Such questions would never have arisen if Tel Aviv had immediately accepted the return of the 1948 refugees before they had children and grandchildren. But they refused to do so, for otherwise they could not have ensured a Jewish numerical majority in a Jewish state.
<blockquote>[O]n 29 November 1947, the General Assembly adopted the partition plan.
According to this plan, Palestine was to be divided into six parts-three of which (56 percent of the total area) were to become a Jewish state, and the other three (43 percent) were to become an Arab state. Jerusalem and environs were to fall under UN administration. This resolution meant that the Jewish state would include 498,000 Jews and 497,000 Arabs (excluding the nomadic inhabitants of the Negev), and the Arab state would include 725,000 Arabs and 10,000 Jews.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The manner in which the Jewish state "was coming into being" was not peaceful, rather, it was characterized by "violence and bloodshed," as UN mediator Count Folke Bernadotte put it.(8) The most frequently mentioned incident among the many contributing to a panic flight of the Palestinian inhabitants was the massacre of Deir Yassin. On 9 April 1948, 254 men, women and children in the village of Deir Yassin were massacred by Irgun attackers. The Irgun was a militant Zionist group led by Menachem Begin, who became Israel's Prime Minister in 1977. Begin later justified the massacre in these terms: "The massacre was not only justified, but there would not have been a state of Israel without the victory at Deir Yassin."(9) Such incidents contributed to a massive exodus of the Palestinian Arab population and opened the door for the creation of the Jewish state. Short of this Arab exodus, the Jewish state would have been demographically more Arab than Jewish.
(Jamal R. Nassar, "The Culture of Resistance: the 1967 War in the Context of the Palestinian Struggle," Arab Studies Quarterly, Summer 1997, <http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2501/is_n3_v19/ai_20755836/print>)</blockquote>
Even now, Tel Aviv doesn't offer to recognize the right of the 1948 refugees while excluding their spouses, children, parents, and so on, for if it does so, then, the question of family reunification arises.
That's setting aside the fact that the law of return allows even grandchildren (and their spouses) of Jews who have never lived in Israel to gain Israeli citizenship: "The rights of a Jew under this Law and the rights of an oleh under the Nationality Law...are also vested in a child and a grandchild of a Jew, the spouse of a Jew, the spouse of a child of a Jew and the spouse of a grandchild of a Jew" ("The Law of Return," <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Return>).
> > just as the country of
> > your origin doesn't
> > have the right to prevent you from coming home if
> > you want.
>
> But Israel is not their country of origin.
> They come
> from a part of Palestine that is now part of Israel.
> Wars lead to border being redrawn sometimes.
Some of the Palestinians who were expropriated and displaced remained inside Israel, living under Tel Aviv's martial laws; Tel Aviv finally made them citizens of Israel in 1966, ironicaly one year before Tel Aviv expanded the borders of Israel to include all of the territories from the river to the sea into Israel. Now that those internally displaced are citizens, does Tel Aviv offer to recognize their right of return, restore their land to them or compensate them for lost properties and other damages? No it hasn't: "The Palestinians who remained within the Green Line borders became citizens of the new Israeli state. Today they number approximately one million, and comprise nearly 20% of Israel's citizens. Some 250, 000 (25%) are internally displaced, and like the Palestinian community in Diaspora, are still denied the right of return to their homes" (Ittijah: Union of Arab Community Based Organizations, "About Palestinians in Israel," <http://www.ittijah.org/inside/inside01.html>).
> > What we are seeing is basically a Jewish state in
> > which all others are
> > either second-class citizens
>
> Like pretty much every other nation-state on the
> planet. Ask a Turkish resident of Berlin. Ask any
> naturalized German citizen whose citizenship can be
> revoked for a variety of reasons, including "political
> extremism" or "opposition to the constitution."
>
> Born, "ethnic" Germans don't have to fear their
> citizenship being revoked, even if they are political
> "extremists" or "oppose" the constitution.
>
> So that's a clear-cut case of apartheid, if we apply
> your usage consistently.
Palestinian citizens of Israel, Palestinian subjects in the OPTs, and stateless Palestinians in the diaspora are not immigrants or would-be immigrants to Israel.
Some LBO-talk subscribers here are Jewish, and if they were to decide to become citizens of Israel, they could do so, and Israel would be overjoyed to have them. Hell, if non-Jewish, non-Palestinian LBO-talk subscribers were to marry Jewish citizens of Israel, they would be welcome in Israel, too, on the basis of family reunification. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>