What is a homeland?

When President Harry Truman stroke out the words “Jewish State” and wrote instead “State of Israel” he was thinking that this isn’t right, or at least I think, he believed in Jesus Christ…

Today Western leaders race to recognize the so-called “State of Israel” as the “homeland for the Jewish people”!!
Jewish people from Europe or the United States of America are true nationals of these states, even after getting their Israeli Citizenship. They belong there more than they belong here in Jerusalem. Well, also there are Jews who lived here and they still belong here. What is not acceptable is to bring others to live here and drive me out there..,. Where?? …I don’t know. Maybe President Sarkuzi knows , or Berlusconi, or Mme. Merkel would tell me where!!!

What is a homeland?!.. Isn’t it the land where my home is?! Isn’t it where one is born on its earth from a father and mother?! In this land that extends from the Mediterranean, West to the River Jordan, East, and from Eilat
on the Red Sea, South, to Al Naqoura on the Lebanese borders North; there is about 12 million people living here today. At least 10 million of them where born here, while 2 million were brought from outside in the last couple of decades.

Today there are about 2 million Palestinians living outside this land because they were forced to leave their home land in 1948 and 1967; they are called refugees or Diaspora Palestinians. Among the 10 million who were born on this land 60 % are Palestinian Arabs, Christians and Moslems. The rest are Palestinian Jews as I might name them or as the British mandate used to name them. Isn’t this our homeland?!

If Haifa is where my grandparents were born and my mother too, isn’t this the home land of my family? My Grandparents left Haifa during the Ottomans and my mother fled in 1948. Does this make Haifa the home land of
the Jewish people coming from Europe in the same year?! Today there are more that 1.5 million Arab Palestinians living in these areas called Israel..What will be their fate within a Jewish State and under a unilateral move by Israel when a Palestinian state is established?! Do we want to repeat the Turkish/Greek model?! What about the Palestinians who belong to Haifa , Lod , Ramla, Jaffa , Nazareth and in Jerusalem too?!

The more Israel pursues its domination, demographically and politically, to become the home land of the Jewish people the more this Holy land in the eyes of Christians loses its Christian local population. In Jerusalem
Christians were 32000 in 1946 and now we are 9000!!!

As Palestinian Christians and within our unified position delivered rough the “Moment of Truth” document, and as indigenous people of this land, our home land Palestine, this is our clear stand: "9.3 Trying to make the state a religious state, Jewish or Islamic, or Christian, suffocates the state, confines it within narrow limits, and transforms it into a state that practices discrimination and exclusion, preferring one citizen over another. We appeal to both religious Jews and Muslims: let the state be a state for all its citizens, with a vision constructed on respect for religion but also equality, justice, liberty and respect for pluralism and not on domination by a religion or a numerical majority.”

This is only politically logical and still unjust. Unjust for the millions of refugees and expelled Palestinians, or those who wish to come back for good while only allowed visiting as tourists. In our word of love, we invited the enemy to be free from the sin of occupation and exclusivity.

Palestine, all Palestine, can be the home land of the Jewish people, Moslems and Christians too if your birth certificate says so. A two states or one state it makes no difference since the rule is one. The state is
only political.
 
 Yusef Daher