Netanyahu Draws Widespread Criticism after Saying Palestinians Support “Ethnic Cleansing”

In a video released in September, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accuses the Palestinian leadership of demanding a Palestinian state free of Jews by opposing Jewish settlements on the occupied West Bank. He states: “There’s a phrase for that. It’s called ethnic cleansing.”

The State Department described the language in the video as “inappropriate and unhelpful.” Many Israelis were also sharply critical. “There is something ridiculous about Netanyahu’s claim against ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Jews,” wrote Ben-Dror Yemini, a political columnist in Yediot Aharonot. (Sept. 12, 2016)

Mr. Yenini wrote that population transfers were historically intended to ensure the right of self-determination and to establish nation states. He maintained that Netanyahu turned that concept on its head. Israelis settling in the heart of Arab-populated areas of the West Bank were, he wrote, “the antithesis of the idea of self-determination and a Jewish and democratic nation state, because instead of separation there is a mix-up of hostile populations.”

Xavier Abu Eid, an adviser to the Palestine Liberation Organization in the West Bank, said, “We are not against people of any religion living in the state of Palestine.” He described Netanyahu’s use of the “religious card” as dangerous, adding, “There is a difference between settlers living in exclusive communities on stolen land and someone who is living in the country as a citizen like anyone else.”

Mr. Abu Eid said that some American and Israeli Jews were already living in areas of the West Bank under Palestinian control. He said that his neighbors in Ramallah included Christians, Muslims, a Druse family from the Golan Heights and a Jewish woman.

Discussing the Netanyahu video, columnist J.J. Goldberg provided this assessment in The Forward (Sept. 23, 2016): “Palestinians repeatedly insist that the Israeli accusation twists their position. ‘Any person, be he Jewish, Christian or Buddhist, will have the right to apply for Palestinian citizenship,’ the PLO spokeswoman Hanan Ashwari told The Times of Israel in ‘Our basic law prohibits discrimination based on race or ethnicity But, she added, Palestinians would not accept the presence of ‘extra-territorial Jewish enclaves’ whose residents remained Israeli citizens under Israeli protection. Privately, Palestinians and Israelis alike call the idea of settlers remaining in a Palestinian state a recipe for disaster. … Considering all the facts, it’s tempting to call Netanyahu’s talk of ethnic cleansing an inflammatory distraction, if not downright dishonest.”

Haaretz (Sept. 26, 2016) notes that, “Even Palestinians on the West Bank are being ‘ethnically cleansed’ … By the time of the Oslo Accords, Israel had revoked the residency of 140,000 Palestinians from the West Bank … While we are still desperately concealing, denying and repressing our major ethnic cleansing of 1948 over 600,000 refugees, some who fled in fear of the IDF and its predecessors, some who were expelled by force — it turned out that 1948 never ended, that its spirit is still with us. Also with us is the goal of trying to cleanse this land of its Arab inhabitants as much as possible and even a bit more.” •