That knock on our door has been ongoing for many years and luckily for us, it has persisted and not given way to blows. The sad thing is that we – the Israeli Jews among us – have remained numb. We seldom appreciate the determination of the overwhelming majority of the Arab minority to embrace the power of speech and obstinately reject violence. We even refuse to be impressed by the fact that this determination has not waned despite sixty years of deprivation, forty years of occupation, seven years of relentless and reciprocal bloodshed between its people and its country of citizenship, the killing of Arab demonstrators by police in October 2000, the abandonment of the most valuable report to emerge from us as a society – the Or Commission Report – and the adoption of racist laws, such as The Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law (Temporary Order) 2003.

Moreover, as with the Palestinians in the OccupiedTerritories, we make our attention conditional upon almost impossible preconditions. The minority must – in advance – give up on presenting its notion of justice, which is full binational partnership in a state within the Green Line (or in Palestine as a whole); its individual members must serve in the army or in a civic service as a condition for reducing discrimination, etc. This is presumably the reason for the relatively limited attention given to an important document drafted by the minority: the proposed constitution issued by Adalah, under the title of “The Democratic Constitution”. This is an in-depth proposal in which substantial thought has clearly been invested. At the very least, it deserves to be reckoned with. I shall undertake a portion of this task. I will start by presenting its positive aspects, followed by debating its problematic aspects, as I perceive them.

Firstly, the Democratic Constitution states forthright that the boundaries of the state that it deems acceptable are those of the Green Line; namely, it adopts a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and envisions a continuation of our joint lives here, in Israel, in a country with a Jewish majority. Secondly, it proposes a “constitutional democracy” wherein human rights are grounded in an enshrined constitution and defended in court through judicial review of the validity of laws infringing human rights. Thirdly, the constitution clearly outlines the rights of the individual and the common rights of citizenship, similarly to other democratic constitutions. The central right in this instance is, of course, the constitutional right to equality. Fourthly, I myself strongly agree with some of the group-differentiated rights claimed in the “Democratic Constitution”: cultural autonomy (providing it does not harm “the minority within the minority”), and the minority’s right to have a part in the state’s symbols. Although I do not accept the demand for full, egalitarian partnership regarding the state’s symbols between a majority comprising eighty percent of the population and a minority – even if it is an indigenous minority – I am all for rejecting the current state of affairs whereby the symbols are exclusively reserved for the majority community. Fifthly, in my view it is difficult not to accept the proposal to return the uprooted citizens of Israel (such as those from Iqrith, Biram and others)to their land, as far as circumstances allow, since this demand changes nothing at all in the demographic balance between Jews and Arabs in Israel. It is also utterly fitting to comply with the civil claim to recognize the “unrecognized villages”.

What – conversely – are the problems in the Democratic Constitution? Firstly, it links all of its demands – the majority of which are completely justified – with a move to a new paradigm, a binational one (with its slightly evasive wording: “a bilingual and multicultural state”). In other words, the proposal correlates its demands with an unequivocal abandonment of the paradigm of the Jewish, democratic state. Sometimes radical transitions are needed, but because transformations of this kind are very difficult and demanding, one must go to great lengths to prove that they are necessary. In order to achieve A, B and C, does one necessarily have to also achieve D and E, which are unfathomable to the other community? After all, as aforementioned, a great many demands which appear in the proposed constitution do not shatter the Zionist paradigm, namely the fair allocation of land to the Arabs, cultural autonomy for the Arabs (similarly to the autonomy granted to the Orthodox Jews), the right to have a say in the state’s symbols, returning the uprooted citizens (as opposed to the right of return of the refugees). All of these and more are attainable and even morally necessary according to the humanistic concepts of Zionism. Why, then, set forth a proposal that sounds like “all or nothing”?

Another problematic aspect of the demand of the “Democratic Constitution” to turn Israel into a binational state pertains to the conditions necessary for the stability of such a framework. The proposal for binationalism is a call for Siamese-twinism, under conditions that are exceedingly difficult for twins of this nature. We are supposed to become Siamese twins without the basic conflict over the right of return being resolved between us and the Palestinian people; against the recent backdrop of the three thousand Palestinian and over one thousand Jewish-Israeli casualties; in the presence of demographic instability; at a time when a democratic political culture is not deeply ingrained on either side; at a time when there are large socio-economic disparities between the nations; and so forth. These are blatantly different conditions from those that accompanied the emergence of classical examples of recognized bi-national countries, such as Switzerland, Belgium and Canada.

A third problem pertains to the potential obstacle unwittingly placed by the “Democratic Constitution” before the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On the one hand, a comprehensive solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is necessary in order to enable the conditions for a binational framework to ripen, since, after all, neither partnership nor the right of veto, or a binational framework can flourish without a broad agreement of both communities regarding common values and goals, especially when it comes to life and death issues. However, in order for this conflict to end, a harsh trauma to the Israeli-Jewish public must occur in the interim, a trauma far worse than the disengagement from the Gaza Strip – a withdrawal, more or less, to the Green Line. The great withdrawal, if it comes to pass, will probably be the consequence of a utilitarian decision made by Israel’s Jews that the withdrawal is the only way to survive. The essence of such a decision is that only forgoing the occupation and fully withdrawing will ensure ongoing sovereignty and the freedom not to depend on others. However, a binational framework is perceived precisely as a relinquishment of this non-dependence; it establishes the minority’s right of veto on topics that are perceived as life and death issues.

Thus, the points of debate and the points of agreement are clearer. Time has not stood still. The knock on the door has continued. However, the community behind it is more assertive now, more skillful and has made dialogue its path of choice. Rather than becoming frightened, and instead of aspiring to restore the lost “paradise” of a submissive minority, which is like clay in the potter's hands, we have to finally act with integrity.

We, the Israeli Jews among us, have to agree to afford the rights that should have been granted from the start, and we shall not make the accordance of said rights conditional in any way, since they are civic rights and not favors. We shall only insist upon what is truly worth insisting upon: control over the entrance gates into Israel (in the cases of potential immigrants as opposed to citizens' spouses and children), control over Israel's security forces, and dominance (yet definitely not exclusivity) over Israel’s symbols.

[1] Dr. Ilan Saban is a lecturer in constitutional law at the Faculty of Law, University of Haifa, Israel.