Israel: apartheid state or only democracy of the Middle East?

Israel’s borders are those of 1947, and because it is a bi-national state it needs the formation of a unitary state, like Belgium. This is the view of academic and human rights activist Professor Uri Davis.

Uri Davis is one of the few Jewish members of the Palestinian Fatah movement.

Davis recalls that “for 5 million Palestinian Arab refugees today that have the right to Israel citizenship while their citizenship rights have been nullified, there are 1.5 million people that have the right to vote. I suggest that as far as Israeli apartheid is concerned, there is an effective instrument falsely suggesting that the state of Israel is not an apartheid state, but the only democracy in the Middle East.”

“Until the ethnic cleansing, the 1947-1949 war, community in Israel was not as segregated as under the Israeli apartheid, and there were mixed marriages in every direction: Muslim-Jewish, Muslim-Christian, Christian-Muslim – whatever combination was not uncommon. There are quite a few members of Fatah movement, including Revolutionary Council and Central Committee, [who] were of Jewish origin.”

“It may very well be that it is safer for Jewish families today to live in Libya or North Africa than to remain in Israel – we are sitting on a pile of illegal nuclear weapons.”