Last Thursday, Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qurei took an unusual step. If peace talks continued to stall, he said, Palestinians would push for a bi-national Jewish-Arab state instead of independence.
A spokesman for Sharon doubted the credibility of the threat, "They are threatening themselves, not us."
But Mr. Qurei's plan would have challenged the very core of Israeli nationhood. Current demographic trends indicate that Arabs will outnumber Jews within a few years in the combined areas of Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (today's those numbers stand at 4.7 million Palestinians and 5.5 Jews). Arabs would be a forceful political majority in an Israeli democracy.
Qurei's tactic rather than Sharon's wall is the more threatening move.
Right-wing Israeli politicians are already worried about the population growth of Arab Israeli citizens.
Predictably, the Palestinian Authority rejected Qurei's strategy this weekend and maintains that independence is still the goal. But the mere mention of a bi-national Israel might be enough to make Israeli negotiators more anxious to establish a Palestinian state.
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