Yousef Munayyer writes: Last week, the Israeli central bureau of statistics reported future trends which indicate the proportion of Palestinian Arabs in Israel will increase significantly by 2059.

Well, I have news for those arguing for a two-state solution will rescue a “Jewish and Democratic State.” Not only does the occupation make a liberal Zionist state impossible through the fundamental contradiction between a Jewish state and a democratic one, but to hope for a “democratic” Israel is foolish.

Think about what “democratic” Israel would be like. In order to insure a Jewish majority, the state will have to continue to not only discriminate against the Palestinian citizens in Israel but also continue to treat them as a “demographic threat.”

Numerous Israeli laws discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel. Because of a 2003 law, Palestinians like me can’t reside in Israel with their Palestinian spouse from outside of “Israel proper.” This means that if I want to live in Israel, my wife from the West Bank cannot live with me. Yet Jews are exempt from this hardship. These laws exist to prevent what Netanyahu refers to as a “demographic spillover”; the movement of Palestinians into Israel, which would threaten the state’s desired Jewish majority.

In fact, since the establishment of the state, its laws have marginalized the Palestinian minority. From the 1950 Absentee Property Law, which was used to expropriate hundreds of thousands of dunams of Palestinian land and is still being used today, to a series of other legalistic measures, the Israeli state effectively and significantly targeted the Palestinian minority.

Today, there are roughly 1.6 million Palestinian citizens of Israel, just over 20 percent of the population. This proportion would be even higher, perhaps 25 perecent, if not for the extraordinary influx of over one million immigrants to Israel from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia in the past 20 years—a demographic feat unlikely to be repeated.

In 2003, Benjamin Netanyahu, then Israeli Finance Minister, argued that the “demographic threat” was not from the West Bank and Gaza, but rather from Palestinian citizens of Israel. He stated that 20 percent would be problematic and would have to be managed, but 35 to 40 percent would mean the end of the “Jewish State.” The state perceives that Palestinian wombs threaten its very nature.