Joint List Angered At Israeli Decision To Exert Sovereignty Over Israel

“The issue isn’t what Israel took control of in 1967, but in 1948.”

Jerusalem, June 9 – Lawmakers from the alliance of several mostly-Arab political parties in Israel’s parliament voiced outrage today at the government’s announced intention to continue exercising its laws and governance instead of dismantling the mechanisms of Jewish independence and returning Jews to the mercy of whoever else rules the place.

Legislators from the Joint List, joined by a handful of colleagues from the nominally-Zionist Meretz party, expressed their ongoing anger Tuesday as Israel prepared for the eventuality of not relinquishing its territory to entities that have sworn to drive the Jews into the Mediterranean, and possibly to extend that sovereignty to other areas in the ancestral Jewish homeland where Jews live.

“This is unconscionable,” declared MK Ahmad Tibi. “It violates everything my constituency values. And by ‘constituency’ I mean the vocal, sometimes-violent minority of Arab voters and their terrorism-supporting allies all over the region. The peace-loving, coexistence-pursuing, integration-favoring Arab citizens of Israel can go stuff it. They get too-easily distracted by unimportant details such as the fact that they enjoy more rights and better security under Jewish sovereignty than anyone ever living under Arab or Muslim rule. As if that even matters when there’s the shame of the Nakba to expiate.”

“Forget the Jordan Valley,” warned MK Hiba Yazbak. “No one cared about the Jordan Valley when Jordan occupied the area. That isn’t even the issue. The issue isn’t what Israel took control of in 1967, but in 1948. The continuing application of Israeli law to areas taken in 1948 is outrageous, a clear violation of international law.” Ms. Yazbak declined to specify what statute, convention, protocol, or other document setting forth international law formed the basis of her statement, insisting instead that any notion or interpretation of existing principles that undermines Jewish sovereignty is “international law” enough for her.

“What’s important, what’s galling, is the injustice of it all,” she explained. “There was an established reality over thousands of years of Jews being downtrodden, subject, oppressed, living at the pleasure of the dominant society, ruler, or whatever. Then some of them decided that arrangement, which worked as well as any other for all that time, wasn’t good enough, and that Jews should have their own place – I ask you, what kind of ridiculous idea is that? How will we maintain our traditional position of at least not being as lowly as the Jew, if the Jew isn’t lowly anymore? It’s enough to make scream something like, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free.”

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