Sometimes, A Refusal Ain't Bad

A Jewish state, a state of the Jewish people, whatever. They don't want it:-

Spokesman Nabil Abu Rdainah told Reuters, "The issue of the Jewishness of the state has nothing to do with the matter.”

PA negotiator Saeb Erekat told the French news agency AFP, "This order has nothing to do with the peace process or with the obligations that Israel has not implemented. This is completely rejected.”

And Erekat went further:-

"We forcefully reject all these Israeli games," said Erekat. "The racist demands of Netanyahu cannot be tied to the request to cease building in the settlements for the purpose of establishing a state."

Nothing to do? But of course it does.

Here's Prime Minister Netanyahu:

In 1896, Herzl wrote in his book, “The Jewish State”: “The Jews who are seeking a state will have a state. Finally, we will live as free people on our own land.”...David Ben-Gurion wrote in his diary: “The state that will be established will be Jewish in its purpose, designation and objective; not a state of those Jews who reside in the country but a state for the Jews, for the Jewish People.  In 1992, in the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty, the Knesset determined the following: “...to establish in a Basic Law the values of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.”

Members of Knesset, the State of Israel is, therefore, both the nation-state of the Jewish people and a democratic country for all its citizens, Jews and non-Jews alike, enjoying full equal rights...The combination of these two values – a Jewish state and a democratic state – expresses the foundation of our existence and the essence of the State of Israel.

The Arabs can't except that.

It's not about borders.

It's not the communities in Judea and Samaria aka "settlements".

Those are just the peripheries.

"Jewish" is the essence.

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