http://www3.haaretz.co.il/eng/scripts/article.asp?id=45779&mador=4
Ha'aretz, May 5, 1999
Discrimination and denial
By Amira Hass
There are no Palestinians except for Yasser
Arafat, Sheikh Yassin and, sometimes, Faisal
Husseini. There are no dates beyond May 4.This is
the sum and substance of public debate in
Hebrew-speaking Israel on the eve of elections.
When no news items force themselves into the
Israeli public's consciousness, these are the
standard limits within which Jewish Israelis view
the Palestinian question. These limits are so
narrow that they can best be described as
"denial."
About 3.5 million Arabs live today west of the
Jordan in what was once British Mandate
Palestine. This is their homeland; and it's the
homeland of another 3 million Palestinian
refugees who live in neighboring countries and
elsewhere in the world.
Blood-soaked historical circumstances, from World
War II to the War of Independence and the
Palestinian "nakba," have made the Jews the
majority population but have not erased
Palestinian ties to this land. Consistent Jewish
Israeli policies, crossing party lines, aim at
maintaining this demographic edge and, if
possible, increasing it.
According to this policy's clear but undeclared
parameters, the Palestinian population consists
of three subgroups, identifiable by the varying
discriminatory regimes imposed upon them.
The three subgroups are: Arab Israeli citizens,
Palestinians who are "permanent residents" of
Jerusalem, and Palestinians living in
self-administered enclaves (which both One Israel
and Meretz strangely term a "state"). The present
context does not allow a detailed description of
the categories or their history; suffice it to
say that the basis of their classification has
always been land.
The principal common denominator in
discrimination against the three groups is
ownership rights to, access to and use of land
resources. In Nazareth and Jaffa, Hebron and Khan
Yunis, Jabal Mukkaber and Anata, and other Arab
communities, a policy of evicting Arabs and
confiscating private Arab land in favor of Jews,
forbidding use of public lands and employing
discriminatory practices in infrastructure
development has created a uniform landscape of
overcrowding and suffocation and has accelerated
the conversion of agricultural land into
construction sites.
Together with restrictive economic legislation,
this policy has produced a vast reservoir of
cheap labor discriminated against in job
opportunities, pay and working conditions. Yet
Israeli Jews have the right and opportunity to
live and work wherever they want in this land -
on either side of the Green Line.
Various laws and regulations make it easy to
cancel the residency rights of Palestinians,
revoke their citizenship, and deny citizenship
and residence to their spouses. East Jerusalem's
annexation forced that area's Palestinian
inhabitants to become "permanent residents"
deprived of basic rights. In 1995, prior to the
interim agreement's implementation on the West
Bank, the government authorized the Interior
Ministry to revoke this imposed status (which,
from the start, ignored these native
Jerusalemites' natural rights) if the individual
in question worked overseas or had been forced to
seek housing outside Jerusalem's boundaries.
Until the Palestinian Authority's establishment,
various military regulations caused tens of
thousands of Palestinians to forfeit their
residency status on the West Bank and in Gaza.
Israel continues to prevent them and their
families from returning to their homes. In
contrast, Jews can come here from anywhere in the
world, be granted citizenship immediately and
live anywhere they wish on either side of the
Green Line.
Over the past eight years, Israel has
consolidated and, with ever-increasing rigor,
enforced a policy of denying freedom of movement
to 2.5 million Palestinians on the West Bank and
in Gaza. Limits have been imposed on their
private lives, family relations, and economic,
cultural and religious activities as well as on
the effective functioning of the PA's
institutions and of non-governmental Palestinian
agencies. Palestinian individuals and
institutions are completely dependent on movement
permits issued by the Israeli military
authorities. Only 100,000 Palestinians possess
these permits. In contrast, Israeli Jews have
unrestricted freedom of movement on either side
of the Green Line, except for administrative
entry limitations on PA-controlled areas in Gaza.
The morality and survival of any regime of
structured discrimination is a gamble in the long
run. But does that point interest anyone driven
by short-term considerations
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