Israel moves tanks to Gaza border

[ag]

The objective of Hamas attack was precisely Israeli reoccupation of Gaza - this is going to take the pressure of them to accept the two-state solution. I guess, predictability of Israeli response means that they will succeed. Unfortunately, given the creation mythology of the Israeli state, they indeed struck into such a spot that no Israeli government could have any choice as to what to do.

[ag]

The best course of action  for Israel is to invade and go back to their old First Intifada policy: anyone caught doing anything to impede the IDF gets their arms broken with rocks.

This would represent a substantial softening of what has been Israeli policy ever since: the current policy is to kill any such person, as well as anybody who happens to be nearby.

[ag]

Israel will never give Palestinians citizenship for one very simple reason: it would then expose the internal contradiction in what it claims to be: "a Democratic Jewish State". If the citizenship were granted, it would have to choose: either it is Democratic, or it is Jewish, since it would be impossible to form a government supported just by the Zionist Jewish parties (or else, all Jewish parties will have to always support each other). This is why Israeli citizenship has never been an option that Israelis were willing to entertain.

This is the "Original Sin" of Zionism: failure to see that the land was not empty and that they could not create a Democratic Jewish state without addressing the issue of the Arab population. They observed the Arabs, but they never really "saw" them, and this is the cause of the war (at least, the Zionist cause - you could argue that the Arabs refused to see the Jews as well, but, then, unlike the Jewish migrants they were not really driven by a self-concious ideology of "not seeing").  Of course, holding on to the territories captured in 1967 meant that the two-state solution was increasingly becoming impossible, which meant that Israel was facing an insurmountable ideological problem. They still haven't faced it properly: they'd have to evacuate a lot more than a few isolated settlements to really solve it (unless, of course, they are willing to resort to Nazi-style crimes).

More deeply, the problem with Zionism is that it is an ideology behind its time. It arose from the 19th-century Romanticism, the same pool that gave rise to all sorts of nationalist movements (starting, perhaps, with Greek liberation) and that culminated in (and was terminated by the failure of) the German Nazism (isn't the common ideological foundation of the Zionists and the Nazis ironic?). It could not come to fruition before WWII, and when it did get its chance it was inextricably, in part, a barbaric anachronism.  A state, that attempts to be at the same time a somewhat sociallist democracy; a nationalist romantic refuge, protected by an uber-race of National Hero-Fighters; and an ancient theocracy, where the strangely-dressed clerics monitor the sexual transgressions of a two-thousand-year vintage, is inescapably schizophrenic. It would have been not such a big problem, if all it did is damage the brains of its own citizens (hey, they are Jewish - and we all are somewhat nuts ), but, unfortunately, it has also been impacting on others.

[ag]

That's a bit of a stretch, ag.  76% of the population are Jewish, 16% Muslim, 2% Christian, and a few other small sects.  They can still structure their nation off of Jewish principals and remain a democracy without 100% of the nation being Jewish. 

Not unless they get out of the territories.  Your numbers only include Israeli citizens - they exclude a lot of the Arabs and others living under Israeli control, not only in the West Bank, but also in Jerusalem, including a lot of the lands Israel is not planning to give back. Within the next few years Jews will be a minority between the Jordan and the sea (they would have long been a minority, had Israelis not expelled a lot of the people over the last 6 decades). Of course, Gaza shouldn't, probably, count any more - unless they reoccupy it. The demographic situation is why Israel has never offered citizenship to those in the territories, and why it will never do it - and that is what I wrote about.

But, the fact is, that Israeli democratic character would be severely undermined even if the Jewish proportion falls to around 2/3 of the citizenry. The reason, of course, is that the implicit political requirement that an Israeli government must have a "Zionist majority" of 61 seat in the Knesset would imply a near-necessity of a grand coalition. If the Jews were to constitute only 2/3 of the population, the "Zionist parties" would struggle to get even 90 seats (some Arabs - a lot fewer of them recently, though - of course, vote for the major parties, of course, which I take into account, but also some Jews vote for the non-Zionist Communists). If you have to get 61 seat out of 90 to be able to form a government, forming a meaningfully democratic goverment becomes very difficult. In particular, the Israeli polity would be even more dependent on the ultra-religious haredi party-sects like Shas, NRP and the rest of the crowd (and, due to the higher fertility of the haredim, it won't be long before those take over 30 seats, meaning that no secular Israeli Jewish government would be possible even in theory).

To sum up, even if Israel gets out of the territories and never gives citizenship to another Arab, it will not take long before the non-haredi Jews are a minority in Israel. And if they really permanently annex any part of the West Bank (or even just the East Jerusalem) and have to extend the citizenship to those resident there (and it is hard to see how a truly democratic state can permanently avoid doing it), this will happen even sooner.

[ag]

Another problem with Zionism is even if one accepts the rather ridiculous idea that someone has the right to a land because their ancestors lived there 2000 years ago

Well, the legal justification of Israeli existence is not based on that (at least, if you look at it from a non-religious point of view). Israeli existence is based on a whole bunch of international agreements, starting with the Balfour Declaration in 1918 (?), the establishment of the British Mandate and, of course, eventually, the UN SC and GA resolutions providing for the termination of the Mandate and the establishment of the two states. You could argue all what you want about why those were adopted and whether they were furthering a wise, moral or just policy at the time (I, personally, think they weren't, on any of those counts), but Israeli existence is a done fact, legally as well as practically.

Furthermore, it is not a simple arithmetic: multiplying an injustice by an injustice does not a justice make. Any just solution has to take into account the fate of 5 mln. Israeli Jews, vast majority of whom does not have anymore any real connection to any other country. The fact is, that Europeans (and, lets face it, a lot of the Arabs as well - how many people got kicked out of Iraq alone?) chose to resolve their own "Jewish problem" by sending their ancestors to that very country (by far not everybody came there voluntarily). Now, decades later, destroying the lives of the Israeli-grown generations would do nothing to restore the destroyed lifes of the Palestinians.

The ancient argument has nothing to do with it - for that matter, many, if not most Palestinians can, probably, also claim their origin from the ancient Jews.

[ag]

this still doesn't apply to a good amount if not sizable majority of Jews as they are not actually mostly descended from the ancient Twelve Tribes of Israel, but rather the Kazhars,

BTW, though it is entirely irrelevant, is not likely that most of European (Ashkenazic) Jews have anything to do with the Khazars (though there are some other - smallish - Jewish communities that undeniably do). There is simply a discontinuity between the areas and times of known Khazar settlement and the evidence of Ashkenazic migration. For instance, linguistic evidence in Yiddish clearly indicates a Western migration route through France (Yiddish contains notable borrowings from early medeival French), not Eastern route through what is now Ukraine, while there is no evidence of Turkic borrowings into the language, which would likely be there if the community contained many Khazars. There is also a gap of a few centuries between the known Khazar Jewish communities in what is now Ukraine and establishment of Ashkenazic communities there under Polish control (in fact, therer is evidence that there were no Jews in many of those areas in the inerim), etc.

On the other hand, there were many other documented cases of mass conversion into Judaism - in Asia Minor (Galatia), in Yemen (the origin of most Yemeni Jews), etc. There are also conjectured conversions, which might have more to do with the origins of many of the modern Ashkenazim - in particular, they talk about a probable significant conversion of some Slavic groups (the latest one of these - this one is documented, though smallish - happened as recently as in the 19th century).

Still, the best evidence for the mideastern origin of at least part of the modern Jewish community is, ironically, in the genetic relationships they've established between the Jewish and the Palestinian Arab populations.

Entirely irrelevant sideline, though.