Palestinians in Israel
Faith, Money and the Millennium
The solar eclipse on August 11, 1999 led some people to expect the end of the world. According to one report, three people committed suicide, sure the end was near. Others shut themselves in their homes expecting extraordinary events to usher in the eschaton (“end times”). Since a simple eclipse could cause such panic, despite our considerable scientific knowledge, one wonders what the end of a millennium might do to people, individually and collectively.
Dis/Solving the “Refugee Problem”
“A displaced person owns nothing but the spot where he is standing, which is always threatened.” — Murid Barghouti
Israeli power, US backing, Palestinian weakness, Arab complicity — these are the basic ingredients for a coercive settlement of the “refugee problem” based not on refugees’ rights but on their disappearance. The “new Middle East” must be tidied up; states, citizens and borders must correspond; disruptive anomalies must be removed. Because of their centrality to regional instability, eliminating the Palestinian refugees is essential to a pacified Middle East free to fulfill its designated role in the global economy.
A New Strategy for the Palestinian “Minority” in Israel
In December 1997, the first “Equality Conference” was held in Nazareth to address the continuing marginalization of the Palestinian Arab community in Israel. This event represents part of the ongoing struggle of Palestinian citizens to overcome discriminatory laws and state practices in Israel. The conference, however, signals an innovation in this struggle because the organizers positioned it in an international human rights framework. While this has had limited immediate results, the new direction marks an attempt to appeal directly to a wider international community and to place Palestinian issues inside the Green Line in the context of various international struggles.
On Palestinians in the Israeli Knesset
Azmi Bishara was a young rising star in the Communist Party of Israel (Rakah) for several years. Since leaving the party after the upheavals of 1989, he and other Arab intellectuals periodically considered establishing a new Arab political party with a progressive-nationalist orientation. After much debate and several false starts, al-Tajammu‘ (Democratic National Assembly) was established in March 1996, shortly before Israeli elections. Al-Tajammu‘ includes former members and supporters of the Communist Party, the Covenant of Equality (an Arab-Jewish movement founded in 1991), the Progressive Movement (including Muhammad Mi‘ari, former MK of the Progressive List for Peace), Abna’ al-Balad (Sons of the Village) and others.
Palestinian Rights in Post-Oslo Israel
Below are the proceedings of a roundtable discussion held in Nazareth, Israel, on June 24, 1996. The participants were: Aida Toma-Suliman, general director of Women Against Violence, Hala Espanioli Hazzan, chairperson of the Follow-up Committee on Arab Education in Israel, Hassan Jabareen, director of litigation for Adalah — The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, Mohammed Zeidan, coordinator of the Arab Association for Human Rights, Samar Zaidani, administrative director of the Galilee Society — the Arab National Society for Health Research Services, and Yousef Jabareen, former director of strategic planning for the Nazareth Municipality.
Homecoming
I was afraid. Why should I be? But once I stood in front of the young women in the white and blue-striped shirt I was reduced to shivering with a tongue as dry as the Negev. She asked me insistently, “Why are you here?” I had earlier thought of two or three convincing answers, but suddenly I could not decide on any of them and I stood there looking at her with empty eyes, trying to control my sweating hand.
Wedding in Galilee
Wedding in Galilee (Michel Khleifi, 1987).
From Land Day to Equality Day
On June 24, 1987, the Palestinian Arab community of Israel conducted a successful countrywide general strike. The “Equality Day” strike was called by the National Committee of Arab Local Council Heads (NCALCH) to demand an end to all forms of racial discrimination against the nearly 700,000 Palestinian Arab citizens who constitute 17 percent of the population within Israel’s pre-1967 borders. As a result of its leadership of the strike, the NCALCH has emerged with enhanced authority as the representative of the entire Palestinian Arab community of Israel.
Benvenisti, Israeli Censorship of Arab Publications
Meron Benvenisti, Israeli Censorship of Arab Publications: A Survey (New York: Fund for Free Expression, 1984).
Scholch, Palestinians Over the Green Line
Alexander Schölch, ed., Palestinians Over the Green Line (London: Ithaca Press, 1983).
Hanna K. and Farah H.
Michel Khleifi, The Fertile Memory (Marisa Films, 1980).
Costa-Gavras, Hanna K. (Universal Studios, 1983).
I didn’t make this film to judge, but to transmit the diversity of attitudes. And also, because I can’t forget that as children my brothers and I had to steal fruits and vegetables in order to live in our own land.
The filmmaker is Michel Khleifi, a Palestinian from Nazareth who now lives in Belgium, and his film is The Fertile Memory, a collage of experiences that begins, in fact, with the image of a bowl of fruit on the table.
Lustick, Arabs in the Jewish State
Ian Lustick, Arabs in the Jewish State: Israel’s Control of a National Minority (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980).
“All This Time We Were Alone”
Saleh Baransi was born in 1929, finished elementary school in his village of Tayba, and went to Jerusalem in 1944 to continue his secondary studies. In 1952, he was appointed a teacher in a secondary school in Tayba. In 1957 he was one of the founders of the Popular Front, which was established in Israel to defend the human and civil rights of Arabs in Israel. In 1958 this Popular Front split, and some participants established a new national movement called al-Ard. In 1960 Saleh was dismissed from his job as a teacher, and from 1960 to 1969 was put under house arrest. During this period he was also put under administrative detention several times and exiled from his home to other places inside Israel.
