Right-wing MK: Let Palestinians vote for Israeli parliament

Knesset Member Zvulun Kalfa, of the pro-settlement Jewish Home party, is calling for Israel to annex the West Bank and allow Palestinians to participate in Israeli general elections.

“Palestinians should get full citizenship rights, equality, investment in infrastructure [in their] communities and voting rights to the Knesset,” Kalfa told the Israel Hayom daily. According to Kalfa, this is the only way to dismiss for good the claim that Israel is discriminating against Palestinians or that it is an Apartheid state. “I am for a single state for everyone.”

Kalfa estimates that Jews will be able to remain a majority in the greater state. He is not, however, calling to annex Gaza.

Other members of the Jewish Home party reject the single state idea. Party chairman Naftali Bennett has previously called for Israel to annex Area C, leaving the majority of the Palestinian population in the West Bank without full rights.

However, Kalfa is not the first far-right public figure to call for a single-state solution. Four years ago I did a feature for Haaretz Magazine exploring support for the idea among right-wing ideologues and politicians – you can read it here. An interview I did with then-Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin in which he also endorses one state can be found here.

The Israeli Right’s one-state solution is different from the Left’s or the models explored by Palestinian and international scholars and activists. According to the Israeli Right’s idea, the state will absorb roughly 2 million Palestinians from the West Bank but remain the same in every other aspect.

At the time, Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat hinted that Israelis are deluding themselves if they think that new demographic realities won’t result in fundamental changes in the character of the state. “I am not afraid from the talk about an Israeli ID,” he told me. “Give me one and we will see what happens.”

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