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Integration or Separation?
Today about 20% of Israel’s
population is non-Jewish. These
Israelis enjoy the basic freedoms
and rights of all Israeli citizens. In
a very real sense, the democratic
State of Israel reflects the two
core values of San Remo: a Jewish
homeland, and protection of
minority rights.

However, the invasion of Israel by its
Arab neighbours in 1948 shattered
any hopes of full implementation of
the San Remo vision. Hundreds of © Sarah Schuman/Flash90
thousands of Palestinian Arabs were
suddenly subject to occupation by
Egypt (Gaza) and Jordan (West Bank Today the PLO manifests itself as The San Remo Resolution proposed
and East Jerusalem). The Palestine “Palestine”: a State, which has a three-state solution, and the
Liberation Organization (PLO) was now been recognised as such by Mandate for Palestine led to a four-
established in 1964, with the sole many States in the world, even state solution. It was unable to bring
goal to reject the Jewish homeland though it does not meet the peace to the region. So perhaps
in Palestine that had been approved established criteria for statehood the ‘problem’ is the existence of a
by the League of Nations and United under international law, nor can Jewish state at all.
Nations. it be expected in practice to give
the same civil and religious rights
to Jewish minorities as Arabs 1. Quoted by Benny Morris, 1948: A History of
“non-Jewish Israelis receive in Israel. At the same time, the First Arab-Israeli War (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 2008): 10.
Palestinian Arab leaders have
enjoy freedoms and rejected time and again – Peel

rights of all citizens” report (1937), Partition Plan (1948),
Camp David (2000), Olmert plan
(2008), Trump plan (2020) – any
proposal for a two-state solution
west of the Jordan River.

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