Action-Palestine
GAZA: ISRAELI DEFENSE FORCES (IDF) RAID KILLS EIGHT, INCLUDING A MOTHER AND HER FOUR CHILDREN: Yet this time the Italian Ambassador did not request a suspension of the UN Security Council meeting in protest.
Rome, April 29th, 2008
Yesterday Israeli tank shells killed eight civilians, including a mother, her four children ages seven, six and four, and a fifteen month old baby. They were having breakfast when they died under the rubble of their home in Beit Hanoun, in the northernmost part of the Gaza Strip.
Last Wednesday, April 23rd, a meeting of the UN Security Council dedicated to the Middle-East was suspended at the request of Italian Ambassador Marcello Spatafora in protest of a statement by Libyan Ambassador Giadalla Ettalhi, who compared “the actual conditions in Gaza to the situation of Nazi’s concentration camps” during the Second World War. I have never said, and never will say, that Israeli policies towards the Palestinian people are the same as those adopted by Nazis against Jews, communists, homosexuals and gypsies. The uniqueness of the Holocaust belongs to our European history, the same is true for the persecutions against Jews, and we have said “never again.” Therefore, I don’t blame our Ambassador for raising objections to comparisons of Nazi and Israeli policies, as made by the Libyan Representative when talking about Gaza.
Yet, I strongly disagree with our Ambassador for not taking any initiative to stop the illegal military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, or to bring the collective punishment of the exhausted civilian population in Gaza to an end. Day after day, we hear of civilians dying, of bombardment, of house demolitions, of land confiscations: why doesn’t our Ambassador feel indignation on behalf of those women, children and elderly who in Gaza have no bread left to eat? And also for those in the Strip who are sick and are dying since they can’t access medical treatment? Or, finally, for those students in Gaza who, having obtained scholarships from renowned Universities abroad, can’t leave the Strip because Gaza is closed and its population imprisoned as in an open-air jail? On April 24th, The United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugee aid (UNRWA) was forced to stop food deliveries due to the cut-off of fuel by the Israeli Authorities.
Is this not enough of an outrage for our Ambassador? Isn’t it sufficiently outrageous that Israel has refused to grant exit permits to the 1,562 Palestinian patients who need to leave Gaza for urgent treatments? Or that 133 Palestinians have already died in the Strip because of these refusals? I call on our Ambassador to go to Gaza and to see the little bodies of premature babies who may die for the lack of electricity or fuel due to the Israeli siege, remembering though, that even if he wanted to go he might not be able to: the Israeli Authorities, as the occupier, decide who can enter or exit. Even Nobel Peace Prize winner and former US President Jimmy Carter was recently denied entry.
It’s really time for Italian diplomats, EU governments and the entire International Community stop using indignation as a hypocritical tool for a ‘double standard’ policy. They must start listening and supporting the frequent denunciations of Israel’s human rights violations: denunciations coming from Palestinian, Israeli and International organizations, as well as the UN. Even the World Bank, just yesterday, highlighted the dramatic deterioration of Palestinian economy in the Occupied Territories, where, due to the “restrictions imposed by Israel to the freedom of movement and of access in the West Bank,” 35% of the population lives in conditions of absolute poverty. In 2007 the economic growth fell to zero, with continued stagnation expected in 2008. The unemployment rate is currently 23% in West Bank and 33% in Gaza Strip in spite of the 7.7 billion dollars in aid promised by donor countries.
After 40 years of occupation and 60 years of Nakbah, Palestinians have the right not only to aid but above all a future, a future of justice and peace and the creation of their own State: autonomous, sovereign, independent, based on ‘67 borders, with Jerusalem as shared capital and in peaceful co-existence and in security with the Israeli State. They request not just indignation but freedom, independence, legality and real steps from the Israeli Government and the International Community. These could begin simply by ending the military occupation, implementing UN resolutions (that have languished for years), and by ensuring the respect of universal rights. All this will bring freedom and security to Palestinians and also to Israelis: the children of Sderot will no longer have to live in fear of the illegal barrages of rockets raining on their town.
Further information: Luisa Morgantini +39 348 39 21 465 Rome office: +39 06 69 95 02 17 www.luisamorgantini.net
‘Anyone gets close, I kill him. Don’t bug me. I kill. I have no mercy.’
In shocking testimonies that reveal abductions, beatings and torture, Israeli soldiers confess the horror they have visited on Hebron
By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem
Saturday, 19 April 2008
The dark-haired 22-year-old in black T-shirt, blue jeans and red Crocs is understandably hesitant as he sits at a picnic table in the incongruous setting of a beauty spot somewhere in Israel. We know his name and if we used it he would face a criminal investigation and a probable prison sentence.
The birds are singing as he describes in detail some of what he did and saw others do as an enlisted soldier in Hebron. And they are certainly criminal: the incidents in which Palestinian vehicles are stopped for no good reason, the windows smashed and the occupants beaten up for talking back – for saying, for example, they are on the way to hospital; the theft of tobacco from a Palestinian shopkeeper who is then beaten “to a pulp” when he complains; the throwing of stun grenades through the windows of mosques as people prayed. And worse.
The young man left the army only at the end of last year, and his decision to speak is part of a concerted effort to expose the moral price paid by young Israeli conscripts in what is probably the most problematic posting there is in the occupied territories. Not least because Hebron is the only Palestinian city whose centre is directly controlled by the military, 24/7, to protect the notably hardline Jewish settlers there. He says firmly that he now regrets what repeatedly took place during his tour of duty.
But his frequent, if nervous, grins and giggles occasionally show just a hint of the bravado he might have displayed if boasting of his exploits to his mates in a bar. Repeatedly he turns to the older former soldier who has persuaded him to speak to us, and says as if seeking reassurance: “You know how it is in Hebron.”
The older ex-soldier is Yehuda Shaul, who does indeed “know how it is in Hebron”, having served in the city in a combat unit at the peak of the intifada, and is a founder of Shovrim Shtika, or Breaking the Silence, which will publish tomorrow the disturbing testimonies of 39 Israelis – including this young man – who served in the army in Hebron between 2005 and 2007. They cover a range of experiences, from anger and powerlessness in the face of often violent abuse of Arabs by hardline Jewish settlers, through petty harassment by soldiers, to soldiers beating up Palestinian residents without provocation, looting homes and shops, and opening fire on unarmed demonstrators.
The maltreatment of civilians under occupation is common to many armies in the world – including Britain’s, from Northern Ireland to Iraq.
But, paradoxically, few if any countries apart from Israel have an NGO like Breaking the Silence, which seeks – through the experiences of the soldiers themselves – as its website puts it “to force Israeli society to address the reality which it created” in the occupied territories.
The Israeli public was given an unflattering glimpse of military life in Hebron this year when a young lieutenant in the Kfir Brigade called Yaakov Gigi was given a 15-month jail sentence for taking five soldiers with him to hijack a Palestinian taxi, conduct what the Israeli media called a “rampage” in which one of the soldiers shot and wounded a Palestinian civilian who just happened to be in the wrong place, and then tried to lie his way out of it.
In a confessional interview with the Israeli Channel Two investigative programme Uvda, Gigi, who had previously been in many ways a model soldier, talked of “losing the human condition” in Hebron. Asked what he meant, he replied: “To lose the human condition is to become an animal.”
The Israeli military did not prosecute the soldier who had fired on the Palestinian, as opposed to Gigi. But the military insists “that the events that occurred within the Kfir Brigade are highly unusual”.
But as the 22-year-old soldier, also in the Kfir Brigade, confirms in his testimony to Breaking the Silence, it seems that the event may not have been exceptional. Certainly, our interview tells us, he was “many times” in groups that commandeered taxis, seated the driver in the back, and told him to direct them to places “where they hate the Jews” in order to “make a balagan” – Hebrew for “big mess”.
Then there is the inter- clan Palestinian fight: “We were told to go over there and find out what was happening. Our [platoon] commander was a bit screwed in the head. So anyway, we would locate houses, and he’d tell us: ‘OK, anyone you see armed with stones or whatever, I don’t care what – shoot.’ Everyone would think it’s the clan fight…” Did the company commander know? “No one knew. Platoon’s private initiative, these actions.”
Did you hit them? “Sure, not just them. Anyone who came close … Particularly legs and arms. Some people also sustained abdominal hits … I think at some point they realised it was soldiers, but they were not sure. Because they could not believe soldiers would do this, you know.”
Or using a 10-year-old child to locate and punish a 15-year-old stone-thrower: “So we got hold of just some Palestinian kid nearby, we knew that he knew who it had been. Let’s say we beat him a little, to put it mildly, until he told us. You know, the way it goes when your mind’s already screwed up, and you have no more patience for Hebron and Arabs and Jews there.
“The kid was really scared, realising we were on to him. We had a commander with us who was a bit of a fanatic. We gave the boy over to this commander, and he really beat the shit out of him … He showed him all kinds of holes in the ground along the way, asking him: ‘Is it here you want to die? Or here?’ The kid goes, ‘No, no!’
“Anyway, the kid was stood up, and couldn’t stay standing on his own two feet. He was already crying … And the commander continues, ‘Don’t pretend’ and kicks him some more. And then [name withheld], who always had a hard time with such things, went in, caught the squad commander and said, ‘Don’t touch him any more, that’s it.’ The commander goes, ‘You’ve become a leftie, what?’ And he answers, ‘No, I just don’t want to see such things.’
“We were right next to this, but did nothing. We were indifferent, you know. OK. Only after the fact you start thinking. Not right away. We were doing such things every day … It had become a habit…
“And the parents saw it. The commander ordered [the mother], ‘Don’t get any closer.’ He cocked his weapon, already had a bullet inside. She was frightened. He put his weapon literally inside the kid’s mouth. ‘Anyone gets close, I kill him. Don’t bug me. I kill. I have no mercy.’ So the father … got hold of the mother and said, ‘Calm down, let them be, so they’ll leave him alone.’”
Not every soldier serving in Hebron becomes an “animal”. Iftach Arbel, 23, from an upper- middle class, left-of-centre home in Herzylia, served in Hebron as a commander just before the withdrawal from Gaza, when he thinks the army wanted to show it could be tough with settlers, too. And many of the testimonies, including Mr Arbel’s, describe how the settlers educate children as young as four to throw stones at Palestinians, attack their homes and even steal their possessions. To Mr Arbel, the Hebron settlers are “pure evil” and the only solution is “to remove the settlers”.
He believes it would be possible even within these constraints to treat Palestinians better. He adds: “We did night activity. Choose a house at random, on the aerial photo, so as to practise combat routine and all, which is instructive for the soldiers, I mean, I’m all for it. But then at midnight you wake someone up and turn his whole house upside down with everyone sleeping on the mattresses and all.”
But Mr Arbel says that most soldiers are some way between his own extreme and that of the most violent. From just two of his fellow testifiers, you can see what he means.
As one said: “We did all kinds of experiments to see who could do the best split in Abu Snena. We would put [Palestinians] against the wall, make like we were checking them, and ask them to spread their legs. Spread, spread, spread, it was a game to see who could do it best. Or we would check who can hold his breath for longest.
“Choke them. One guy would come, make like he was checking them, and suddenly start yelling like they said something and choke them … Block their airways; you have to press the adams apple. It’s not pleasant. Look at the watch as you’re doing it, until he passes out. The one who takes longest to faint wins.”
And theft as well as violence. “There’s this car accessory shop there. Every time, soldiers would take a tape-disc player, other stuff. This guy, if you go ask him, will tell you plenty of things that soldiers did to him.
“A whole scroll-full … They would raid his shop regularly. ‘Listen, if you tell on us, we’ll confiscate your whole store, we’ll break everything.’ You know, he was afraid to tell. He was already making deals, ‘Listen guys, you’re damaging me financially.’ I personally never took a thing, but I’m telling you, people used to take speakers from him, whole sound systems.
“He’d go, ‘Please, give me 500 shekels, I’m losing money here.’ ‘Listen, if you go on – we’ll pick up your whole shop.’ ‘OK, OK, take it, but listen, don’t take more than 10 systems a month.’ Something like this.
“‘I’m already going bankrupt.’ He was so miserable. Guys in our unit used to sell these things back home, make deals with people. People are so stupid.”
The military said that Israeli Defence Forces soldiers operate according to “a strict set of moral guidelines” and that their expected adherence to them only “increases wherever and whenever IDF soldiers come in contact with civilians”. It added that “if evidence supporting the allegations is uncovered, steps are taken to hold those involved to the level of highest judicial severity”. It also said: “The Military Advocate General has issued a number of indictments against soldiers due to allegations of criminal behaviour … Soldiers found guilty were punished severely by the Military Court, in proportion to the committed offence.” It had not by last night quantified such indictments.
In its introduction to the testimonies, Breaking the Silence says: “The soldiers’ determination to fulfil their mission yields tragic results: the proper-normative becomes despicable, the inconceivable becomes routine … [The] testimonies are to illustrate the manner in which they are swept into the brutal reality reigning on the ground, a reality whereby the lives of many thousands of Palestinian families are at the questionable mercy of youths. Hebron turns a focused, flagrant lens at the reality to which Israel’s young representatives are constantly sent.”
A force for justice
Breaking the Silence was formed four years ago by a group of ex-soldiers, most of whom had served in Israel Defence Forces combat units in Hebron. Many of the soldiers do reserve duty in the military each year. It has collected some 500 testimonies from former soldiers who served in the West Bank and Gaza. Its first public exposure was with an exhibition of photographs by soldiers serving in Hebron and the organisation also runs regular tours of Hebron for Israeli students and diplomats. It receives funding from groups as diverse as the Jewish philanthropic Moriah Fund, the New Israel Fund, the British embassy in Tel Aviv and the EU.
April 17th is Palestinian Prisoners Day – a date to remind the public that thousands of Palestinian are imprisoned in Israeli jails under extremely difficult circumstances and are exposed to various forms of torture and inhumane treatment. A new campaign has been launched to raise awareness about the issue. The campaign asks people (among other things) to “wear black on the day and tell people why they are doing it”.
The Campaign’s objective, as explained by Naji Mohamed, Action Palestine’s campaigns officer is to “shed light on the plight of Palestinian prisoners which is a very crucial issue in the Palestinian cause but is very rarely talked about”.
Palestine student societies will organise actions and events about the issue of student prisoners in Israeli prisons and detention centres. The campaign which is supported by several organisations, including, NUS Black Students Campaigns, PSC and FOSIS alongside others, is calling on people to use the logo of the campaign as their facebook profile picture on the 17th of April. Also a petition has been placed on the Downing Street website asking the Prime Minister to apply maximum pressure on the Israeli government for the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons.
Palestinian prisoners from the Occupied Territories, hundreds of whom are under the age of 18, are tried under military courts and sentenced by military judges. Defendants are often convicted on secret evidence and are given serve disproportionately long sentences.
In what is referred to as “administrative detention” the Israeli army is allowed to arbitrarily arrest and detain Palestinian civilians for periods of six months. After this period has ended the sentence can be extended without explanation. These loose guidelines allow the Israeli army to exercise broad and unchecked powers against the Palestinian population.
Naji added that Action Palestine as a student group is especially concerned with this issue as students in Palestine are the most severely affected by it. The Israeli army often launches waves of arrests against university students, particularly first year students, simply to collect information on them. The Israeli army has recently arrested eight Birzeit University students and one employee but none of them have been charged.
Ruqayyah Collector, NUS Black Students’ Officer explained that given the current conditions within these prisons this Prisoners Day is partiularly significant. In addition to the poor treatment and inhumane conditions under which Palestinians are held Palestinian prisoners at multiple detention centres have recently suffered direct attacks. These attacks often occur when Israeli forces attempted to transfer large numbers of prisoners from one detention facility to another. By moving prisoners around every few months Israel seeks to disrupt supportive relationships that form amongst prisoners.
Ruqayyah stressed that it has become of huge importance that the people of the world pressure their governments to hold Israel accountable for its violation to international law, particularly after the failure of the international community in protecting the rights of the Palestinians.
*END*
- To contact Action Palestine please email info@actionpalestine.org
- To view the campaign pamphlet please visit: http://www.actionpalestine.org/temp/Palestinian%20Political%20Prisoners.doc
A very interesting and informative article by Uri Avnery, 29.03.08
“Death to the Arabs!”
TOMORROW WILL BE the 32nd anniversary of the first “Day of the Land” – one of the defining events in the history of Israel.
I remember the day well. I was at Ben Gurion airport, on the way to a secret meeting in London with Said Hamami, Yasser Arafat’s emissary, when someone told me: “They have killed a lot of Arab protestors!”
That was not entirely unexpected. A few days before, we – members of the newly formed Israeli Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace – had handed the Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, an urgent memorandum warning him that the government’s intention of expropriating huge chunks of land from Arab villages would cause an explosion. We included a proposal for an alternative solution, worked out by Lova Eliav, a veteran expert on settlements.
When I returned from abroad, the poet Yevi suggested that we make a symbolic gesture of sorrow and regret for the killings. Three of us – Yevi himself, the painter Dan Kedar and I – laid wreaths on the graves of the victims. This aroused a wave of hatred against us. I felt that something profoundly significant had happened, that the relationship between Jews and Arabs within the state had changed fundamentally.
And indeed, the impact of the Day of the Land – as the event was called – was stronger than even the Kafr Kassem massacre of 1956 or the October Events killings of 2000.
THE REASONS for this go back to the early days of the state.
After the 1948 war, only a small, weak and frightened Arab community was left in the state. Not only had about 750 thousand Arabs been uprooted from the territory that had become the State of Israel, but those who remained were leaderless. The political, intellectual and economic elites had vanished, most of them right at the beginning of the war. The vacuum was somehow filled by the Communist Party, whose leaders had been allowed to return from abroad – mainly in order to please Stalin, who at the time supported Israel.
After an internal debate, the leaders of the new state decided to accord the Arabs in the “Jewish State” citizenship and the right to vote. That was not self-evident. But the government wanted to appear before the world as a democratic state. In my opinion, the main reason was party political: David Ben-Gurion believed that he could coerce the Arabs to vote for his own party.
And indeed: the great majority of the Arab citizens voted for the Labor Party (then called Mapai) and its two Arab satellite parties which had been set up for that very purpose. They had no choice: they were living in a state of fear, under the watchful eyes of the Security Service (then called Shin Bet). Every Arab Hamulah (extended family) was told exactly how to vote, either for Mapai or one of the two subsidiaries. Since every election list has two different ballot papers, one in Hebrew and one in Arabic, there were six possibilities for faithful Arabs in every polling station, and it was easy for the Shin Bet to make sure that each Hamula voted exactly as instructed. More than once did Ben Gurion achieve a majority in the Knesset only with the help of these captive votes.
For the sake of “security” (in both senses) the Arabs were subjected to a “military government”. Every detail of their lives depended on it. They needed a permit to leave their village and go to town or the next village. Without the permission of the military government they could not buy a tractor, send a daughter to the teachers’ college, get a job for a son, obtain an import license. Under the authority of the military government and a whole series of laws, huge chunks of land were expropriated for Jewish towns and kibbutzim.
A story engraved in my memory: my late friend, the poet Rashed Hussein from Musmus village, was summoned to the military governor in Netanya, who told him: Independence Day is approaching and I want you to write a nice poem for the occasion. Rashed, a proud youngster, refused. When he came home, he found his whole family sitting on the floor and weeping. At first he thought that somebody had died, but then his mother cried out: “You have destroyed us! We are finished!” So the poem was written.
Every independent Arab political initiative was choked at birth. The first such group – the nationalist al-Ard (“the land”) group – was rigorously suppressed. It was outlawed, its leaders exiled, its paper proscribed – all with the blessing of the Supreme Court. Only the Communist Party was left intact, but its leaders were also persecuted from time to time.
The military government was dismantled only in 1966, after Ben Gurion’s exit from power and a short time after my election to the Knesset. After demonstrating against it so many times, I had the pleasure of voting for its abolition. But in practice very little changed – instead of the official military government an unofficial one remained, as did most of the discrimination.
“THE DAY OF THE LAND” changed the situation. A second generation of Arabs had grown up in Israel, no longer timidly submissive, a generation that had not experienced the mass expulsions and whose economic position had improved. The order given to the soldiers and policemen to open fire on them caused a shock. Thus a new chapter started.
The percentage of Arab citizens in the state has not changed: from the first days of the state to now, it had hovered around 20%. The much higher natural rate of increase of the Muslim community was balanced by Jewish immigration. But the numbers have grown significantly: from 200 thousand at the beginning of the state to almost 1.3 million – twice the size of the Jewish community that founded the state.
The Day of the Land also dramatically changed the attitude of the Arab world and the Palestinian people towards the Arabs in Israel. Until then, they were considered traitors, collaborators of the “Zionist entity”. I remember a scene from the 1965 meeting convened in Firenze by the legendary mayor, Giorgio la Pira, who tried to bring together personalities from Israel and the Arab world. At the time, that was considered a very bold undertaking.
During one of the intermissions, I was chatting with a senior Egyptian diplomat in a sunny piazza outside the conference site, when two young Arabs from Israel, who had heard about the conference, approached us. After embracing, I introduced them to the Egyptian, but he turned his back and exclaimed: “I am ready to talk with you, but not with these traitors!”
The bloody events of the Day of the Land brought the “Israeli Arabs” back into the fold of the Arab nation and the Palestinian people, who now call them “the 1948 Arabs”.
In October 2000, policemen again shot and killed Arab citizens, when they tried to express their solidarity with Arabs killed at the Haram al-Sharif (Temple Mount) in Jerusalem. But in the meantime, a third generation of Arabs had grown up in Israel, many of whom, in spite of all the obstacles, had attended universities and become business people, politicians, professors, lawyers and physicians. It is impossible to ignore this community – even if the state tries very hard to do just that.
From time to time, complaints about discrimination are voiced, but everybody shrinks back from the fundamental question: What is the status of the Arab minority growing up in a state that defines itself officially as “Jewish and democratic”?
ONE LEADER of the Arab community, the late Knesset member Abd-al-Aziz Zuabi, defined his dilemma this way: “My state is at war with my people”. The Arab citizens belong both to the State of Israel and to the Palestinian people.
Their belonging to the Palestinian people is self-evident. The Arab citizens of Israel, who lately tend to call themselves “Palestinians in Israel”, are only one part of the stricken Palestinian people, which consists of many branches: the inhabitants of the occupied territories (now themselves split between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip), the Arabs in East Jerusalem (officially “residents” but not “citizens” of Israel), and the refugees living in many different countries, each with its own particular regime. All these branches have a strong feeling of belonging together, but the consciousness of each is shaped by its own particular situation.
How strong is the Palestinian component in the consciousness of the Arab citizens of Israel? How can it be measured? Palestinians in the occupied territories often complain that it expresses itself mainly in words, not deeds. The support given by the Arab citizens in Israel to the Palestinian struggle for liberation is mainly symbolic. Here and there a citizen is arrested for helping a suicide bomber, but these are rare exceptions.
When the extreme Arab-hater Avigdor Liberman proposed that a string of Arab villages in Israel adjoining the Green Line (called “the Triangle”) be turned over to the future Palestinian state in return for the Jewish settlement blocs in the West Bank, not a single Arab voice was raised in support. That is a very significant fact.
The Arab community is much more rooted in Israel than appears at first sight. The Arabs play an important part in the Israeli economy, they work in the state, pay taxes to the state. They enjoy the benefits of social security – by right, since they pay for it. Their standard of living is much higher than that of their Palestinian brethren in the occupied territories and beyond. They participate in Israeli democracy and have no desire at all to live under regimes like those of Egypt and Jordan. They have serious and justified complaints – but they live in Israel und will continue to do so.
IN RECENT YEARS, intellectuals of the third Arab generation in Israel have published several proposals for the normalization of the relations between the majority and the minority.
There exist, in principle, two main alternatives:
The first way says: Israel is a Jewish state, but a second people also live here. If Jewish Israelis have defined national rights, Arab Israelis must also have defined national rights. For example, educational, cultural and religious autonomy (as the young Vladimir Zeev Jabotinsky demanded a hundred years ago for the Jews in Czarist Russia). They must be allowed to have free and open connections with the Arab world and the Palestinian people, like the connections Jewish citizens have with the Jewish Diaspora. All this must be spelled out in the future constitution of the state.
The second way says: Israel belongs to all its citizens, and only to them. Every citizen is an Israeli, much as every US citizen is an American. As far as the state is concerned, there is no difference between one citizen and another, whether Jewish, Muslim or Christian, Arab or Russian, much as, from the point of view of the American state, there is no difference between white, brown or black citizens, whether of European, African or Asian descent, Protestant, Catholic, Jewish or Muslim. In Israeli parlance, this is called “a state of all its citizens”.
It goes without saying that I favor the second alternative, but I am ready to accept the first. Either of them is preferable to the existing situation, where the state pretends that there is no problem except some traces of discrimination that have to be overcome (without doing anything about it).
If the courage is lacking to treat a wound, it will fester. At football matches, the riffraff shout: “Death-to-the-Arabs!” and in the Knesset far right deputies threaten to expel Arab members from the House, and from the state altogether.
On the 32nd anniversary of the Day of the Land, with the 60th Independence Day approaching, it is time to take this bull by the horns.