"Therefore, the key to peace is the explicit recognition by the Palestinians of Israel as a Jewish state," Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his country on 12 July.

Since that day ministers and officials have repeated the line so many times it has garnered much support from within and from outside Israel. Even from before Netanyahu made his speech, however, Palestinians knew they would not accept the proposal.

The request is so impossible, Palestinians and Arabs see it as an obstacle to reaching any deal solution while it stands on the table.

• Israel is not an ethnically or even religiously defined state. More than 1.5 million Arab Palestinians hold Israeli citizenship, and Druze, Christian and Baha’i minorities also make up a considerable population in modern Israel.

• Israel was established as a place where Jews could gather from across the globe and be safe from injustice and assault. Today, however, Jewish people living as far off as America, Germany, Syria, Iran, Morocco, France and Brazil are not lacking in security, and are safe from the injustices like those perpetrated by the state of Israel. Israel is not creating a safe place for Jews, so it should not be declared a Jewish state.

• The identity of the State of Israel is colonial, not religious.

• The demands of any state that defies human rights, that joins the United Nations then scoffs at its resolutions must be questioned. A state that demands laws be changed to suit its realities, when it comes to rights, wars and peoples must not be granted its whims.

• By its own people’s admission, Israel discriminates against its own people. Ethiopian Jews are turned away from kindergarten classes, Russian Jews given the meanest sorts of jobs and the lowest quality houses, etc. African Jews were also prohibited from giving blood at Israeli hospitals.

Israel is not a state that protects Jews, it is not a state that takes care of its people, it is not a state that projects or exemplifies any religious beliefs. Israel is not a Jewish state and should not, as it is today, be recognized as such.

Nasser Lahham is Ma'an News Agency's editor in chief, and hosts several news programs on Ma'an Network. He is from Bethlehem.