorial tradeoff annoy Israeli Arabs but show their attachment to Israel
Knesset Member Ahmed Tibi can relax. In the final-status agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, Israel will not be transferring its control over the Arab-Israeli towns of Umm al-Fahm and Taibe to the Palestinian state in exchange for settlements in Judea and Samaria.
Even if a final-status agreement is signed (and it will not be signed,) the moment a decision will be made to annex Umm al-Fahm and Taibe to the Palestinian state, tens of thousands of Arab-Israelis will move into the new borders of Israel – because it's better to continue being a discriminated against Arab citizen in the Jewish state than to have equal rights in the Palestinian state.
So, at the end of the day we will end up with more Arabs in Israel and less territory.
Yet this notion of territorial tradeoff is mostly used for the purpose of being cruel to the Arab Knesset members. Even without being evil, one is allowed to enjoy the sound of Knesset Member Ahmed Tibi crying out in the name of his sacred citizenship: "We are not conditional citizens!"
Tibi waves his blue Israeli identity card every time we merely offer him to join his own people, the Palestinians, on their land and in their community. That same equal citizenship, which he cries out over now, never hindered him when he was serving as Yasser Arafat's close advisor for many years.
Trembling with rage
It is certainly nice to hear Arab Knesset members enraged every time the idea of territorial tradeoff is raised again. They tremble with rage. After all, this is the only way to see how strongly they cling to the democratic State of Israel.They may be nationalistic Arabs, but the vision of a Palestinian state interests them only on condition they are not part of it. They are reminiscent, notwithstanding all the differences of course, of the Zionistic Jews residing in wealthy countries in the Diaspora: They support Israel, love it, and want to see it prospering, but they do not really bother to move here.
In the Palestinian case, the effort required is not even to pack their belongings and hit the roads. All they need to do is go over to the Palestinian Interior Ministry, be granted citizenship in their new country, and start receiving their child allowances from Palestine instead of Israel – without having to bother with the infamous national symbol of Israel, the Menorah, and without the line about a "Jewish soul" in the national anthem. How simple indeed.
Nothing will come out of it. Arab-Israeli citizens will remain citizens of Israel (and this is a good thing.) Yet in order to hear from them how deeply they are attached to their citizenship in the Jewish State, it is nice to raise the idea of territorial tradeoff once in a while. What's the matter, can't we annoy them a little?
