Velshi: The right to exist goes both ways
Israel has a right to exist and to defend itself. That’s a fact. The same is true for Palestinians – that point seems to get missed. Palestinians are, at best, third class citizens in the nation of their birth. The Israeli government, on an ongoing basis, declares parcels of land on which Palestinians live to be either of military or archeological importance, causing residents to be evicted. Sometimes there’s a court case, and almost always, the Palestinians lose. Yet months or weeks later, that same “important” land suddenly becomes home to a brand-new Israeli settlement. As more and more Jewish settlers take over land on which Arabs lived, the Occupied West Bank becomes de facto more Israeli and, in the explicit hopes of the Israeli government, more Jewish. This is a long-standing and deliberate attempt to force Arabs – who have lived in that land sometimes for hundreds of years – out. It is an attempt to dilute their presence, because to have Arabs as full participants is, in the opinion of the Israeli government and courts, diluting Israel.
