This week Palestinians observed the 32nd anniversary of the first “Day of the Land” — one of the defining events in the history of the Jewish state. 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 protesters!”
That was not entirely unexpected. A few days before, we — members of the newly formed Israeli Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace — had handed 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.
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 750,000 Arabs been uprooted from the territory that had become the State of Israel, but those who remained were leaderless.
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. The great majority of the Arab citizens voted for David Ben-Gurion’s 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). 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”. Under the authority of the military government and a whole series of laws, huge chunks of land were expropriated for Jewish towns and kibbutzim.
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. 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 Day of the Land also dramatically changed the attitude of the Arab world and the Palestinian people toward the Arabs in Israel. Until then, they were considered traitors, collaborators of the “Zionist entity”.
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. 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. 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. 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.
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).
