Sari Nusseibeh doesn't want Palestinians to accept Bibi's terms:
Rrather than demand that Palestinians recognise Israel as a "Jewish State" as such – adding "beyond chutzpah" to insult and injury – we offer the suggestion that Israeli leaders ask instead that Palestinians recognise Israel (proper) as a civil, democratic, and pluralistic state whose official religion is Judaism, and whose majority is Jewish. Many states (including Israel's neighbours Jordan and Egypt, and countries such as Greece) have their official religion as Christianity or Islam (but grant equal civil rights to all citizens) and there is no reason why Israeli Jews should not want the religion of their state to be officially Jewish. This is a reasonable demand, and it may allay the fears of Jewish Israelis about becoming a minority in Israel, and at the same time not arouse fears among Palestinians and Arabs about being ethnically cleansed in Palestine. Demanding the recognition of Israel's official religion as Judaism, rather than the recognition of Israel as a "Jewish State", would also mean Israel continuing to be a democracy.
Jonathan Tobin fumes:
After more than 2,500 words of dishonest incitement, Nusseibeh concludes by saying that Israel should be a democratic country with a Jewish majority and a Jewish state religion. But that is what it is now and what Israelis and those who support it understand to be a Jewish state. Palestinians who haven’t been able to create their own democratic culture can’t credibly claim that they are, as Nusseibeh says, merely worried about the future of Israeli democracy. Why then is it so hard for even a member of that small majority of Palestinians who actually believe in living in peace with the Jews to say the phrase “Jewish state?” Perhaps because to do so invokes finality to the conflict that gives even moderates like Nusseibeh pause. If even someone like him is moved to this level of invective by those words then it is hard to imagine when the rest of Palestinian society will accept them and the permanence of their Jewish neighbors’ hold on even part of the land.
The Dish 