Since I'm a prosciutto-loving Jewish atheist my Zionism has no religious motives. Neither did Theodor Herzl and David Ben Gurion, Jabotinsky, Golda Meir, Chaim Weizmann, Abba Eban.
Arabs have had two state solution peace offers in: 1937, the Peel Commission partition plan,
1947, UN partition plan
1967, UN resolution 242
1979, Camp David Egypt-Israel peace.
2000: Camp David Clinton Parameters, which Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador, told Arafat to accept and called it a crime that he didn't.
2008: Olmert peace plan, rejected by Abbas, virtually identical to the Clinton Parameters.
British foreign secretary Ernest Bevin explained why in February 1947 when he handed the Palestine problem to the UN: "the #1 priority of the Jews is to build a state. The #1 priority of the Arabs is that the Jews not have a state."
That's it. That's the entire conflict and nothing has changed in 77 years.
Your ahistorically ignorant comment implies a moral equivalence symmetry where none exists. The Arabs' ethnic cleansing of Jewish settlements began in 1920 as soon as the British mandate began, continued in 1929 with their liquidation of the Jewish community of Hebron and the 1936-39 Arab revolt that eliminated Jewish settlements east of the Jordan river. During the mandate not a single Jewish settlement was built on stolen Arab land. It was all bought, mostly from absentee Arab effendi landlords living in Cairo, Damascus and Istanbul.
"grants citizenship rights to all": Israel's Arabs already have more democratic rights than every other Arab population from Morocco to Iraq. Listen to Sophia Khalifa, daughter of an illiterate Bedouin mother with a Stanford MBA who describes how Israel gave her everything: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_MfnpuafBg&t=1844s
"respects one another's cultural heritage"--Under Arab occupation from 1948-67 Jewish cemeteries paved roads and Jews were barred from the Temple Mount. Under Israeli occupation Muslims worship freely at the Temple Mount over which the Dome of the Rock (which is not a mosque) and the Al Aqsa mosque were built 6 centuries after the Romans destroyed the 2nd temple. A Muslim foundation administers both. Contrast this with what the PLO's "respect for cultural heritage" at Camp David:
“Arafat’s negotiating team’s) memo specifically clarified that the return the Palestinians demand is to “‘their homes,’ wherever located — not to their ‘homeland’ or to ‘historic Palestine.’” The memo further…rejected defining the new Palestinian state as “the homeland of the Palestinian people” because “this nullifies the right of return.” Finally, the memo enshrined the Palestinian rejection that a Jewish Temple ever existed: “In the first formulation regarding the Haram, accepting that the Western Wall is a part of either ‘the space sacred to Judaism’ or ‘the Holy of Holies’ will amount to implicit recognition that the Temple lies under the Haram.”
Saudi ambassador to the US, Prince Bandar, said the same thing differently to Arafat after the PLO leader lied when Bandar asked him if he’d said yes to the Clinton deal: ““I hope you remember, sir, what I told you. If we lose this opportunity, it is not going to be a tragedy. This is going to be a crime.” …”I wanted to cry, my heart was burning at how the opportunity was lost again and perhaps for the last time…”
So who's "respected" whose cultural heritage?
But it's the Arabs, outside of the Abraham Accords' signatories, who can't live with the idea of permanent Jewish sovereignty in the Middle East. Jewish sovereignty, success in building a state and wealth is a permanent affront to their identity as the recipients of Allah's final revelation. They just can't bear to look in the mirror and face why they failed.
https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/islam-and-intellectual-infidels-b83b6cdcb7fc
You're entitled to your own opinion, but opinions informed by knowledge are superior to those not.
