'It was necessary to uproot them' Charles Glass http://www.lrb.co.uk/v26/n12/glas01_.html
A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples by Ilan Pappe | Cambridge, 333 pp, £15.99
The Gun and the Olive Branch by David Hirst | Faber, 624 pp, £16.99
The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited by Benny Morris | Cambridge, 664 pp, £70.00
[concluding paragraph] Zionism seemed to have solved Europe's 'Jewish problem' by sending the Jews to western Asia. That solution led to Israel's 'Arab problem'. The Arab problem exercises Israelis now as it did the Zionist pioneers. Is any solution to the Arab problem acceptable? Should Israel pay Arabs to leave their homes? Order them to move to Jordan? Punish them if they stay? The government recently announced the creation of the Minhal Harisot, or Demolitions Administration, to co-ordinate the destruction of illegal Arab homes. Ministers are also calling for the construction of new towns in the Negev to stop the growth of bedouin villages. The demographic mix in Israel itself allows for the possibility that Arabs will one day outnumber Jews. Is it racism to suggest this should be prevented? At a conference in Herzliya last December, Yitzhak Ravid of the Israeli government's Armament Development Authority proposed that Israel 'implement a stringent policy of family planning in relation to its Muslim population'. Should Arabs in Israel be forcibly sterilised to prevent their children outnumbering the children of Israel's Jews? Should the same be done to create a Jewish majority in the West Bank and Gaza Strip? Is it mad even to think in such terms? Was this inherent in the Zionist idea? Is it time for a new idea?
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Simon
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