These are reasonable questions.
I heard the problem once outlined in this way:
Israel can either be a democratic state or a Jewish state. To be the latter means the Arab citizens in essence remain oppressed, and will forever. To be the former, Israel can no longer be a Jewish state.
That still seems about right to me.
I don’t have a political solution.
My intuitive solution, though, is that Zionists want a safe place for Jews to be created by drawing borders on a map.
That’s just not how safety works.