142 chapter four authors do not adopt a comparative approach in their address of Jewish demographic supremacy, and fail to provide an example of a contemporary liberal-democratic country whose intricate legal, political and militaristic practices of demographic control are comparable to those of Israel. The authors begin their argument with the assertion that … all the strands of the Zionist movement consistently held that the Jewish state, which they conceived as a democracy, could only be established on the basis of a Jewish majority, either in the country as a whole of at least in a part of it … (Yakobson and Rubinstein 2009, 71). Having adopted the Zionist framework rendering demographic supremacy a prerequisite for Jewish statehood, the authors argue that The Law of Return (1950) is therefore necessary to ensure a Jewish majority and maintain the self-definition of the state. It is not that the law is problematic in itself by providing this right to Jews, say the authors, rather the problem is that no such law exists for Palestinians in another state: [A]nyone who agrees to the establishment of an independent state for the Palestinian people agrees to the Palestinian ‘right of return’ to this state (not to Israel) (Yakobson and Rubinstein 2009, 133).24 What this means for Palestinian citizens of Israel is clear. Echoed in the statement of then Prime Minister Tzipi Livni in February 2009, only days after the 22-day Gaza onslaught, the two-state settlement is to be pursued so that “[a]mong other things [, she] will also be able to approach the Palestinian residents of Israel … and tell them: ‘Your national aspirations lie elsewhere’.”25 If Arabs wish to identify as Palestinians, as indigenous to the land, and adopt a category that is outside of the Zionist framework for Israeli citizenship, then they can return to their own state, through their own ‘law of return’, once the Palestinian state is established. The Knesset 24 also see 157. 25 BBC News, “Livni sparks Arab ‘transfer’ row,” December 12, 2008, http://news.bbc .co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7779087.stm. Moreover, on November 16, 2012, in response to protests in Nazareth against Israel’s bombardment of Gaza in ‘Operation Pillar of Defence’, the Mayor of Nazareth Illit (Upper Nazareth), Shimon Gapso, wrote a letter to the Minister of the Interior, Eli Yishai, asking him to “to freeze the state funding to Nazareth” to show that “Zionism still is alive and exists.” In this letter, Gapso calls Arab MK Haneen Zoabi a “terrorist” and even goes so far as to declare: “If it was in my hands, I would evacuate from this city its residents the haters of Israel whose rightful place is in Gaza and not here ….” See Ali Abunimah, “Israeli mayor: expel Palestinian citizens of ‘hostile’ Nazareth to Gaza for opposing war,” The Electronic Intifada, November 21, 2012, http://electronicintifada .net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israeli-mayor-expel-palestinian-citizens-hostile-nazareth -gaza-opposing-war.