Beinart argues that a Palestinian state wouldn’t end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:
For Netanyahu, the creation of a Palestinian state must mean the end of Palestinian claims against Israel. But there’s a problem. Even if Israel relinquishes the West Bank, it will still contain more than a million Palestinians. Jews generally call these folks “Israeli Arabs.” But surveys suggest that they increasingly call themselves “Palestinian” citizens of Israel. And even after the creation of a Palestinian state, they’ll have claims.
Israel’s Palestinian citizens don’t want to leave. Over the decades they have developed an identity distinct from their West Bank and Gazan cousins. They appreciate living in a prosperous, democratic country. But—and this is what keeps Netanyahu up at night—they don’t want that country to be a Jewish state (PDF).
They don’t feel warm and fuzzy about a flag with a Jewish star and a national anthem that talks about the “Jewish soul.” They believe, as a high-profile Israeli government commission acknowledged in 2003, that Israel’s treatment of them “has been primarily neglectful and discriminatory.” Their kids can’t aspire to be prime minister. In ways both deeply symbolic and highly practical, they feel like second-class citizens as non-Jews in a Jewish state.
For Zionists who believe in the legitimacy of a state that protects and represents the Jewish people—and I’m one of them—the opposition of Israel’s Palestinian citizens to Israel’s Jewish identity is a profound challenge. Netanyahu wants Abbas to solve it for him. That’s the real agenda behind his insistence that Abbas recognize Israel as a Jewish state. But Abbas can’t solve Netanyahu’s problem. Politically, he can’t accept something the Palestinians living inside Israel don’t. And even if he did, all he’d do is alienate himself from Israel’s Palestinian citizens. He wouldn’t make them feel less alienated from Israel’s anthem and flag.
Zionism always had an element of utopianism to it. But it is not in any way pleasant to observe the long-term consequences of such a radical experiment.
The Dish 