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.
Adalah: We will Seek the Establishment of an Independent, Impartial Investigatory Committee with the Participation of International Experts in Response to AG Mazuz’s Decision to Close the October 2000 Killings Cases
None of the police officers or commanders involved in the fatal shootings of Palestinian citizens of Israel in October 2000 will face criminal indictment, the Attorney General of Israel, Menachem Mazuz, announced yesterday, Sunday, 27 January 2008. His announcement officially closes the case against police over the deaths and injuries of Palestinian Arab citizens who demonstrated in towns and villages across Israel in October 2000 against the government’s oppressive policies towards Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The police used snipers, live ammunition and rubber-coated steel bullets to disperse the unarmed demonstrators, which led to the thirteen deaths and to thousands of injuries.
Mazuz argued in his decision that there was a lack of sufficient evidence to issue criminal indictments against the police officers and commanders. He further found that the police who shot the victims faced direct threats to their lives. This situation, he claimed, necessitated the use of operational judgment and negates criminal responsibility. Thus, even if it could be proven that police officers fired the fatal bullets, it nevertheless could be argued that the shootings were justified.
Mazuz’s perception, as revealed in his decision, is that Arab citizens of Israel are enemies of the state, and as a result the police possess wide discretion to open fire on them. Further, according to the Mazuz, the police officers were facing a real and immediate threat to their lives. These perceptions were sharply criticized by the Official Commission of Inquiry (Or Commission) into the October 2000 events, which issued in its final report in September 2003. In the report, the Or Commission recommended that the Israeli police stop relating to the Arab citizens as enemies. In addition, the Or Commission’s clearly concluded that the use of snipers and the use of live ammunition by other police officers was illegal and that the demonstrators posed no immediate and real threat to the lives of police officers. In Adalah’s view, trust cannot be placed in the Attorney General, who continues to relate to Arab citizens as enemies.
In response to the decision, Adalah stated its intention to seek international justice in these cases. “We will not approach the Supreme Court in these cases. We have now exhausted all legal proceedings in Israel. We will seek the involvement of the United Nations and other international foraâ€, stated Attorney Hassan Jabareen, the General Director of Adalah, at a press conference held yesterday, the 27 January 2008, following the Attorney General’s decision. The press conference was held jointly by the High-Follow up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel, the Committee of the Victims’ Families and Adalah.
At the press conference, Mr. Shawqi Khatib, the Chairman of the High-Follow up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel stated, “This is a black day for justice and human rights and for the hopes of equality and respect between the peoples. Mazuz, with his deafness, has legitimized the killing and the result is that Arab blood flows freely.â€
Hassan Asleh, the father of Asel Asleh who was killed by police in October 2000 and the head of the Committee of the Victims’ Families, also spoke at the press conference. He read out the names of the thirteen Palestinian youths killed in October 2000 and those police officers and commanders responsible for each of their deaths. He promised that the family members would continue in their struggle for justice.
Mazuz’s decision endorsed the report on police conduct during the events of October 2000 released by Ministry of Justice’s Police Investigations Department (“Mahashâ€) in September 2005. In the report, Mahash announced its decision to close all the investigation files against police officers and commanders implicated in the October 2000 deaths on the pretext of lack of evidence.
Following the release of Mahash’s report, and as a result of public pressure, the Attorney General decided to conduct a review of the decision, and to this end appointed a special investigatory committee within the State Attorney’s Office to review the files. At the time and today, Adalah argues that the decision to review Mahash’s report within the State Attorney’s Office lacked all integrity because the office is headed by current State Attorney Eran Shendar. Shendar was the Director of Mahash during October 2000 and bears direct responsibility for the failure to open an immediate investigation into the police officers and commanders responsible for the deaths.
In October 2006, Adalah submitted a comprehensive report entitled “The Accused†to the Attorney General, in which it addressed the shortcomings and failures of the law enforcement authorities – first and foremost Mahash – in investigating the October 2000 killings. The report primarily exposes Mahash’s negligent work and its failure to fulfill its duty to investigate the criminal offenses committed by police in October 2000. In addition, the report discloses how Mahash concealed significant facts from the public and issued a falsified report regarding the events. Mazuz’s decision included specific responses to “The Accused†report.
For more information, see a special web-report on the October 2000 Killings
Often when “Israeli Apartheid” is talked about the argument that you always hear is: “There are no Jews-only park benches in Israel” which is a strange argument. There are many Jews-only things in Israel and furthermore apartheid is, according to international law, not defined according to unequal access to park benches.
In its most specific meaning, the word Apartheid (Afrikaans for separation) refers to the system of laws, policies and practices implemented by the white minority in South Africa to repress and exploit the indigenous African majority. In Israel, the word Hafrada (Hebrew for separation) is used to refer to the general policy of separation the Israeli government has adopted and implemented over the Palestinians in the West Bank (WB) and Gaza Strip (GS).
In 1976, the world witnessed the signing of the International Convention for the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. According to this convention, Apartheid is a Crime against Humanity, and applies to all cases where policies are implemented “for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them”. The convention gave examples of policies that are often used to establish and maintain this domination, all of which are used by the Israeli authorities against non-Jews and particularly against Arabs.
In 1967, Israel occupied the WB and GS, ethnically cleansing a further 250,000 Palestinians from their homes after 720,000 were ethnically cleansed in 1948. Both the WB and GS are populated by large number of Palestinians and this has placed Israel in a dilemma. This is because it wants to control the land but escape responsibility for the Palestinians, so in response it created fenced-in Bantustans in GS and the WB.
Israel has built 24 foot high and 720km long (double the length of the Green Line) concrete Wall. It is clear that the wall does not run along the Green Line, which separates Israel from the WB, but rather runs through the WB. This means the annexing Palestinian land and divides the WB into small Bantustans. Furthermore it hugely restricts the movement of Palestinians within the WB.
As well as the Wall over 300 Israeli checkpoints and roadblocks divide the WB into 420 different enclaves with no freedom of movement for Palestinians between them. Settler -only highways are off limits for Palestinians who are forced to drive with different colour number plates to distinguish them from Israeli settlers.
Palestinians in the WB are subject to a different set of laws to Israeli settlers living in the same area. The military laws that apply to Palestinians in the WB regulate every aspect of life.
Curfews are regularly placed on Palestinian areas that place all residents under de-facto house arrest. The city of Nablus, for example, was under 24-hour curfew for 5 consecutive months in 2002.
In the WB/GS, Israeli soldiers and police have killed over 4,850 Palestinians since September 2000.
Since 1967, more than 650,000 Palestinians have been detained. Currently over 10,000 Palestinians from the WB/GS are being held as political prisoners, more than 2,000 without ever being charged or facing trial. The Israeli military will regularly drive through Palestinian areas and call for all Palestinian males between 15 and 50 to leave their houses and gather in a central area where they will be detained.
Torture is used against virtually every Palestinian arrested by the Israeli military or police. Regular beatings, being tied in contorted positions, denial of food and prevention of the use of the bathroom are common experiences in Israeli prisons.
Around 18,000 Palestinian homes have been demolished since 1967. These demolitions often occur without warning where residents are forced to flee their homes with whatever belongings they can carry.
But the apartheid label should not be restricted to the post-1967 occupation. There is a more fundamental form of apartheid of which the occupation is nothing more than a manifestation.
Apartheid in historic Palestine originated, and has persisted, in the ideology of creating a state in which Jews would be separated from non-Jews in their stake in the political community. It was an apartheid mentality that nourished the desire of establishing and maintaining a state with a Jewish demographic majority and character. It is apartheid law that creates a wall of discrimination between Jewish and Arab citizens of the Israeli state. It is an Apartheid mentality that prompts some Israeli Jews to view their Arabs living under Israel as a “demographic threat”.
Section 7A of the Israeli Basic Law prevents anyone running for the Israeli Knesset (parliament) if they do not recognize Israel as a Jewish state and thus bars anyone who wants to change the apartheid character of the state by parliamentary participation.
The Jewish National Fund (JNF) owns around 14% of the land in Israel, and is prohibited by its constitution from selling or leasing this land to Palestinians, around 2/3 of this land was taken from Palestinian refugees. Through its 50% representation on the council of the Israel Lands Administration (ILA), the JNF has a substantial influence over more than 93% of the land in Israel.
Some Israeli towns set criteria that prevent Arab citizens from purchasing homes or living in the town. The Israeli state regularly passes legislations that prevent Arab from reaching their lands or redefines areas as nature reserves or forests that can then be confiscated.
There are over 100,000 (9% of Palestinian citizens of Israel) Palestinian citizens of Israel living in villages that the Israeli government does not officially recognise. These villages existed prior to the establishment of Israel but were simply declared as non-existent with the adoption of the Israeli Planning and Construction Law in 1965 and do not appear on any map. Although the residents of these villages are officially Israeli citizens, they are denied basic services such as housing, water, electricity, education and health care. Furthermore the Israeli authorities regularly demolish some of these villages.
Up to 420,000 of Arabs living under Israel are internal refugees “internally displaced persons” in Israel, between 46,000 and 48,000 Arabs became displaced in 1949 within what became Israel. Over fifty years later, this group (including the children of the displaced) represents about 150,000 to 200,000 persons. If you also include the Bedouins who were ordered in 1949 to move into a close area under military rule in the Negev and now for the most part live in “unrecognized villages”, the estimate the number of displaced is 250,000-420,000.
The well-planned ethnic cleansing, in 1948, of 720,000 indigenous people was apartheid practice par excellence. It is apartheid which prevents the expelled and their descendants from returning: this apartheid denies residence to expellees from the Galilee, but grants it, not just to Israeli-born Jews, but to Jews all over the world.
Since 1948, the Israeli military and police have continually carried out massacres of Palestinians who are living under Israel, in the WB and the GS and those in neighbouring countries. For example, in 1956, Israeli police in Kufr Qassem killed 49 Palestinian citizens of Israel after a curfew was placed on the village without warning.
Another argument I often hear is “if Israel was an apartheid, Arabs in Israel would not be able to vote” which completely ignores the fact that Arabs living under Israel today are the remains of the Arab population who still live there despite all the efforts by Israel to expel them. They are merely allowed the to vote in Israeli elections because they are a minority in the Israeli political system that has their voices sidelined. The fact that Palestinians within Israel have the right to vote is nothing more than a way to hide the reality of apartheid and does not undermine the apartheid nature of the state of Israel.
The past few years have seen a significant increase of literature and analysis which has argued that Israel is apartheid state. Also figures in the anti apartheid struggle in South Africa, including figures such as Nelson Mandela, and archbishop Desmond Tutu who has repeatedly made the statement that the Israeli occupation of Palestine is analogous if not worse than South African apartheid. Even the current Israeli PM tactfully acknowledged apartheid when he said in an interview with an Israeli newspaper: “If the two-state solution collapsed we (Israel) would face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights”.
Naji Mohamed
najimohamed@actionpalestine.org