Ashrawi: Recognizing Israel as ‘Jewish state’ would legalize ‘racism’
Ma’an – 11/01/2014
BETHLEHEM – Israel’s pressure on Palestinians to recognize it as a Jewish state is an attempt to legalize “racism,” a PLO official said Saturday.
PLO Executive Committee Member Hanan Ashrawi said defining Israel as a Jewish state would signify that any Jewish person would have the right to return to Palestine, while Palestinians would lose that right.
Ashrawi told Ma’an that Israel wants to “create a narrative that denies the Palestinian presence, rights, and continuity on the historic Palestinian lands.”
A “Jewish state” recognition would exempt Israel from its responsibility toward the Palestinian refugees who were forcibly displaced from their homes in 1948, she said.
Similarly, a former Palestinian member of the Israeli Knesset said that recognizing Israel as such a state would “annul the Palestinian narrative about the Nakba.”
It would abolish the right of the refugees to return, said Talab al-Sani.
During US-mediated peace talks with the Palestinians, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly cited recognition of Israel as a Jewish state as a precondition for peace.
It is the “minimal requirement for peace,” Netanyahu told the Saban Forum on Middle East policy in Washington on Dec. 8.
There would be peace, Netanyahu said, if “there were no longer any Palestinian national claims on the Jewish state — no right of return … no residual claims of any kind. And that, the Palestinians have so far been unwilling to give.”
More than 760,000 Palestinians — estimated today to number 4.8 million including their descendants — were forced into exile or driven out of their homes in the conflict surrounding Israel’s creation in 1948.
Palestinian officials have repeatedly said that recognizing the concept of Israel as a “Jewish state” is unnecessary and threatens the rights of nearly 1.3 million Palestinian citizens of Israel who remained in their homes during the displacement of the majority of the Palestinian population during the 1948 war.
The right of Palestinian refugees to return to their land is enshrined in article 11 of UN resolution 194.
The internationally recognized Palestinian territories of which the West Bank and East Jerusalem form a part have been occupied by the Israeli military since 1967.
Related article
No comments yet.
Featured Video
Iran Is Not Our Enemy
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
Book Excerpt
“Vaccines Do Not Cause Autism!” The Science is Settled. Right?
ICAN urges the IACC to actually study infant vaccines and autism
By Aaron Siri | Injecting Freedom | March 16, 2026
On behalf of ICAN, we just sent a copy of chapter 11 of Vaccines, Amen to the newly appointed members of the federal Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC).
If you haven’t already read this chapter, you can read the whole thing in the attached letter. I trust that after you read it, you’ll see why the statement “vaccines do not cause autism” is a belief, not science!
IACC Public Comment Letter
1.53MB ∙ PDF file
Includes chapter 11 of Vaccines, Amen
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Weapons makers cash in on Trump’s Iran war
- Why Trump’s anti-Iran naval coalition in Strait of Hormuz is doomed to fail
- IRGC says regional energy sites linked to US will be reduced to ashes
- Qatar condemns ‘dangerous’ Israeli attack on gas field
- Iran made ‘unexpectedly substantial’ offer during Geneva talks, US envoys ‘dragged’ Trump into war: Report
- Russia condemns Israel’s attack near Bushehr plant, files complaint
- Russia Strongly Condemns Actions Aimed at Harming Health of Iranian Leadership – Kremlin
- Israeli Journalist Demands Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens Be Placed in WWII-Style Internment Camps
- No Liability, No Studies, No Accountability: The Vaccine System Aaron Siri Exposed in Federal Court
- No time for losers: Why the war meant to save Israel may destroy it
- If Americans Knew
- How ignorance, misunderstanding and obfuscation ended Iran nuclear talks
- Israeli media reports grotesque settler attack in West Bank
- UK security adviser attended US-Iran talks and judged deal was within reach
- Tucker Carlson says ‘neocons’ will try to destroy Joe Kent over resignation
- Lebanon death toll exceeds 900, another assassination in Iran, bombing in Gaza – Not a ceasefire Day 159
- Trump’s counterterrorism chief, whose own wife was killed by ISIS, quits over Iran War saying Tehran posed ‘no imminent threat’
- Here’s what US could fund instead of Bibi’s war on Iran
- Israel Killed Over a Dozen Lebanese Paramedics in Three Days, Now Claiming That Ambulances Are “Hezbollah” Targets
- War on Iran: These are the heritage sites devastated by US and Israeli attacks
- Four news stories from Israeli media that illustrate Israeli “justice”
- No Tricks Zone
- Energy Expert: Germany’s Nuclear Phaseout Was A “500 Billion Euro Mistake”
- New Research: South Australia’s Mid-Holocene Sea Surface Temperatures Were 4°C Warmer Than Today
- Storing Green Energy To Last Germany 10 Days Would Require A 60-Million Tonne Battery
- New Studies: UK Sea Levels Were 4 Meters Higher Than Today During The Mid-Holocene
- Destructive Green New Deal: German Energy And Metal Group Warns Of Drastic Crisis
- New Study Documents A 20-Year Pause In Arctic Sea Ice Decline – Driven By Internal Variability
- Wake-up Call: Survey Shows Majority Of Germans Now Favor Postponing Climate Targets!
- Televised! Leading German Political Candidate Tells Schoolchildren CO2 Makes Sun Hotter!
- New Study: A Century Warming Of 1.1°C Is ‘Commonplace’ And ‘Not Unusual’ During This Interglacial
- New Study: ‘Internal Noise’ And Volcanic Forcing Can Trigger 10-15°C Warming Within Decades
Aletho News 
Leave a comment