Palestinian Arabs...generally prefer life in what they call the "Zionist entity." On two occasions, this pattern became especially clear: when eastern Jerusalem in 2000 and part of the Galilee Triangle in 2004 were slated for transfer to PA control. In both cases, the Palestinians involved clung to Israel.
When Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak's diplomacy raised the prospect, in mid-2000, of some Arab-majority parts of Jerusalem being transferred to the PA, a Palestinian Arab social worker found that "an overwhelming majority" of Jerusalem's 200,000 Arabs chose to remain under Israeli control. A member of the Palestinian National Council, Fadal Tahabub, specified that 70% preferred Israeli sovereignty. Another politician, Husam Watad, described people as "in a panic" at the prospect of finding themselves under PA rule.
Israel's Interior Ministry duly reported a large increase in applications for citizenship and one city councilor, Roni Aloni, reported what he was hearing from Jerusalem Arabs: "we are not like Gaza or the West Bank. We hold Israeli IDs. We are used to a higher standard of living...A doctor applying for Israeli papers explained, "we want to stay in Israel. At least here I can speak my mind freely without being dumped in prison, as well as having a chance to earn an honest day's wage."
To stop this Palestinian Arab rush for Israeli citizenship, the ranking Islamic official in Jerusalem issued an edict prohibiting it, and the Palestine Liberation Organization's agent in Jerusalem, Faisal al-Husseini, went further, calling this step "treason." This proved ineffective, so al-Husseini threatened that taking out Israeli citizenship would result in the confiscation of one's home. [emphasis added]
In the Galilee Triangle, a Palestinian-majority area in the north of the country, just 30% of the Arab population agreed to some of the Galilee Triangle being annexed to a future Palestinian state, according to a May 2001 survey. By February 2004, when the Sharon government released a trial balloon about giving the PA control over the Galilee Triangle, the Haifa-based Arab Center for Applied Social Research found the number had jumped to 90%. And 73% of Triangle Arabs said they would use violence to prevent changes in the border.
...
Also in 2004, when Israel's security fence went up, some Palestinian Arabs had to choose on which side of the fence to live. Most, along with Ahmed Jabrin of Umm al-Fahm, had no doubts. "We fought [the Israeli authorities so as] to be inside of the fence, and they moved it so we are still in Israel." [emphasis added]
That Palestinian Arabs in large numbers prefer to live under Israeli control appears to result more from practical considerations than from an intent to submerge the Jewish state demographically. They see the PA as impoverished, autocratic, and anarchic. As one Palestinian explained, it is "an unknown state that doesn't have a parliament, or a democracy, or even decent universities."
...Two long-term conclusions follow. First, were Palestinian Arab demands for a "right of return" to Israel ever met, a massive population influx into Israel would result. Second, any final-status agreement that requires turning over Israeli-ruled land to the Palestinians will be very hard to implement.
Pipes' analysis here also seems to call into question the fundamental existence of a 'Palestinian people' which the sympathetic West has certainly elevated to the level of universal truth. The overwhelming desire of "Palestinians" to live in Israel and to the extent that a great majority would resort to violence to continue to live in a brutal, racist, and fascist state appears a bit unseemly? Someone ought to ask the British AUT and the idiots at ISM what they have to say.
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