Wise words from Khaled Abu Toameh....

He writes for the Jerusalem Post....read his whole speech...

I am very worried about the deterioration of relations between Jews and Arabs inside Israel, more than I'm worried about the deterioration of relations between Jews and Palestinians.

It is easy to solve the problem with the Palestinians because, at the end of the day, there is going to be separation between Jews and Palestinians in one form or another. But what do we do with the 1.4 million Arabs living inside Israel? That is something that we should focus on.

I really believe that we, the Israeli-Arabs, can serve as a bridge between the Jews and our Palestinian brothers. And it is a huge mistake for us to side with one side against the other. We are playing into the hands of those radical Israeli right-wingers who are trying to depict us as a fifth column and a cancer and we are actually giving them the ammunition to attack us.

So we should be very careful about how we present our case as Israeli Arabs.

Our dilemma is that our state, Israel, is at war with our people in the West Bank and Gaza. And by the way, we have no problem being Israeli citizens. I mean many of us are even proud to be Israeli citizens. If you go to Ramallah and Gaza once, and you come back into Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, you will see what I mean. Sometimes I say “thank God we have Israel.”

Israel is a wonderful place to live and we are happy to be there. Israel is a free and open country. If I were given the choice, I would rather live in Israel as a second class citizen than as a first class citizen in Cairo, Gaza, Amman or Ramallah.