Democratic Palestine : 40 (ص 22)

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Democratic Palestine : 40 (ص 22)

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tence» with the 120,000 Palestinians
who remained on their land after the
establishment of Israel. Although this
community was small in number and
under military rule, Dr. Sharon was
concerned with the purity of the new
State. The mere idea of having Palesti-
nians within its borders, regardless of
their number, contradicts with the
Zionist principle of a pure Jewish
State.
Weitz recorded in his diaries a
meeting which took place in 1955,
seven years after the establishment of
the Israeli state between himself,
Sharett and Levi Eshkol, who later
became Israel’s prime minister(Yosef
Weitz, My Diary and Letters to the
Children). In that meeting a plan was
discussed to «transfer» the Palestinians
to Libya which was a monarchy at the
time and had good relations with the
Israeli leaders. Sharett reported that
John Foster Dulles, the US secretary
of state, promised financial support for
the plan.
Although the plan to expel Pales-
tinians to Libya could not be
implemented, in 1967, Israel, after
occupying the rest of Palestine, man-
aged to expel an additional 250,000
Palestinians from the newly occupied
territories. However, the majority
(600,000) clung to their land despite
Israeli state terrorism aimed at driving
them out. Although Israel’s victory in
the 1967 war was euphoric, the sober-
ing reality of Israel’s inability to expel
the majority of the Palestinians from
the newly occupied territories began to
set in. It meant that the Jewish state
could not annex these territories,
because doing so would not only dilute
the Jewish character of Israel, it would
strip the Zionist movement of a major-
ity in a very short period of time. This,
in turn, would force the Israelis to
deny the Palestinians voting privileges
so that they would not be voted out of
the government.
This dilemma, which the Israelis
refer to as the «demographic bomb» or
the «demographic devil,» has beset
Israel with a fundamental problem:
there exists now about 1.7 million
Palestinians in the territories occupied
since 1967, while only 200,000 Jewish
settlers (mostly religious zealots) have
opted to live there, despite the finan-
cial enticements from the government
designed to lure as many settlers as
possible. The new Likud-led govern-
ment will attempt to solve this problem
by settling the new immigrants in these
territories, in effect using them as can-
non fodder, despite Sharon’s promises
22
that no new immigrants will be settled
in the 1967 occupied territories. As
well, the new immigrants have to wait
one year before they can get an Israeli
passport and are not allowed to leave
the country for five years after their
arrival, effectively trapping them in
Israel.
Selective expulsion
Since 1967, over 1,200 Palestinians
have been expelled from the territories
occupied in that year. These selective
expulsions of leading Palestinian per-
sonalities are aimed at destroying the
infrastructure of Palestinian society
and crushing the Palestinian nationalist
movement. The first to be expelled
was Abdul Hamid AI Sayeh, president
of the Islamic Council. He was fol-
lowed throughout the years by Rawhi
Al Khatib, mayor of Jerusalem, the
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mayors of Ramallah, El Bireh, Hebron
and Halhoul, Greek Orthodox
Archbishop Monseigneur Hilarion
Capucci, union leader Dr. Alfred
Tubasi, the editor of a prominent
Palestinian newspaper, Akram Han-
niyeh, student leader Marwan Bargh-
outi and educator Dr. Walid Mustafa,
to name just a few.
These expulsions, clearly in viola-
tion of the Fourth Geneva Conven-
tions, have received special attention
during the intifada. In January 1988,
the UN Security Council held a special
meeting to discuss this matter, and
issued resolution number 607 against
these illegal expulsions. Needless to
say, this did not deter Israel from con-
tinuing this practice.
Israeli apologists still maintain
that those Israelis who call for the
expulsion of Palestinian Arabs are very

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Democratic Palestine : 40

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