Israeli
helicopters circled overhead as soldiers surrounded the village
below. Residents watched helplessly as the bulldozer tore apart 14
Arab homes, shelter to over 125 people. The following week, in the
north, Israeli agents raided and confiscated property from three
offices of an Islamic Movement welfare organization. Make no
mistake: These examples are not taken from the brutal occupation of
the West Bank and Gaza, but from the other side of the border, in
the land that was declared as Israel in 1948.
The
international community dismisses the concerns of Palestinians
inside Israel as an Israeli “domestic issue.” Branded as
“Israeli Arabs,” the one million Palestinians who represent 20%
of the Israeli population are excluded from the international
agenda. Even among the Arab community worldwide, both Muslim and
Christian, there is little understanding of the 1948 Palestinian
community. Some are unaware that there are Muslims and Christians
inside what Israel insists is a Jewish state while others believe
that any Palestinian living inside the borders of internationally
recognized Israel must be a traitor who has abrogated Palestinian
and Arab identity.
Wrong.
The one million Palestinians living inside Israel are those
Palestinians, and their descendants, who managed to remain inside
the borders of the land that was declared as a Jewish state in 1948.
Overnight this community found themselves transformed from a
majority to a minority in a racially defined state. After forcing
more than 700, 000 Palestinians out, Israel believed that the
minority that remained could be excluded from the system through
legal means or literally through gradual transfer.
From
1948 to 1966 the community was kept under military law, something
akin to the curfew strangling the West Bank and Gaza today. No one
was permitted to leave their towns without permission from the
military authorities. Fear of massacres such as in Kufr Qassem 1956,
when 50 villagers who unknowingly broke a curfew were shot dead,
enabled Israel to subordinate the Palestinian population.
While
1948 Palestinians no longer live under military rule, the
subordination of a million citizens is carried out in more subtle
ways. A large minority is labeled by the Israeli government as
“Present Absentees”: those who live within the 1948 boundaries
but have been made refugees from their original towns and villages.
 |
|
Tel
Aviv – Arab Israelis demonstrating outside
U.S.
embassy |
Some
live a mere two kilometers from their village but are not allowed to
return. “If the international community does not recognize the
rights of Palestinian refugees living inside Israel as well as
outside, there will never be a just resolution,” said a 29 year
old refugee from Saffouri. Many residents of Saffouri who are not
living in the squalor of the refugee camps of Lebanon were forced to
live in neighboring Nazareth. They can now drive past the site of
old Saffouri and see the Jewish country village and forest of
Zippori. The people of Saffouri must fight even to be allowed to
tend the crumbling graves of their ancestors, while a new Israeli
immigrant can move to Saffouri in an instant.
Land
confiscation and housing demolition did not end in 1948 but
continues daily. The example above is the case of a Bedouin clan in
the Negev, a demolition in line with the government plan to drive
the Bedouin from their land and force them to live in overcrowded
townships. The Israeli Interior Ministry justifies such action by
declaring many Arab villages (not only among the Bedouin) as
illegal, despite the fact that they may have been in existence
before the establishment of Israel.
In
the Galilee Israel confiscates land to further its policy of the
“Judaization of the Galilee,” a densely Arab populated area. A
look at the landscape of the Galilee demonstrates clearly the
Israeli design to maintain control and domination over its
Palestinian citizens. The confiscation of all high ground in the
area, ostensibly for Jewish villages, makes potential military
command of the area a simple task.
Such
scenarios are not pure conjecture. In October 2000, the Israeli
border police set up military posts in Jewish hilltop settlements in
the Galilee to give perfect sniping positions at Arab demonstrators.
13 Palestinian citizens of Israel were killed by police in the
demonstrations that emerged in solidarity with the second Intifada.
Not for 24 years, since the killing of six Palestinians in Land Day
1976, had Israel taken such brutal steps against the Palestinian
population inside the Green Line. Suddenly the 1948 Palestinian
community were mourning 13 of their own martyrs, reinforcing the
political consciousness and Palestinian identity of a new
generation.
With
discrimination in all spheres from child benefit to employment law,
Palestinians living inside Israel are living in an apartheid state.
Independence for the West Bank and Gaza is not the only thing that
must be achieved to establish genuine peace and justice. Just as a
resolution to the conflict will require justice for Palestinian
refugees worldwide, it will also require equality for the
Palestinians inside Israel. That will require a fundamental
reshaping of the nature of Israel, an ethnic state currently
designed to benefit Jewish citizens only.
The
author encourages your comments. Please e-mail her at
