For the record, I no longer hold the opinions of this earlier post, nor will I defend (or attempt to clarify, unless one asks) those words in any public or private discussion. It was written in the heat of the moment, and it now looks ignorant.
Anyway, I think that Israel is heading towards a binational architecture of government, or at least that’s what will happen with the further increase of Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria/West Bank. I also think that the Israeli government knows the inevitability of a binational architecture, which is why it is widely reputed in its own press scene for its encouragement of larger orthodox and Ultra-orthodox families (including Haredi and Religious Zionist) and higher orthodox birth rates; in short, Jewish religious fundamentalism (and all that is entailed, including "natural growth") is the government’s insurance against the Jewish/Hebrew culture being swamped by Arab/Muslim culture in the scenario of a binational Israel.
And who can blame them? A binational state seems to frighten those who fear the end and assimilation of the Jewish character of the state and its culture more so than those who move into the hinterland for religious (and apolitical) reasons. It would not be surprising to see a Gaza-West Bank-like split between the religious and non-religious Hebrew-speaking populations, with the Jerusalem-centric, hinterland-dwelling religious population remaining more dependent upon natural growth and the Tel Aviv-centric, coastal plain-dwelling non-religious population remaining dependent upon Aliyah from other countries.
For the Arabs who dwell within this new binational or federal state, the experience of delegated self-governance would remain centered in Samaria (where Ramallah is located), while the Arab experience in North District. They would have to deal and cooperate with a Hebrew-speaking resident minority in Samaria – one which is a naturally-growing mix of both religious and non-religious settlers – and would have to work out a suitable solution to access to ancient remains of Jewish civilization in Samaria while retaining or gaining equitable empowerment for the non-religious and orthodox Muslim Arab residents.
Jerusalem and Judea, on the other hand, is probably the most visibly and acerbically contentious portion of the entire conflict. Religious settlement in the Judean portion surrounding Jerusalem, and Haredization of the Jewish-majority portions of inner city Jerusalem, is obviously meant to tilt the demographic majority in the favor of Jewish fundamentalism and orthodoxy, neither of which have had as much of a historical dominance in Tel Aviv. This, of course, brings Israel and Judaism into direct conflict with the Islamic world and orthodox Islam, a demographically-skewed conflict for which Israel has long felt – at least since the Six Day War – woefully unprepared.
So perhaps Israel is delaying the binational solution until a solid Hebrew, Jewish fundamentalist majority is stacked into all sides and corners of Jerusalem and surrounding Judea. I doubt that such a majority will hold for long in the region after a full annexation and binationalization is instituted, since Judea is right next door to Jordan, but Israel has a shot at sowing the seed of the majority through Orthodox natural growth and religious immigration from the coastal plain region.
I surmise that it’ll take another two decades before the government finally annexes the West Bank and institutes binationalism as state policy.
None of this will happen or work until the Arabs decide to live in peace with Israel. Or as one Arab woman put it: Until they learn to love their children more than they hate the Jews.
A binational state will only work with a peaceful neighbor. Israel doesn’t have that. This is a conflict that is going to continue until either Arabs reach their stated goal of driving Israel into the sea, or the Israelis get fed up with it and simply turns Gaza and the West bank into a parking lot. I would support the latter. No people should have to live in fear of some nutjob blowing up their children on a school bus, or raining rockets down on their heads.
Actually, that was former Israeli PM Golda Meir who said that.
Also, the fact that the dispute between the Hebrew and Arab cultures has long held obvious religious connotations which deeply involve the religiously-motivated sympathies of outside parties, namely American Jews (and Evangelical Christians) and non-Arab Asian Muslims, complicates and befuddles the entire idea of a negotiated settlement between the two resident cultures, let alone any notion of “peace” (a vague and highly co-opted word that does not figure into the Abrahamic religious framework of negating any and all opposing possibilities).
Speaking of negating possibilities, the reason why the state of Israel was created in the first place was because European ethnicities (from Spain and France to the hinterlands of Russia) had ethnically and religiously rejected the existence of Jews, and increasingly sought for their containment and elimination from sight and from mind. They were classified, like the Roma people (whose ancestors initially came from the Indian subcontinent), as an un-European presence, so it slowly but logically followed that the Jews were really a Middle Eastern ethnic group, despite the lack of contact between European Jews and the region of former Israel for over a millenia. Surprisingly, the Jews who did make Aliya from Europe were increasingly rejected by the Arabs as white Europeans, despite the fact that they had reconstructed the Hebrew language specifically to sound like a genuine Semitic language.
My best guess, like yours, is that the Hebrew culture in Israel will have to ingrain itself (by violence, if necessary) back into the Southwestern Asian multicultural framework, at least to a point of no return. Despite the highly-misguided suggestions of various folks on DemocraticUnderground.com, the majority of Jews in Israel could never fathom moving back to Europe or the diaspora (for both religious and safety reasons), and the neo-Nazis and Christian Armageddonists here in North America can’t possibly be expected to not give North American Jews grief without having a far-away, isolated place to chuck them by the boatload.