Thread by @lymanstoneky

TIL (thanks to @AriLamm ) that the casual use of "Arab" in contrast to "Jewish" is probably a mistake, since ~40-50% of Jews in Israel are Mizrahi, and genetic evidence suggests Mizrahi Jews are nearly as close of kin to former Arab neighbors as to Ashkenazim.

Relevant citations:
people.socsci.tau.ac.il/mu/noah/files/…
sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
nature.com/articles/s4143…
sciencemag.org/news/2000/10/j…

Guess that makes the "Palestinian" component of the "Arab Palestinian" argument the chief operator, but then that gets complicated with Hamas' 2017 charter that tries to redefine their ambitions in nationalist rather than religious terms.

Obviously, any "Look, half of you are Arabs anyways!" argument about Israeli Jews would be absurd.

But it's an important marker that the conflict ***is primarily religious***, not primarily race-ethnic.

This distinction of course seems very odd to me since trying to separate ethnicity and religion in a sociological sense is, uh, not easy, but it was recently brought to my attention by some folks that "Is it a religious conflict or not?" is an important question in some circles.

Specifically, apparently, "The conflict is not about religion but race or ethnicity" is apparently an argument against portraying the conflict as basically about "Should a large population of Jews be permitted to live permanently and with security in the land?"

Of course the complicating factor in interpretation of the conflict as primarily religious is the Palestinian Christian community.

Relatedly, here's plausible estimates of the Jewish share of the population of Israel, Israel + Palestinian territories, and Israel + Palestinian territories + Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.

So basically, "right of return" is the difference between a hypothetical one-state solution being "there is no religious majority group" (after accounting for Druze, Christians, nonrelig, etc) and "Muslim majority."

As an aside for why that might be significant, go Google population trends for Jewish people in Muslim majority countries.

And it seems like a decent explanation for the rightward turn in Jewish politics is simply the declining Jewish share of the population.

Alas, the Arab Barometer surveys in Palestine don't ask many questions at all about relations with Israel. But it's worth mentioning that in 2018, self rated dislike of neighbors of other religions in Palestine was 22%, only beaten in the Arab world by Yemen, Libya, and Egypt.

In fairness Yemen and Libya were a *lot* higher than Palestine. But Egypt was comparable. I'm not sure any of the three offer encouraging examples of what happens to minority groups and the odds of intercommunity violence or functional democracy.

Though in September 2020, a poll found that a plurality of Palestinians thought the best response to Israeli occupation was armed resistance, and majorities oppose a two-state solution.

Which is to say, the modal opinion is "establish a unitary state through violent action."

Furthermore, a third of respondents rejected the idea of peace with Israel *even if* refugee issues were resolved.

Here's the poll: jewishvirtuallibrary.org/palestinian-at…

Oh man, a January 2020 poll found that the share of Palestinians who say the top priority should be ending the occupation fell from 40s to 30s 2017 to 2020, while the share saying reclaim all territory, river to the sea rose from 30s to 60s.

So it seems an awful lot like what we're seeing is a big increase in support for violent armed action aimed at establishing a single state which is Palestinian (and not necessarily democratic according to questions on that!).