Right wing politicians are not saying that Palestinians should be forced out of the country, the way so many were during Israel’s war of independence in 1948. What they are suggesting is that the army make life so impossible for the Palestinians that they will choose to leave.
And whether or not that is the army’s objective, it’s certainly what’s happening in Ramallah right now. There’s no risk of getting blown up in a supermarket; it’s impossible to get there because tanks block the streets and snipers shoot anyone who looks threatening.
“If people find the situation so hard and so dangerous that they prefer to move to some other part of the world or some other part of the region, it’s a tragedy but it is something that I cannot stop,” says Effi Eitam, once a top Israeli general who is now retired.
“As a result of war, many Palestinians may find themselves again as refugees, on the other side, the eastern side, of the Jordan River,” he says.
Eitam and many of his colleagues on the far right say Palestinians can live and farm their fields with broad civilian autonomy but would have no vote and no army. They can accept those conditions or leave.
Palestinians Naim and Rana Daour say ‘no’ to both options. They live with their two children in the West Bank town of Hebron, where their families’ roots go back 1,200 years.
“We believe that our fate and destiny is to live here, and to die here,” says Naim. “Leaving this will be leaving our culture, our heritage, our religion, our identity, our past and our future.”
The Daours are not surprised about the poll results on “transfer.” They say it’s clear that Israel is moving to the political right.
But then so are the Palestinians.
“If if you ask Palestinians today what they think about the Israelis, they would have some similar poll, what to do with Israelis,” says Professor Munzer Dajani, who teaches sociology in Jerusalem.
”I’m not speaking about driving them to the sea, but I am speaking about sending them back to Russia and Poland and Czechoslovakia,” he says. “I think the Palestinians would feel very strongly that these people should go back home.”
But, of course, Israelis say they are home. And the Jewish settlers in Hebron add that if you don’t believe it, read the Bible.
“This country is Jewish country. It’s Jewish land. It was given by god to the Jewish people,” says Noam Arnon, a settler leader.
Palmach Ze’evi doesn’t flinch at the thought of the removal of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. “The Americans have done much more dramatic moves in order to stop violence and end conflict,” he says. “Remember the Second World War? Remember how it ended in Japan? We’re talking about a much more civilized solution.”
Of course, that depends who you talk to.
“Do you think the Israeli army, do you think my son, is going to put people in a bus and transfer them across the border,” asks Goodman. He claims such a move would destroy Israel morally.
“We’re going to live like a scourge, with transfer - the mark of Cain - on our foreheads? I cannot conceive that a Jew would see putting people on a railway carriage, and transferring them anywhere. It is totally inconceivable that a Jewish state would do that.”
But Ze’evi has a different view: “One nation is gonna be forced out of here. One tribe is gonna go out. I prefer it’s the Arabs.”