Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights - Bethlehem

At the Badil center today in Bethlehem, we met with Mohammed who spoke to us about Palestinian Refugees.  It was his belief that the problem is first and foremost of one human rights and not one of territory and that most Palestinians want a a secular democratic state.  He said that though his was convinced that the overwhelming  majority of Palestinians in the West Bank support one secular state and that maybe palestinians all over do too, but no data to prove that exists.  The Badil center did  a study in 2002 that debunked the popular position that there is no room in Israel for Palestinian refugees, which concluded that 84% of Israeli Jews like in merely 16% of Israel proper (within green lines).  This does of course not account for the problem that Palestinian refugees would pose to the Jewish majority, but that is of course the center contradiction of the modern state of Israel - being both a Jewish state and a Democratic state is an impossibility due to both the difficulty of maintaining a Jewish majority democratically and the fact that if it is to be a state for Jewish people then it is not a state that offers equal democratic rights to all.

Mohammed was arrested at age 13 for setting up a Secondary school union.  According the Israeli forces, being a founder of a students union was a "violation of public security."  He has been arrested 16 times since.  During his presentation he told us something that really struck a chord with me.  He said:
"Palestine is the home of the three major religions so Judaism is part of my culture, too.  I am not anti-Jewish.  I am anti-Zionist."