chamsa

Are you an Israeli first, or a Jew?

In a poll conducted on the eve of Israel's 59th Independence Day, 50 percent of respondents said they were Jewish first, 45 percent said they were Israeli first and the remaining five percent said that both titles did not represent them.

Eighty-two percent of religious respondents said they were more Jewish compared to eight percent who said they were more Israeli. The gap among the strictly-Orthodox population is the largest: 92 percent said they felt more Jewish compared to five percent that sees itself as more Israeli.

Among secular Israelis, 72 percent said they were more Israeli compared to 23 percent who said they were more Jewish. Among respondents who view themselves as conservative, 64 percent said they were more Jewish and only 27 percent said more Israeli.

[...]

According to Becker, there is an erosion of values perceived as 'Israeli' and in their stead people have begun to identify more with Judaism. Becker said that this is not necessarily people latching on to Judaism as a religion, but as a nationality, a culture and spirituality, a community with historic and familial roots.

What are you?

I'm an Israeli Jew, wonder where that fits in?

Tse.

'Israeli melons have AIDS'

For Palestinian refugees, return is not a question

4.5 million Palestinian refugees live in dozens of refugee camps across the Middle East in precarious conditions.

By Sakher Abu El Oun - JABALIYA REFUGEE CAMP, Gaza

At 85, Abdelrahman al-Mabhuh still believes he will one day leave his miserable refugee camp in the Gaza Strip and return to lands that were once his in neighbouring Israel.

"The Israelis will be defeated and chased off our country. I saw it in a dream, it will happen in 11 years," he is sure.

The Jabaliya refugee camp is today the biggest Palestinian refugee camp in the Middle East, where over 106,000 people live in density and squalor.

Mabhuh is one of about 760,000 Palestinians who fled or were driven away from their homes in the months before and following the creation of the Jewish state in May 1948.

Almost 4.5 million Palestinian refugees and their descendants live today in dozens of refugee camps across the Middle East in precarious conditions, and their plight is seen as the biggest stumbling block to peace.

Israel vehemently rejects any suggestions of a return for the refugees, arguing the influx would effectively erase the Jewish character of the state, while Palestinians view the right of return as sacred in solving the decades-old conflict.

When Arab states unanimously adopted this week a plan offering full normalisation of ties with Israel in exchange for the return of all occupied Arab lands, creation of a Palestinian state and the return of refugees, the Jewish state balked at the latter element of the Arab peace plan.

But the recent flurry of peace diplomacy hardly left an impression on Mabhuh, who grew up in the today-vanished village of Batani just a few kilometres (miles) away from the Gaza Strip.

The right of return is not subject to any negotiations, he says.

"We will never give up. They chased us away from our paradise and we have since fought for our return," he says as he adjusts the keffieh chequered scarf on his head.

Like many Palestinian refugee families, Mabhuh has kept the key to his Batani home, a symbol of his desire to return and of the Palestinian national cause.

The grandparents of 40-year-old Suheila al-Taluli lived before the 1948 war in the village of Dimra, not far from Batani, and again of which no trace has remained.

"My grandmother told me before she died many stories about her village. She would often break down in tears from the memories and pain," she says.

"She raised her children on love of the cause. One of them died as a martyr and others are today in Israeli prisons," she says.

Sitting in front of her ramshackle home, Taluli's neighbour, Latifa al-Hilu, is too old to remember her age, but she keeps a vivid image of her home in the village of Beit Jirja where today stands an Israeli community.

"It was a beautiful two-storey house. My father fell sick when he heard that it was destroyed after we left," she says.

"We lived there comfortably with the income from our fields. Today we live on humanitarian aid, but we will return one day," she promises.

"Nothing in this world will make me give up my right of return. Jabaliya is not my home. Home is the village where my parents and grandparents were born and sooner or later we will return," says Suheila, whose family also came from Dimra.

According to the United Nations, Palestinian refugees and their descendants numbered 4.45 million by the end of 2006, with 1.85 million living in Jordan, 442,363 in Syria and 408,438 in Lebanon, in a total of 95 camps.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Friday that the return of any Palestinian refugee was "out of the question".

"I'll never accept a solution that is based on their return to Israel, any number," the premier said in an interview to the Jerusalem Post English-language daily.