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Palestinians Remaining Inside the Jewish State May 9, 2005
When land was occupied in 1948 and the state of Israel was proclaimed, 150,000 Palestinians managed to remain. Today, this group has reached around a million, representing around 20 percent of the Israeli population. Palestinian citizens live in three key areas: the northern Galilee (bordering Lebanon), the Triangle (bordering the West Bank), and the southern Negev Desert. Some also live in a few so-called mixed towns such as Haifa, Jaffa, Tel-Aviv, and Ramle. However, most of these people live within specific Arab ghettos within these towns. Despite their citizenship, Palestinians inside Israeli borders have been systematically discriminated against in all areas of life—economic, political, and social. Military Rule From 1948 to 1966, the Arabs who remained were subject to military law and emergency regulations, somewhat similar to the restrictions imposed on the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza today. Irrespective of their Israeli citizenship, Israel did not hesitate to use violence against Arab residents, as the killing of 49 Palestinians in the village of Kufr Qassem in 1956 demonstrated. These villagers had been working out in the fields and had no idea that the army had imposed an early curfew after these people had left the village that morning. Internal Refugees Israel can be defined as an ethnic state because it is a state defined as a state for one race only—Jews. Palestinian citizens are subject to all forms of political, economic, and social discrimination. The Israeli Law of Return allows all Jews to claim citizenship in Israel, yet at the same time denies the rights of Palestinians to return to a land they inhabited less than 60 years ago. This law affects Palestinians inside as well as outside. Many Palestinians are internally displaced, meaning that although they are Israeli citizens, they are not allowed to return to the specific villages and homes that they were driven out of in 1948. They have been forced to remain in host villages and towns. They may be able to drive past their old home, or the place where it was once, but they cannot go back permanently. Unrecognized Villages Another way that Israel has attempted to make Palestinians refugees in their own land is to refuse to recognize certain residential areas settled by Arabs. Although some of these areas were settled post 1948 (many a direct necessity of expulsion from other villages), many were also considered villages before the Israeli state was created. Yet although the residents are Israeli citizens, Israel refuses to place these localities on the map, thus denying residents basic services such as water and electricity, postal and bus services. What’s in a Name?
“Naming, as you know, is a powerful thing, a privilege given to those who have power.”1 In the period of military rule, fear of the authorities and further displacement largely prevented public expression of Palestinian identity. Israeli policy isolated the Arabs “inside” from those beyond the borders, convincing the world that “Israeli Arabs” were an Israeli domestic issue. Even among those who express solidarity with the Palestinian cause abroad (Arabs included), there is a wide acceptance of the term Israeli Arab, and a failure to grasp the dilemmas faced by Palestinians within the Jewish state. “Aren’t they the ones who stayed behind because they agreed to collaborate?” one person asked, when I said that I was working in a Nazareth human rights organization. Attempts to isolate the Palestinians inside the Green Line from the rest of the Palestinian community continue, but not without resistance. Research on collective self-identification revealed over 75 percent of high school and university students use the term Palestinian as part of the label with which they identified.2 Land Expropriation, House Demolitions In 1976, Arabs across the country united to protest against continuing land confiscation. On this first Land Day, now commemorated annually by Palestinians on either side of the Green Line, six Palestinians were killed in demonstrations focused on the village of Sakhnin in the Galilee. Land Day focused the rest of the Palestinian community worldwide on the continuing struggle for the Palestinians left behind on the land proclaimed as Israel in 1948. Land expropriation did not end in 1948 on either side of the Green Line. Just as the occupying Israeli forces confiscate Arab land in the West Bank and Gaza, the Israeli state continues to expropriate what little land 1948 Palestinians own. Arab homes have been served with demolition orders to make way for new Jewish settlements or roads. On Land Day 2000, Palestinians demonstrated outside an army camp on land in Sakhnin that was confiscated recently. Police met demonstrators with rubber bullets and tear gas. One protestor remains under house arrest in his house, which is under demolition order, a punishment that is symbolic of the way in which the Palestinian community is trapped at every level by the discrimination of an ethnic state. Community Divisions Israel attempts to weaken the Arab community by emphasizing the Muslim, Christian, Druze, and Bedouin sectarian divides, and ignoring Palestinian identity. Despite cultural and religious differences between these various groups, all suffer discrimination as Arabs in a state that is classified in ethnic terms as a state for Jews. Although the state has not managed to drive many wedges between Muslims and Christians, since the time of the British, Druze Arabs have lived separately. Today they are conscripted into the Israeli army, and there are few communal ties between Druze and other Palestinians, except within the few mixed villages. Bedouin are also cut off to an extent, partly for geographical reasons, as most are concentrated in the Negev in small settlements Israel has created to try to take them away from the land. Some Bedouin live in the Galilee, but many in much poorer conditions than the average Arab citizens do. Several Bedouin villages in the Galilee are officially “unrecognized” (see above). Apartheid Society Numerous residential areas are designated for Jews only. Over a hundred Arab villages have failed to gain official state “recognition,” denying residents basic service such as running water and electricity. Substantial financial benefits are available from the state to those who have served in the army, therefore excluding most Arabs. Of course, Palestinians inside Israel do not face the same militarily imposed curfew or the dangers experienced by their compatriots in the West Bank and Gaza. Yet, the exclusion that 1948 Palestinians experience daily is a result of the same Zionist ideology which dictates the situation in the 1967 occupied territories: the concept of a state for one ethnic group at the expense of another. The Future? There is no easy solution when looking for an appropriate strategy to adopt to overcome the discrimination of an ethnic state. NGOs, political parties, and individuals are working hard to challenge the apartheid system that is stifling the community. At the beginning of this current Intifada, 13 Palestinian demonstrators inside Israel were killed as they voiced their protest on their own streets about Israeli policy against Palestinians. Following these killings, over 80 percent of the Arab electorate boycotted the next general election, telling the Israeli state it could not treat citizens in such a manner and expect to receive electoral support. The only certainty for the future is that Palestinians in Israel will never be equal citizens in an ethnic state, a state that is legally enshrined as Jewish. Resources: Articles on IslamOnline.net:
Web Sites: Books and Articles:
Films:
External links last accessed January 18, 2005. 1- Anton Shammas, “Palestinians in Israel: You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet,” The Journal of the International Institute 1995, University of Michigan, Michigan (internet version). 2- Nadim Rouhana examines the issue of community identity in detail. This specific reference to 1989 survey. Nadim Rouhana, Palestinian citizens in an ethnic Jewish state: Identities in Conflict (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997) p.122.
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