Israel will have to reckon with the occupation one way or another
As the Israeli government continues to deny Palestinians their basic rights, its democracy, and American Jewry’s support for it, are in peril.
Henry Siegman is president emeritus of the U.S./Middle East Project and a past senior fellow on the Middle East at the Council on Foreign Relations. He was a visiting research professor at SOAS and formerly headed the American Jewish Congress and the Synagogue Council of America.
As the Israeli government continues to deny Palestinians their basic rights, its democracy, and American Jewry’s support for it, are in peril.
If Israeli governments come to believe there is no price whatever to be paid by them for denying Palestinian statehood, they will never allow Palestinian statehood nor end their occupation.
Israel must address the question of whether the original idea of the Zionist movement of a state that is both Jewish and democratic is not deeply oxymoronic.