Arab members of the Israeli Knesset visit London to report on the increasingly beleaguered Arab-Palestinian community in Israel
Thursday, 29 July, 2010 - 20:20
Three Arab-Palestinian parliamentarians, members of the Israeli Knesset, visiting London to report on the situation of Palestinian citizens of Israel, provided a stinging critique of the well-known maxim that ‘Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East’.
In a media briefing on Monday and speaking in the House of Commons yesterday to two packed halls, they reported on the systematic institutional discrimination against them as Israeli citizens since the establishment of the state and on the recent deterioration in their status since the current government came to power in February 2009.
Here is a summary of the situation as these MPs see it:
1. Escalation in anti-Arab legislation
Since the election of the Netanyahu government in February 2009, a clear escalation was noted on all levels. Dozens of bills have been proposed in the Knesset that can be described as racist and which, if passed into law, would discriminate severely against the Palestinian citizens of Israel. Five of these are known as the loyalty=citizenship laws, proposed by Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Liebermann and his party. Many of the new bills seek to criminalise political activity of Palestinians in Israel or to demand loyalty to the definition of Israel as a Jewish state. Others seek to entrench land segregation and control.
A recent High Court challenge resulted in a ruling forbiding discrimination against Arabs in admission to communities based on their identity; but a new bill has been tabled to enable new communities to use admissions committees to vet and exclude people depending on their ‘suitability to the cultural fabric of the communities’.
The recently-enacted Land Reform Law (2009) will enable, among other things, the transfer of refugees’ lands and of lands confiscated from the Palestinian community in Israel over the years, from state ownership to private hands.
A more recent bill seeks to limit the period in which confiscated lands may be reclaimed to 25 years, so that lands confiscated before 1985 can no longer be reclaimed even in principle. Since over 99% of Palestinian lands were confiscated before then, this would effectively debar almost all claims for restitution.
Most recently, last month the Knesset voted to recognize the purchase of large tracts of land in the Negev desert by 51 individual Jewish farmers or ranchers – even though these encroach on lands held for generations by local Bedouin communities.
While these individual ranches were recognized, no recognition was given to more than 40 Bedouin villages housing some 90,000 Bedouin citizens of Israel in the same region. These villages, most of which existed before the establishment of the state, are defined as ‘unrecognized’ by the state, and are denied basic public services such as running water and electricity as a form of pressure to push their residents from their lands into cramped government-designated townships elsewhere.
The status of non-recognition also means that over 40,000 Bedouin homes are threatened with demolition because they have been refused building licenses.
A few weeks ago the entire Bedouin village of Tawil Abu Jarwal was demolished, and earlier this week another village, Araqib, suffered the same fate. There is fear among the Bedouin communities that the government is planning to use law enforcement authorities and private contractors to forcefully remove tens of thousands of other villagers to the townships, where there are no employment opportunities and no possibility for farming.
2. Israeli definitions of democracy exclude the Palestinian identity of the Arab minority in Israel
The discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel is not the result of this or that specific policy but rather is systematically built into the definition of the state of Israel as a Jewish state. Any Jew anywhere in the world can become an Israeli citizen with more rights than the indigenous Palestinian population in Israel, who are seen at best as second-grade citizens, and at worst as a potential threat.
Even before this government was elected, there were already 18 laws on the statute book that were used to discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel, most notably the amendment to the Entry into Israel Law (2003), which forbids Palestinian couples from different sides of the 1967 border to live together in Israel.
Palestinians have also consistently been discriminated against in the acquisition of land. After years of land confiscations, the Arab-Palestinian population now only owns about 3% of the land in Israel, although they constitute 18% of the population.
Why are Arab citizens of Israel treated this way? In effect, the Israeli establishment demanded of Palestinians who remained in Israel after its establishment that they give up their identity as Palestinians in order to be eligible for citizenship. But even if they agree to do so, Israel’s Arab minority can only become second-grade citizens without civic equality, because the state defines itself on many levels as a Jewish and Zionist state. Structurally its non-Jewish, indigenous citizens remain on the margins of Israeli consciousness.
In education, Jewish and Zionist history is taught, while the land is described as having been virtually empty before the first Zionists arrived. For this reason, Arab citizens who define themselves as Palestinians are not seen as indigenous people with rights but as imposters and traitors to the State.
In the aftermath of defeat in 1948, those Palestinians left in Israel had neither the strength nor the will to resist the state’s definition of citizenship and their designation as ‘Israeli-Arabs’ – free to adopt Arab culture but not a Palestinian national identity. But third- and fourth-generation Palestinian citizens of Israel are now reacting against the severe limitations of Israeli democracy they run up against. As a result the government has increasingly sought to criminalise political activity itself.
Israeli discourse can accommodate the concept of Israeli citizenship granted to local Palestinians at the expense of their Palestinian identity, or the concept of Palestinian identity at the expense of Israeli citizenship. But it cannot accept a concept of a multicultural citizenship, i.e., the liberal-democratic idea that Palestinians living inside Israel can retain both full and equal citizenship and their Palestinian identity.
It is for this reason that the Israeli chief of the secret police or shabac, Yuval Diskin, declared several years back, when relating to Balad, an Israeli party that advocates for both individual and collective civil rights for Palestinian citizens of Israel, that the shabac was there to thwart the activities of groups or individuals who threatened the state’s Jewish character “even if such activity is sanctioned by the law”.
The personal attacks on Arab MK Haneen Zu’bi following her participation in the aid flotilla to Gaza, are a telling example of attempted criminalisation of legal and legitimate political activities.
Zu’bi had not broken any law, and there was no way of prosecuting her for what she had done, hence the decision to vote in Knesset on the stripping of her parliamentary privileges, and her public humiliation there.
3. Anti-democratic trends are a threat not only to Palestinians but also to Israeli Jews and to regional peace
Such discrimination is rapidly moving from being limited to Palestinians to applying to all Israelis who question human rights violations by the Israeli government, or the validity of the term ‘a Jewish and democratic state.’
Both Jews and Arabs have often pointed to the inherent contradiction between Israel’s self-representation as a liberal democracy on the one hand, and its description as essentially ‘a Jewish state’ on the other – a description that must by definition exclude its non-Jewish citizens, at least in theory if not in practice.
Once the current government and the parliament decided to equate citizenship with loyalty to the state, this began to affect all Israelis. The principle that loyalty to the state – or to a certain definition of the state – is required in order to enjoy civil rights and citizenship means that the Israeli left, NGOs, human-rights organisations and academics are now all under threat.
The fact that the vision of Palestinian Arabs is one of equality for all – both Arabs and Jews – infuriates and threatens the Israeli establishment because they seek to monopolise democratic discourse. The Israeli establishment, as ‘the only democracy in the Middle East,’ feels threatened when its democratic credentials are questioned.
The recent deterioration in Israel’s attitude to its Palestinian citizens is not only an internal issue, and not simply a measure of how democratic Israeli is.
It is also an indicator of how serious Israel is about wanting to make peace with the rest of the Palestinians and with the rest of the Arab world. Current developments suggest that Israel is moving further and further away from peace.
Finally, the western world, Europe and the UK, have responsibilities regarding Israeli policies. By admitting Israel to the OECD, upgrading relations with it, and providing its government with other forms of support, the international community is enabling Israel to continue the policies described above with impunity. It is important that these resonsibilities are acknowledged and acted upon.
Background: The Palestinian citizens of Israel
Arab Palestinians who were allowed to remain as a minority within Israel after its establishment in 1948 number some 1.2 million today, or 18 percent of the Israeli population. They represent 13 percent of Israeli voters. Of the 120 members of Israel’s parliament, 11 MKs represent Arab or Arab-Jewish parties.
Three Arab parties are represented in the Knesset:
* The United Arab List combining a 3-party coalition from the Arab Democratic Party, the Islamic party and the Arab party of reform, includes four members;
* The Hadash Party includes the communist party and its allies and has four MKs including one Jewish and one Christian member;
*The Democratic National Party or Balad has three seats in parliament.
Only 6% of Israeli civil servants are Arab, and the education budget for the average Jewish secondary school is four times that of the education budget for Arabs. Only 2% of media coverage in Israel deals with Palestinian citizens of Israel, and 85 percent of these representations are negative.
Some 90,000 Arab-Bedouin and Arab Palestinians live in villages that are defined as ‘unrecognized’, and are therefore denied access to basic facilities and services such as running water, electricity, roads, sewage and adequate primary healthcare.
The information and analysis above are based on briefings to the media and to the House of Commons by MK Talab A-Sanea’ of the United Arab List, MK Dr. Jamal Zahalka of the Democratic National Party (Balad) and MK Haneen Zu’bi of Balad, on 26 and 28 July 2010.
This article may be reproduced on condition that JNews is cited as its source.
Arab members of the Israeli Knesset visit London to report on the increasingly beleaguered Arab-Palestinian community in Israel
In a media briefing on Monday and speaking in the House of Commons yesterday to two packed halls, they reported on the systematic institutional discrimination against them as Israeli citizens since the establishment of the state and on the recent deterioration in their status since the current government came to power in February 2009.
Here is a summary of the situation as these MPs see it:
1. Escalation in anti-Arab legislation
Since the election of the Netanyahu government in February 2009, a clear escalation was noted on all levels. Dozens of bills have been proposed in the Knesset that can be described as racist and which, if passed into law, would discriminate severely against the Palestinian citizens of Israel. Five of these are known as the loyalty=citizenship laws, proposed by Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Liebermann and his party. Many of the new bills seek to criminalise political activity of Palestinians in Israel or to demand loyalty to the definition of Israel as a Jewish state. Others seek to entrench land segregation and control.
A recent High Court challenge resulted in a ruling forbiding discrimination against Arabs in admission to communities based on their identity; but a new bill has been tabled to enable new communities to use admissions committees to vet and exclude people depending on their ‘suitability to the cultural fabric of the communities’.
The recently-enacted Land Reform Law (2009) will enable, among other things, the transfer of refugees’ lands and of lands confiscated from the Palestinian community in Israel over the years, from state ownership to private hands.
A more recent bill seeks to limit the period in which confiscated lands may be reclaimed to 25 years, so that lands confiscated before 1985 can no longer be reclaimed even in principle. Since over 99% of Palestinian lands were confiscated before then, this would effectively debar almost all claims for restitution.
Most recently, last month the Knesset voted to recognize the purchase of large tracts of land in the Negev desert by 51 individual Jewish farmers or ranchers – even though these encroach on lands held for generations by local Bedouin communities.
While these individual ranches were recognized, no recognition was given to more than 40 Bedouin villages housing some 90,000 Bedouin citizens of Israel in the same region. These villages, most of which existed before the establishment of the state, are defined as ‘unrecognized’ by the state, and are denied basic public services such as running water and electricity as a form of pressure to push their residents from their lands into cramped government-designated townships elsewhere.
The status of non-recognition also means that over 40,000 Bedouin homes are threatened with demolition because they have been refused building licenses.
A few weeks ago the entire Bedouin village of Tawil Abu Jarwal was demolished, and earlier this week another village, Araqib, suffered the same fate. There is fear among the Bedouin communities that the government is planning to use law enforcement authorities and private contractors to forcefully remove tens of thousands of other villagers to the townships, where there are no employment opportunities and no possibility for farming.
2. Israeli definitions of democracy exclude the Palestinian identity of the Arab minority in Israel
The discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel is not the result of this or that specific policy but rather is systematically built into the definition of the state of Israel as a Jewish state. Any Jew anywhere in the world can become an Israeli citizen with more rights than the indigenous Palestinian population in Israel, who are seen at best as second-grade citizens, and at worst as a potential threat.
Even before this government was elected, there were already 18 laws on the statute book that were used to discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel, most notably the amendment to the Entry into Israel Law (2003), which forbids Palestinian couples from different sides of the 1967 border to live together in Israel.
Palestinians have also consistently been discriminated against in the acquisition of land. After years of land confiscations, the Arab-Palestinian population now only owns about 3% of the land in Israel, although they constitute 18% of the population.
Why are Arab citizens of Israel treated this way? In effect, the Israeli establishment demanded of Palestinians who remained in Israel after its establishment that they give up their identity as Palestinians in order to be eligible for citizenship. But even if they agree to do so, Israel’s Arab minority can only become second-grade citizens without civic equality, because the state defines itself on many levels as a Jewish and Zionist state. Structurally its non-Jewish, indigenous citizens remain on the margins of Israeli consciousness.
In education, Jewish and Zionist history is taught, while the land is described as having been virtually empty before the first Zionists arrived. For this reason, Arab citizens who define themselves as Palestinians are not seen as indigenous people with rights but as imposters and traitors to the State.
In the aftermath of defeat in 1948, those Palestinians left in Israel had neither the strength nor the will to resist the state’s definition of citizenship and their designation as ‘Israeli-Arabs’ – free to adopt Arab culture but not a Palestinian national identity. But third- and fourth-generation Palestinian citizens of Israel are now reacting against the severe limitations of Israeli democracy they run up against. As a result the government has increasingly sought to criminalise political activity itself.
Israeli discourse can accommodate the concept of Israeli citizenship granted to local Palestinians at the expense of their Palestinian identity, or the concept of Palestinian identity at the expense of Israeli citizenship. But it cannot accept a concept of a multicultural citizenship, i.e., the liberal-democratic idea that Palestinians living inside Israel can retain both full and equal citizenship and their Palestinian identity.
It is for this reason that the Israeli chief of the secret police or shabac, Yuval Diskin, declared several years back, when relating to Balad, an Israeli party that advocates for both individual and collective civil rights for Palestinian citizens of Israel, that the shabac was there to thwart the activities of groups or individuals who threatened the state’s Jewish character “even if such activity is sanctioned by the law”.
The personal attacks on Arab MK Haneen Zu’bi following her participation in the aid flotilla to Gaza, are a telling example of attempted criminalisation of legal and legitimate political activities.
Zu’bi had not broken any law, and there was no way of prosecuting her for what she had done, hence the decision to vote in Knesset on the stripping of her parliamentary privileges, and her public humiliation there.
3. Anti-democratic trends are a threat not only to Palestinians but also to Israeli Jews and to regional peace
Such discrimination is rapidly moving from being limited to Palestinians to applying to all Israelis who question human rights violations by the Israeli government, or the validity of the term ‘a Jewish and democratic state.’
Both Jews and Arabs have often pointed to the inherent contradiction between Israel’s self-representation as a liberal democracy on the one hand, and its description as essentially ‘a Jewish state’ on the other – a description that must by definition exclude its non-Jewish citizens, at least in theory if not in practice.
Once the current government and the parliament decided to equate citizenship with loyalty to the state, this began to affect all Israelis. The principle that loyalty to the state – or to a certain definition of the state – is required in order to enjoy civil rights and citizenship means that the Israeli left, NGOs, human-rights organisations and academics are now all under threat.
The fact that the vision of Palestinian Arabs is one of equality for all – both Arabs and Jews – infuriates and threatens the Israeli establishment because they seek to monopolise democratic discourse. The Israeli establishment, as ‘the only democracy in the Middle East,’ feels threatened when its democratic credentials are questioned.
The recent deterioration in Israel’s attitude to its Palestinian citizens is not only an internal issue, and not simply a measure of how democratic Israeli is.
It is also an indicator of how serious Israel is about wanting to make peace with the rest of the Palestinians and with the rest of the Arab world. Current developments suggest that Israel is moving further and further away from peace.
Finally, the western world, Europe and the UK, have responsibilities regarding Israeli policies. By admitting Israel to the OECD, upgrading relations with it, and providing its government with other forms of support, the international community is enabling Israel to continue the policies described above with impunity. It is important that these resonsibilities are acknowledged and acted upon.
The information and analysis above are based on briefings to the media and to the House of Commons by MK Talab A-Sanea’ of the United Arab List, MK Dr. Jamal Zahalka of the Democratic National Party (Balad) and MK Haneen Zu’bi of Balad, on 26 and 28 July 2010.
This article may be reproduced on condition that JNews is cited as its source.