The right of return enjoys the full backing of the international community. The UN in its famous Resolution 194 of December 1948 stipulates that the refugees must be returned to their homes. Six hundred thousand refugees of 1948 have meanwhile become two million people who demand their homes in Lod, Ramle, Jaffa, Haifa, and all the other parts of the state of Israel that were conquered in the War of Independence. The right of return until recently was totally rejected even by Israeli leftists but in the course of the general collapse even this taboo has been broken. The flow of Arabs into the state of Israel on humanitarian grounds or family unification, according to the official numbers, is currently twenty thousand a year. But in reality the number is at least four times as large. In the meantime Israel has removed its opposition to immigration into Judea and Samaria and with the establishment of a Palestinian state there will be a large immigration and for the first time in decades the demographic balance in Western Eretz Israel will be tilted toward the Arabs.

The absolute majority of the public supports the establishment of a Palestinian state but a considerable part of the public yearns for it. Only a terminally ill patient longs for his own death to liberate himself from his suffering. Amos Oz says: "Barak must ask Arafat to let him know 24 hours before the establishment of the Palestinian state so Israel can be the first state to recognize it." This sort of thinking is apparently what won Oz the Israel Prize.

The demand for a Palestinian state is the triumph of an unprecedented historical fiction. There is no cultural, geographic, ethnic, or national justification for it. There is nothing specific to the identity of the Arabs of Eretz Israel which justifies the establishment of a state, such as language, religion or history. Indeed they are sons of the large Arab nation as it is stated in the introduction to the Palestinian Covenant. Even had they the characteristics of a nation, they would have been satisfied in a Palestinian state which is called Jordan. Eighty percent of the Hashemite kingdom (probably more since Jordan carries out no census for fear of discovery of this truth) are Palestinians. If the Arabs of Eretz Israel want signs of sovereignty they have a flag, stamps, coinage and a king. The establishment of an additional Palestinian state in western Palestine (in addition to the demand for Arab autonomy within the state of Israel) is nothing but an open plot for delegitimizing the Jewish state as part of the Arab war to extirpate the foreign body in their midst.

The Arabs present their position that Israel should be liquidated openly and without any embarassment. The Palestinian Covenant, the plan of stages, the Constitution of Fatah under Arafat's leadership, the logo of the PLO including all of Eretz Israel are formal expressions of this position. The breaking of the law by three Prime Ministers of Israel, without precedent in modern history (except perhaps in the case of national capitulation like that of Petain in 1940), the emptying of the role of Parliament, the undermining of the position of the Supreme Court, are additional signs of systematic institutional disorganization which makes it possible for Prime Ministers to openly carry out their "putsches." The most recent example was Ehud Barak at Camp David announcing he would sign the agreement "even if there remain in my government only nine ministers and a quarter of the members of the Knesset" and declaring "the nation, not the Knesset, will confirm it." These are declarations straight out of fascistic populism. One cannot imagine in a genuine democracy that a person who said such things could remain Prime Minister.

One must assume Barak does not understand the nature of democracy and the position of Parliament as an institution representing the will of the public. It is clear that he does not grasp the meaning of written law that protects the collective against sliding into anarchy. But the problem is not the man Barak but the entire system. Where is the legal adviser to the government whose task it is to call Barak to order? Where is the chairman of the Knesset protesting the insult to the legislative body? Why is the President of the Supreme Court silent as the law of the state is defied? Why does the Likud, whose task as an opposition is to defend the values of democracy, not reveal to the public this betrayal of the Prime Minister's sworn task?

Arie Stav is editor of the Israeli journal Nativ.

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