In 1948, two intertwined mirror events took place: the emergence of
the State of Israel and the demise of Palestinian society with the
disintegration of its dream of statehood. Thus, for the Jewish
citizens, 1948 marks the independence of Israel; for the
Palestinians, it marks the Nakba, or catastrophe. For the 726,000
Palestinian refugees who were displaced as a result of the 1948
war, the Nakba meant that their abandoned hometowns and properties
would become an entrenched memory filled with the scent of pre-1948
Palestine. As the Palestinian refugees clung to the memory of what
was, the Israelis who occupied their homes and properties were bent
on creating a new reality that negated pre-1948 Palestine. A
by-product of the creation of Israel was the 156,000 Palestinian
Israelis - the Palestinian Arabs who remained in their homes in
Israel and later became Israeli citizens under the rule of the new
Israeli state. They are concentrated mostly in the Triangle area
and the Galilee, and 60 years later, they number almost 1.5
million.
Between 1949 and 1966, Israel declared martial law, restricting its
Arab citizens to their villages and localities, and instituted a
permit system allowing some of them to travel from their towns and
villages and to work in Jewish areas. The nascent state and its
Zionist political elite also wanted to ensure that Arab properties
would pass to the state. Through the enactment of legislations such
as the Absentee Property Law of 1950 and the Land Acquisition Law
of 1953, most Arab properties were wrested from its original
owners, regardless of whether they were present in the country or
not. The notion of "present-absentee" which is unique to Israeli
law and, perhaps, the only concept of its kind in the annals of
legal history, enabled Israel to transfer to the state the
properties of its Arab citizens, even of those who had moved a few
kilometers from their former villages or towns, earning themselves
thus, the status of "present-absentees."
Confronting Land Confiscation and Control
The Israeli Communist Party, with a mixed Jewish-Arab membership,
played a crucial role in the 1950s and early 1960s in confronting
the land grab and other repressive policies of the Jewish state
towards its Arab citizens. Other nationalist groups and Israeli
peace activists joined in to protest land expropriation and
restrictions on movement, and to highlight the repressive practices
by Israel's secret service and police. The newspaper Al-Ittihad
became an intellectual beacon for the steadfastness of the
Palestinian Israelis.
The same period also saw the development of a literary tradition
that galvanized thousands of young Palestinians and Arabs who
manifested their national and spiritual attachment to Palestine.
Samih Al-Qassem and Mahmoud Darwish were among the poets who made a
name for themselves and for Palestine. Emile Habibi, Tawfiq Zayyad,
Emile Touma, Tawfiq Touby, Hanna Abu Hanna were among the writers,
historians, politicians and novelists who promoted the Arab
Palestinian perspective as they encouraged the Palestinians in
Israel to remain steadfast and to confront the policies aimed at
their disempowerment.
Clearly, the Israeli government's policy was the geographic
separation between Jews and Arabs - with the exception of some
towns and localities where mixed populations exist to this day. In
addition, the Israeli education system was structured to ensure
that Arab students would be taught in all-Arab schools and Jewish
students in all-Jewish schools. This segregation reflected an
ideology whose aim was the consolidation of the Jewishness of the
state, but, at the same time, without the total disenfranchisement
of the Arab citizens. While Arabic remained the mother tongue among
the Palestinian Israelis, Hebrew became the dominant language and
the medium of contact between the two populations - mostly
work-oriented or service-motivated - and led to an interchange in
lifestyles, food, or fashion. The Israelis appropriated hummus and
falafel as their own national dish, to the dismay of the
Palestinians who first introduced them to it. While a majority of
Palestinian Israelis kept to their villages, towns and cities, an
increasing number of their youths began to attend Israeli
universities and to find that certain cultural traits of Israeli
Jewish society, such as the exercise of free choice or independence
from parents, suited them as well. Nevertheless, the structure of
Israeli society and its spatial, geographic and demographic
composition discouraged integration. Most importantly, the
Palestinian Israelis, regardless of how law-abiding they were, were
always considered a security threat and feared as a "fifth
column."
Land Day
The cumulative effects of Israel's policies against its Arab
citizens, especially land confiscation, led on March 30, 1976 to
confrontations in which six Palestinian Arabs were killed by
Israel's security forces and police. This became known as "Land
Day" and is commemorated annually in the West Bank and the Gaza
Strip as well. The 1980s and 1990s saw different orientations and
new forces emerging among the Palestinian Israelis and, like in
neighboring Arab countries, nationalism was on the wane and
religious Islamic ideology on the rise. In addition, the
predominance of the Israeli economy had its positive impact on the
Arab citizens of the state, although they remained on the periphery
and under-represented in the various economic sectors.
The political and socioeconomic realities shifted with the signing
of the Oslo agreement and the introduction of the Palestinian
Authority (PA) in the early 1990s. This led to a measure of
optimism among the Palestinian Israelis as, for the first time
ever, Yitzhak Rabin invited Arab parties represented in the Knesset
to join in forming a supportive coalition. However, the subsequent
failure of the concept of "a state for all of its citizens"
promoted by some Arab Palestinian nationalist politicians caused
some dismay. And although the overwhelming majority of Arabs in
Israel voted for Ehud Barak in 1999, he decided not to involve Arab
parties in consultations for the formation of his coalition
government. The greatest disappointment came with the outbreak of
the second intifada (2000) and the killing by the Israeli police
and security services of 13 Arab Palestinians, all citizens of
Israel, with the exception of one victim from the occupied
territories.
The rise of Islamic religious ideology among the Palestinians in
Israel meant that the stress was less on the equality for all
citizens than on a link with broader Islamic concerns. Islam, for a
good number of Palestinian Israelis, as it is for Muslims
elsewhere, has become a defining parameter which influences
perspectives and socio-political behavior. At the same time, as
Arabs moved from the leaderless years of post-state creation, the
second and third generations became more educated and found their
way into universities, some sectors of the economy and the liberal
professions, all of which promoted a lifestyle open to modernity.
Most importantly, these changes posed a challenge to the Israeli
system on how to deal with this new generation of "modernist Arabs"
as well as Islamist Arabs.
Are Arabs in Israel Equal Citizens?
The essential dilemma still persists: Are the Arabs equal citizens
in Israel? And what about calls, such as Knesset Member Avigdor
Lieberman's recent proposal to turn over Arab population centers,
especially those in the Triangle area close to the border of a
prospective Palestinian state to that state? Clearly, the Arabs are
not equal citizens, in spite of the acquired rights to social
security and in economic endeavors. Recent public opinion polls
show conclusively that a majority of Jewish citizens do not want to
associate with Arabs or to visit Arab towns and localities, not
even for leisure activities. The policies of segregation and
separation, first instituted by the state at its inception, have
led to the creation of a psychological, ethnic and religious
divide.
But the realities of the first decade of the 21st century with the
attitudinal changes among the Arab population, the result of higher
education as well as developments in television and electronic
communication, pose a challenge to the traditional security
perspective of the Israeli establishment. Israel, which proclaims
itself "the only democracy in the Middle East," cannot keep
pursuing a policy of disenfranchisement of its Arab citizens. The
alternative for a majority of Israelis, however, is not a state for
all of its citizens but rather a state that rids itself of as many
of its Arab citizens as possible. Hence, some Arab politicians in
Israel fear that the negotiations with the PA over territorial
exchange would eventually lead to the transfer of thousands of
Palestinian Israelis to the prospective Palestinian state.
The Occupied Territories: The Labor Force Dimension
The encounter between Israel and the Palestinians in the
territories occupied in June 1967 took on different dimensions than
those between Israel and its Arab minority. Initially, the
occupation led to the provision of cheap labor for the Israeli
economy, which saw a period of boom, particularly in construction.
This period resulted in the transformation of many villages and
towns in the West Bank into dormitories that provided day labor and
created new economic elites within Israel's socioeconomic structure
as they brokered Arab labor to various Israeli establishments. As a
result, some of the traditional institutions of family patronage
and city-village economic dependencies started to change in the
occupied territories. This economic interchange led to the
superficial discovery of the Other, particularly as Palestinian
laborers interacted daily with Israeli bosses and Jewish Israeli
laborers and others who sought their services. Yet this contact did
not spill over into social and or cultural interchange, nor did it
invite major perceptional transformation of each other across the
political and ideological divide.
In spite of apparent economic growth in the occupied territories
due to exported labor, Israeli policies did not encourage
indigenous Palestinian economic development. In fact, some
political and sociological analysts argued that Israeli policies
were aimed at keeping the territories and their population captive
to the needs and interests of the Israeli economy.
Israel's System of Palestinian Population Control
Most important was Israel's institution of a system of population
control at all levels. While initially encouraging the old mukhtar
system of local representation, the Israeli Civil Administration
(an arm of the military occupation in the occupied territories)
took care not to deal with the Palestinian population and its
institutions as a unified bloc. Instead it followed a
divide-and-rule policy, encouraging mayors and other local
representatives to speak only of their immediate problems and
concerns rather than of problems and challenges facing the
population and the territories as a whole. A carrot-and-stick
approach was introduced by the Israeli military authorities in
order to reinforce this policy. In East Jerusalem - which was
illegally annexed and its municipal boundaries expanded from 6
square kilometers under Jordan to 70 square kilometers after 1967 -
a protest led by former Governor of Jerusalem Anwar al-Khatib and
former Mayor Rawhi al-Khatib condemning the illegality of
annexation was met by the deportation of at least four Jerusalem
leaders. This deportation policy, applied all over the West Bank,
led to the weakening of the local leadership that could have
tackled jointly the concerns and problems faced by the population.
Inadvertently, this policy encouraged many to go underground and to
link up with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as the
sole political representative of the Palestinians. The Israeli
Civil Administration tried at certain points to promote local
substitutes for the PLO and for its leadership within the occupied
territories but failed miserably.
One could conclude that these economic and political orientations
of the Israeli Civil Administration were short-sighted; in reality
they were intended to secure Israel's interests as perceived by
planners, academic experts, security officials and political
pressure groups. They also reflected the condescension and
self-assuredness of those serving in the Civil Administration as
the control systems throughout the occupied territories were
considered good enough to keep matters in check. Israel saw itself
as invincible and able to continue its occupation, benefit from
cheap Palestinian labor, use the resources of the territories and
keep the Palestinians compliant with the system.
The Emergence of Palestinian Civil Society
The Palestinians responded to Israel's occupation policies with the
development in the late 1970s and the 1980s of civil society
organizations aimed at handling the variety of issues that were not
addressed by the Civil Administration. These organizations, often
affiliated with PLO political factions, were mostly
grassroots-oriented and operated in the fields of community health,
education, vocational training, women empowerment, and agricultural
relief, among others. Alongside these organizations, Palestinian
universities and institutions of higher learning mushroomed and
began absorbing thousands of students. These institutions became a
rallying point for the PLO program and were used by various
Palestinian factions to recruit new members and promote resistance
to the occupation. No wonder then that the universities became the
theatre for ongoing confrontation with the Israeli occupation
forces.
The occupation provided Israel with the opportunity to embark on
its settlement activity. Hebron witnessed the first drive of
settlement activity that is ongoing to this day. Jewish settlement
in the occupied territories highlighted the insuperable gulf which
divides Arabs and Jews over the land and its ownership. The
spatial, geographic and demographic separation that exists in the
West Bank today due to settlement activity parallels the separation
between Arabs and Jews within Israel proper. Settlement activity
aimed at appropriating the land; denigrating Palestinian village
and rural communities; and bisecting, trisecting and quadresecting
the Palestinian territories through a settler-only road system.
More notably, it aimed at land expropriation and the exclusive use
of water and other resources in East Jerusalem and the West Bank to
such a point that it would become impossible for the Palestinians
to regain political control.
Sumud and the First Intifada
The trials and tribulations of a protracted occupation led to the
concept of sumud (steadfastness) that went hand in hand with the
development of civil society organizations and the establishment of
universities and other educational and cultural institutions. Sumud
received the support of the Baghdad Arab Summit (1978), which led
to the establishment of the Palestinian-Jordanian Joint Committee
to manage a special fund to support sumud. Palestinians of all
walks of life wanted to remain on their land and to go on with
their lives and traditions in defiance of the Israeli occupation
and settlers' violence.
Some saw the eruption of the first intifada (1988-1993) as an
expression of massive popular sumud and affirmation of self,
community and nation. Others saw it as the result of frustration
with the vacuum created by Israel's policies of control and
repression that hindered the development of local political,
economic and social forces that could supplement the PLO's
leadership role outside the occupied territories. Still others saw
the intifada as a reflection of a generational gap whereby the
younger generation expressed its disappointment with the
performance of the older generation. Thus, children rose up to do
precisely what they perceived their parents had failed to do: to
attempt to throw off the yoke of the occupation.
The political fruits of the first intifada were the Oslo Accords in
1993. While the Palestinians viewed Oslo with guarded optimism, the
arrival of the PA and the PLO to the occupied territories kindled
the hope that the occupation would eventually end and a two-state
solution would be implemented. This hope proved unrealistic, and
the failure of Oslo, along with several attempts at
Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, led to the eruption of the second
intifada in September 2000. For a variety of reasons, the second
intifada was never capable of transforming its achievements - if
any- into political gains as was the case with the first intifada.
As a result, the Palestinians feel that Israel has the upper hand
and, as it proceeds with the construction of the separation wall
begun in 2002, more and more Palestinians are of the opinion that
Israel is seeking to exercise full control over their lives and to
deprive them of their land and basic rights.
Separation
An immediate consequence of the separation wall is the total
separation from Israeli society, although Israel continues to have
full control over the vital areas of life in the occupied
territories. The Palestinian labor force is now denied access to
the Israeli labor market, and thousands of Palestinians are trapped
between the wall and the 1967 border, and are denied access to
their lands, places of work and social services. East Jerusalem is
encircled in the north, east and south by the "Jerusalem envelope,"
and as a result, close to 100,000 Palestinians with Israeli blue
identity cards are now located outside the city's boundaries. The
West Bank's fragmented landscape with hundreds of illegal Israeli
settlements has almost all of the Palestinian population trapped
into small residential pockets, whether in cities, towns or
villages. The military checkpoints that control the movement of
Palestinians within the West Bank itself are testimony to the
control philosophy of Israeli military officials. The overall
impact is the weakening of the PA as it attempted to deal with the
many problems and issues on a locality basis rather than in a
comprehensive manner.
With a deadlocked political process and the Hamas-PLO rift, the
Palestinians remain pessimistic about positive developments in the
near future. The financial aid provided by the international
community suggests a long-term economic and social dependence for
the Palestinian people. The development plans as elaborated in
Paris (December 2007) and Bethlehem (May 2008) need to address
questions of free access and movement across the Palestinian
territories. Israeli military officials keep insisting that it is
impossible to lift these checkpoints. It would seem that Israel's
security for them lies in ever-growing control; they fail to
perceive Palestinian economic development plans as an impetus for
the promotion of normal relations with their Palestinian neighbors.
Poverty in the Palestinian territories - with a significant
percentage of households falling below the poverty line - is the
result of the same Israeli policies of control. Using economic
leverage to accomplish political gains, the Israeli government and
its military establishment are virtually contributing to despair
among a vast segment of the Palestinian population that fails to
see a light at the end of the tunnel. Whereas the Palestinians
remain committed to a negotiated settlement with Israel, the faits
accomplis on the ground point to the impossibility of a successful
negotiated settlement. Israel does not have a vision of peace; it
has only a vision of security. The dream of good neighborly
relations between Palestinians and Israelis seems, at the moment, a
remote likelihood.