Israeli Arabs

I should perhaps clarify what I wrote two days ago about the Palestinian Christian we met in the old city of Jerusalem. He and his family were among those who fled Palestine at the time of the proclamation of the state of Israel in 1948. They were not allowed to return, despite their birth within the territory of Israel proper. Many, if not most, of these are the Palestinian refugees of whom we hear so much.

Yet it is true, of course, that there are many Israeli Arabs who have full rights of citizenship and whose political parties are represented in the Knesset. Israel's record with respect to its own religious minorities, while defective from a western standpoint, is exemplary relative to that of its neighbours. While travelling in the middle east in 1995 my wife and I met another Arab Christian who successfully sought and received Israeli citizenship, believing he had a better opportunity of living a fairly normal life as an Israeli than as a citizen of the unknown quantity represented by a future Palestinian state.

Nevertheless, pity those whose parents and grandparents fled the new state of Israel in 1948. They have nowhere to go. Israel will not take them back. Nor will the Arab countries where their refugee camps are located accept them as full citizens. Their governments prefer to use them as weapons to subvert Israel. That this is tremendously unjust is scarcely in need of saying.