Israeli Arabs in Support of Hezbollah -- With Citizens Like This, Israel Doesn't Need Enemies

Attached is a link that quotes prominent Arab Israelis and their views on the current Hezbollah war with Israel. Its tough to have citizens like this represented in your parliament.

On my last trip I got into a heated debate with a gentleman over the following issue, and the definition of "ethnic cleansing":

Israel has just over a million Arab citizens, many of whom do not particularly love Israel (as the attached article would indicate), though they love the economic opportunities and political and legal rights of living there. A good chunk of these people live in land in the southern Galilee that is contiguous to the northern West Bank. Most Israeli plans for dealing with the large Jewish population blocs on the West Bank call for Israel to give the West Bank to the Palestinians but retain a bit less than 10% of the West Bank lands which contain these blocs, in any final territorial resolution. It has been suggested by a significant Israeli political party (and others) that Israel do a "land swap", and "compensate" the Palestinians for this 10% "seizure" by giving them an equal amount of this Arab-populated Israeli sovereign territory, together with the Israeli Arabs occupying it.

Seems like a fair solution and everyone should be happy, no? The Left maintains that this is ethnic cleansing. I guess you are cleansing Israel of a portion of its citizenry that, by and large, is not loyal to its country, but at least you are not removing them from their land, which is very important to them -- you are just changing their sovereignty to that of their Palestinian brothers. There is a ton of legal precedent for this exact maneuver, in Europe after WW II and elsewhere. Surprisingly, public opinion polls among the Arabs that would be affected is very negative about this idea -- as much as they hate Israel, they like their lives in Israel just too much. What does that say about Arab society and Arab confidence in Palestinian self-government?

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