It has been argued by defenders of the status quo that all of the nations surrounding Israel are theocracies or significantly biased towards Islam. However the governments of these nations are anachronisms with little understanding of the modern world. Israel is a western style democracy with all of the infrastructure and institutions characteristic of the developed nations: The United States, England, France, Costa Rica, Holland, Japan, Taiwan and so on. These are not theocratic states, although there may be the vestiges of a national religion hanging around somewhere in the laws and customs. No one is denied British citizenship because he (or his mother) does not subscribe to the Anglican church; ditto for Lutheran Norway or Catholic Italy. One can continue to give persons with a Jewish ancestry preferential treatment, yet the "principle of return" ought to be modified, in a manner that I will come to in a moment.
The second is that Israel has a well founded fear of being overwhelmed by immigrants from nations with traditions of anti-Semitism dating back 1500 to 2000 years. The people of Israel have every reason to be suspicious of Orthodox Christians from Russia, German nationalists, traditional anti-Semites from Austria, Poland, the Balkans and France who apply for citizenship. Likewise, Israel does not want Saudis, Afghans, Taliban, Iranians, Iraqis, Pakistanis, Egyptians or Syrians blocking the doors to the immigration offices, at least not in the near future.
On the other hand, there is a tradition of tolerance for Jews and Judaism in the Far East that has lasted for many hundreds of years. Here is a description of the Chinese city of Kai-Feng,(Wikipedia) :
"According to historical records, a Jewish community with a synagogue built in 1163 lived in Kaifeng (China) from at least the Southern Song Dynasty until the late nineteenth century. It is surmised that the ancestors of the Kaifeng Jews came from Central Asia. The uninterrupted existence of this religious and ethnic group, living for over 700 years in socio-cultural surroundings strongly dominated by Confucian moral and ethical principles, is a unique phenomenon in Chinese and Jewish history."
Likewise the Jewish communities in Cochin, India thrived from the 16th century with little opposition from the local population (Wikipedia):
"The (Malabar) Jews came to Kerala and settled as early as 700 BC for trade. In the 17th and 18th centuries, Cochin had an influx of Jewish settlers from the Middle East, North Africa and Spain."The attacks on the Jewish community by the Muslims from Calicut in 1524 arose from a trade dispute. The Portuguese who arrived later in the 16th century brought the Inquisition along with them; after these were displaced by the Dutch in the Portuguese in 1660, the Jews were left in peace.
In the 1950's most of Cochin's Jews emigrated to Israel, preferring to live in a Jewish country. There is no evidence that they were forced tor do so from fear of persecution.
Another example: During WWII a Jewish community in exile developed in Shanghai. It survived all through the war, even after Shanghai was occupied by the Japanese. The Japanese harbored no anti-Semitic prejudices. Whatever harshness there was towards the Jews was part of a policy of harassment of all Europeans.
I therefore propose the following strategy:
The hostility against Judaism derives from the fact that Christianity and Islam are splinter sects, off-shoots from the main body of Jewish tradition and thought. There is an inevitable tendency in human beings for there to be enmity between the founding ideology and any later divergent interpretations. If the number of Christians were small, the Jews might consider them an intolerable heresy. Since the number of Christians is astronomically larger than the number of Jews, the reverse is true. Therefore:
Ultimately, within half a century, the new Israel should be composed of 40% Jews, 30% immigrants from the Far East, 20% Muslims (including all Palestinians who opt for Israeli citizenship), and 10% Christians.
Every modern Western democratic nation on earth, even the normally up-tight Swiss, is admitting populations from the Third World. All of the Scandinavian countries have admitted thousands of refugees from countries in crisis such as Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Somalia and so on. Membership in the Common Market obliges a nation to open its doors to a certain quota of foreign refugees. Here is an excerpt from a policy statement by the EEC:
"Asylum [....] is granted to a person who is unable to seek protection in his/her country of citizenship and/or residence in particular for fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.
The European Union (EU) is an area in which freedom of movement must be ensured [....] A set of commonly agreed principles at European Community level in the field of asylum can provide a clear added value while continuing to safeguard Europe's humanist tradition."
If Israel were to join the Common Market it too would have to admit refugee populations on the basis of need, not ethnicity.
I visited with friends in Galway, Ireland last year. The Irish are another embattled people. They, too, have suffered centuries of persecution, have a strong heritage and ethnic identity, and can claim a wide-spread Diaspora. Galway today accommodates sizable populations of Nigerians, Latvians, Poles and others. Many of the locals are upset by this, but the people that I was with told me that these populations greatly enrich the life of a rather provincial town.
I am against monoculture nations because they breed prejudice, intolerance and fear. I am against them because they are thoroughly unrealistic in the modern world. Finally I am against them because there are desperate peoples in need all over the world , to whom nations have an obligation, to the extent possible, to open their doors, accepting them as full human beings endowed with full human rights.
To argue that a nation should always be JUST the homeland for an oppressed minority is completely unrealistic. Nor will the Palestinians just disappear. Where does Israel intend to send them? What I am suggesting is that if there is a large buffer immigrant population outside the Judaeo-Christian tradition living in Israel, there is nothing to fear from the Palestinians, or their invidious and treacherous allies, the governments of the nations of the Middle East.
I recognize that all this is something of a pipe dream. There are too many parties with vested interests that have little to do with peaceful solutions, for anything to change in the near future.