When Mahatma Gandhi was asked what he thought of Western Civilization, he replied: “I think it would be a good idea.”

There has never been a separate, self-governing Palestinian state. But like Gandhi’s opinion of Western Civilization, most Israelis believe that establishing such a state would be a good idea. The main reason it has never happened is because of the actions of the Palestinian Arabs themselves.

In 1937, in the wake of a series of massacres of Jewish inhabitants instigated by the virulently antisemitic grand mufti of Jerusalem, the British rulers of Palestine proposed the Peel Commission partition plan, which would have allowed both the Jews and the Arabs to have separate states. Under it, the Jews would have two small non-contiguous sections of the land. The Arabs would have a much larger contiguous area, including all of Gaza and the West Bank. They would also get the entire Negev.

The Jews, reluctantly, accepted the Peel Commission plan. The Palestinian Arabs rejected it.

In 1947, as British rule was coming to an end, the United Nations proposed another partition plan. The plan also would have resulted in a Jewish state consisting of two non-contiguous sections of land, and an Arab state including all of Gaza and the West Bank. Again, the Jews accepted the partition plan and again the Arabs rejected it.

In 1948, the Jews declared an independent state called Israel on the borders set forth under the UN plan. Immediately, armies from five neighboring Arab states invaded the nascent State of Israel. To the world’s surprise, the Israelis repulsed them all, and gained more land, allowing them to establish their State in one contiguous land area with more defensible borders. In the fighting, Egypt seized the Gaza Strip and Jordan seized the West Bank.

From 1949 to 1967, while Egypt and Jordan ruled the Gaza Strip and the West Bank respectively, there was virtually no talk or movement to establish a Palestinian state in those territories.

In 1967, when Israel was again threatened with annihilation by its neighbors, it launched a preemptive strike. In the ensuing Six Day War, it defeated the armies of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, and took possession of Gaza and the West Bank.

Israel has never been comfortable governing those Arab-majority areas. It has proposed returning them to Egypt and Jordan, but both countries refused to take them back. It has also proposed establishing a Palestinian state, on the condition that it would not be used as a springboard for future attacks on Israel.

In 2000, President Clinton invited Israeli leader Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to Camp David. Clinton’s administration was nearing its end, and the President hoped that a peaceful resolution would burnish his legacy. Under his pressure, Israel accepted a proposal granting the Palestinians Gaza, about 95% of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Arab Quarter of the Old City. To compensate the Palestinians for getting less than 100% of the West Bank, the plan also required Israel to give up a small amount of its own pre-1967 territory.

The Palestinian leader rejected  this proposal. Clinton was enraged by Arafat’s refusal, and told him: “You are leading your people and the region to a catastrophe.” Instead of establishing a state on the offered land, Arafat launched a terrorist campaign that eventually cost the lives of over a thousand Israelis.

In 2008, Israeli leader Ehud Olmert offered the Palestinians a plan that would have given them Gaza and 94% of the West Bank. Israel would give up about 6% of its pre-1967 territory. To allow for contiguity between Gaza and the West Bank, a tunnel under full Palestinian control would be constructed connecting them. Israel would accept 1,000 Palestinian refugees every year for five years, and it would help establish an international fund to compensate other Palestinian refugees. The Palestinian border with Jordan would be patrolled by international forces, to ensure that no Arab armies could invade Israel from that direction again. 

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called Olmert’s offer “amazing.”  She was astonished and disappointed when Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas rejected it.

Later in 2007, Hamas ousted the Palestinian Authority from Gaza in a vicious war in which the two Palestinian factions took turns throwing each other’s prisoners off tall buildings. Today, with Hamas controlling Gaza, and the Palestinian Authority administering the West Bank, there is no one united Palestinian party with which Israel can negotiate an overall resolution.

The frustrating history of the efforts to negotiate the establishment a Palestinian state illustrate the wisdom of the observation of the late Israeli statesman Abba Eban: “The Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”

The founders did the opposite. They appealed to the Arab residents to stay.

On May 14, 1948, David Ben Gurion announced the Declaration of the State of Israel. Even as the armies of neighboring Arab states were invading, Ben Gurion conveyed this message to the Arab residents:

WE APPEAL – in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months – to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.

The Arab leaders conveyed a different message to the Jewish residents. Abdul Rahman Azzam, the Arab League’s first secretary-general, threatened that the establishment of a Jewish state would lead to “a war of extermination and momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacre and the Crusades.”

Every war results in the displacement of innocents. Millions of Muslim residents of India, and millions of Hindu residents of Pakistan, were displaced by the terrible violence that erupted following the end of British rule.  Millions of Germans were displaced from their ancestral homes in land transferred to Poland and Czechoslovakia in the aftermath of World War II.  Our own American Revolution led to the displacement of approximately 60,000 loyalists, who became refugees throughout the British Empire.

The Israeli War of Independence was no exception. There were atrocities on both sides. Despite Ben Gurion’s plea to the Arab residents to remain as full and equal citizens, an estimated 700,000 Arabs fled their homes, most because they were urged to do so by the invading Arab countries, but some because of legitimate fears of Israeli extremists. An even larger number of Jewish residents fled their homes in surrounding Arab countries in the wake of the violence perpetrated against them.

But while the numbers of displaced people on both sides may have been comparable, the consequences were not.

The Jewish refugees were welcomed into the nascent State of Israel, where they started new lives and became productive citizens. The Palestinian Arab refugees were segregated in squalid refugee camps in Jordan, Gaza, Syria, and Lebanon.

Ultimately, to understand why the Palestinian refugee problem is not the fault of Israel, one should consider the condition of those Arabs who heeded Ben Gurion’s appeal to remain in Israel, rather than to move. Today, Arab Israelis enjoy more civil rights than the Arabs of any other state. They are free to criticize their government – and many do! They are also free to run for office – and, again, many do! Life expectancy among Arab Israelis is higher than in any Arab-Muslim country, and their standard of living is higher than in any neighboring Arab country.

The Arabs, not the Israelis, caused the Palestinian refugee problem to begin, and the Arabs, not the Israelis, have allowed the Palestinian refugee problem to fester.

“Apartheid” is an official government program of racial segregation, which authorizes discrimination in the political, legal, and economic spheres. No such system exists in Israel.

Arab Israelis, who constitute 21% of the population, enjoy the same civil rights as Jewish Israelis. They serve as elected representatives in the Knesset and as judges in Israeli courts. An Arab Israeli, sitting on the Supreme Court, authored the  decision upholding the rape conviction of a former President of Israel. They are also culturally integrated. In 1999, an Arab Israeli woman was crowned Miss Israel. In 2016, an Arab Israeli was crowned Miss Trans Israel.

If you want to see the absurdity of calling Israel an “apartheid” state, attend a soccer game when the popular Maccabi Haifa team is playing. Two of the team’s biggest stars are Arab Israelis, Dia Saba and Mahmoud Jaber. The team roster includes players of four different religions: Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Druze. Messay Dego, a member of Israel’s Ethiopian community, is the team’s first black head coach.

Arab Israelis are exempt from the draft, but many thousands of them volunteer to serve in the IDF.

It is also worth noting that a majority of Israeli Jews are Sephardic, meaning that they are of Middle Eastern or North African descent. In the United States, such people would be perceived as “people of color,” not white. So the term “apartheid” doesn’t even make sense when applied to Israel.

Finally, a racist “apartheid” state would not have gone to great lengths, as Israel did, to transport thousands of oppressed Ethiopian Jews out of Africa to Israel. Throughout history, many nations have removed Africans from that continent to subject them to slavery. Israel alone among the nations of the world has rescued Africans from that continent to elevate them to freedom.

 The Jews are the native people.

Abundant archeological evidence shows a continuous Jewish presence in Israel since the Hebrews’ return from Egypt circa 1200 BCE. Arabs did not arrive in this geographic area until 640 CE, nearly 2,000 years later.

The British, French, and other Europeans who established colonies in Africa are examples of true “colonists” They colonized regions in which they had never lived before, and to which they had no spiritual or cultural connection. The American pioneers who settled the Western frontier are examples of true “settlers.” They settled territories in which they also had never lived before, and to which they had no connection.

In contrast to the European colonists and the American settlers, Jews have always been deeply connected to what the Bible refers to as Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel.

Because of the forced expulsion by the Romans, most Jews were dispersed throughout the world, a phenomenon known as the Diaspora. But some always remained in Israel, fostering a continuous Jewish presence for over three thousand years. For Jews in the Diaspora, a special spiritual connection to the Holy Land persisted even if a physical connection did not. “Next year in Jerusalem” is recited by Jews the world over at Passover. The Shulchan Aruch, the Jewish legal code compiled in the 16th century, states that a Jew who comes to pray should face the Land of Israel. At weekly Sabbath services, Jews read a portion of the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament. The Torah mentions Jerusalem more than 660 times, further proof of the deep Jewish connection to Israel.

In short, Jews are and have always been an indigenous people of the Holy Land, with deep religious connections.

Calling Jews “colonists” or “settlers” of Israel may fit the trendy “intersectionality” jargon common on many college campuses these days. But it’s a historical fiction.