Palestinian Arabs of Israel—Marginalized, Barely Coexisting as Self-Defined ‘Second-Class’ Citizens
Palestinian citizens of Israel are skeptical of their right to vote in the upcoming elections. They feel they are participating as pawns in a longtime political deadlock. Their citizenry in Israel is now threatened by a Supreme Court ruling on revoking a person’s citizenship. Here, we review these stories and also a salient view of the so-called equality of citizenship by Palestinian activist, Diana Buttu.
By John Mason / Arab America Contributing Writer
Palestinian Israeli Vote in Upcoming Election seen as ‘Window-dressing’
Palestinian citizens of Israel, as they prefer to be called, are skeptical of their right to vote in the upcoming elections. In supporting an Arab-Islamic governing coalition, they are participating in a longtime political deadlock. The coalition aims to keep former leader Benjamin Netanyahu out of office. If its only goal is to block him from a comeback, that’s a zero-sum game. No matter who becomes Prime Minister, it seems, Palestinian citizens get little out of their vote.
As the Washington Post recently surmised, the coming election “is a rare moment in the electoral spotlight for Israel’s Palestinian citizens. Many, however, are frustrated at being viewed just in the context of Netanyahu’s political fortunes while their grievances, including discrimination against them, remain unaddressed.” Since Islamist Mansour Raam’s party became part of the coalition, Palestinians have seen little success. Money for their long-ignored communities comes only begrudgingly.
Most Palestinian citizens feel they are worse off compared to last year. So much for political payoffs. Whether it’s Netanyahu or another Arab-hating leader, the leadership does not make much of a difference. If their communities get anything out of their vote, it doesn’t add up to much more than roads and infrastructure. Benefits such as schools and health improvement allude to them.
Even more damning is a new law that prevents Israelis from conveying their citizenship to a Palestinian spouse from the occupied territories. As a result of this and other humiliation, Palestinian citizens have launched lively protests on the streets of their communities. Per the Post, “For some Palestinian citizens of Israel, the protests were a kind of political awakening.”
Palestinian citizens of Israel comprise around two million of the country’s ten million people. That is about 20% of the total. Most of those citizens are descended from families that did not leave during the creation of Israel in 1948. Many of their fellow Palestinians either fled or were expelled during that critical moment. Those who stayed received Israeli citizenship, but otherwise suffer from significant discrimination. One Palestinian citizen from a community near Tel Aviv summarized her feelings for the Post. She said, voting or joining the government “will not change anything; they ask us to vote and then are racist to us.”
New Israel Supreme Court twist on Citizenship: Threat to withdraw it for ‘Breach of Loyalty’
A recent ruling by Israel’s Supreme Court amended the 2008 Citizenship Law. It stated, according to TRT News, “the state can revoke the citizenship of people who carry out actions that constitute a breach of trust against the state, including terrorism, espionage or treason.” Such a law might leave someone stateless, thus challenging international law. However, the Justices believed that this “does not render the entire practice as unconstitutional.”
The ruling followed appeals of cases involving two Palestinian citizens of Israel. They were convicted of attacks that killed Israeli citizens. Long sentences were doled out and the State aimed to strip them of their citizenship. TRT reported, “The Supreme Court denied the removal of citizenship in these two cases based on serious procedural flaws, but ruled that the practice itself was constitutional, even if a person became stateless as a result.”
Palestinian civil society reps responded to the ruling quickly and assertively. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel and Adalah, a Palestinian rights group, labeled the law discriminatory, saying it “will likely be used exclusively against Palestinian citizens of Israel.” Furthermore, it averred, “There are many cases of Jews in Israel who took part in terror, and not even once has the interior ministry thought to appeal to revoke their citizenship.”
The Myth of Coexistence in Israel—Sober view of the ‘Real Politic’ of Equality
A respected lawyer, activist, and Palestinian citizen of Israel has offered a salient view of the so-called equality of citizenship. Diana Buttu, the former adviser to the negotiating team of the Palestine Liberation Organization, wrote her opinion for The New York Times.
She writes, “The fault lines in Israeli society have never been clearer and Jerusalem remains the tinder box that could ignite another catastrophic fire unless the underlying causes — Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories and its highly discriminatory policies — are dealt with.” She criticizes the pass given to Jewish youth in the streets of Haifa, where both Palestinians and Israelis live. There they marched, carrying flags and tire irons, shouting, “The people of Israel live—Death to the Arabs.” She notes that if this is coexistence, “Then how could these cities suddenly be transformed into sites of mob violence?”
Buttu wonders whether the Palestinian citizens of Israel and the Jewish majority have ever coexisted. She claims, “We Palestinians living in Israel ‘sub-exist,’ living under a system of discrimination and racism with laws that enshrine our second-class status and with policies that ensure we never equal.” Not by accident, Buttu claims, but by design.
She raises the larger question of the origin of the Israeli state itself. The Palestinian citizens who make up one-fifth of Israel’s population are those who survived the ‘nakba.’ That, Buttu defines as “the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948, when more than 75 percent of the Palestinian population was expelled from their homes to make way for Jewish immigrants during the founding of Israel.”
From 1948 to 1966, Buttu’s family and other Palestinians in Israel lived under military rule. She describes this as much like the life of Palestinians living under the military occupation of the West Bank. Their land was taken and they had to get permits to travel from one place to the next. Israel routinely denies or dismisses the nakba, eliminating its discussion in school history books. As Buttu avers, “It is as though we are interlopers in our homeland.”
Buttu writes about the end of military rule in 1966. Then, Israel began to propagate “the myth that Palestinian citizens of Israel were now full citizens, noting that we can vote for members of the Knesset and that we have representatives there too.” However, since then, she notes, Israel has enacted more than 60 laws entrenching Palestinians’ second-class status. One especially egregious law allows Jewish Israelis in some towns to deny Palestinians the right to live alongside them—”because we are not ‘socially suitable.’”
Buttu’s opinion is poignant and detailed. For the sake of brevity, we end by quoting one of her more poignant statements—almost too sad to quote. Still, here it is:
“To be a Palestinian in Israel is to wait for the day when Israel will decide to forever rid itself of you.”
In the meantime, paraphrasing Buttu, the reality is that Palestinians are surrounded by people who consider them as second-class citizens.
Sources:
“Marginalized Palestinian Israelis debate point of voting,” Washington Post, 8/26/2022
“Israel Supreme Court: Citizenship can be revoked for breach of loyalty,” TRT News, 7/22/2022 (TRT is a Turkish public broadcaster and international news channel)
“The Myth of Coexistence in Israel,” Opinion, Diana Buttu, The New York Times, 5/25/2021
John Mason, PhD., who focuses on Arab culture, society, and history, is the author of LEFT-HANDED IN AN ISLAMIC WORLD: An Anthropologist’s Journey into the Middle East, New Academia Publishing, 2017. He has taught at the University of Libya, Benghazi, Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, and the American University in Cairo; John served with the United Nations in Tripoli, Libya, and consulted extensively on socioeconomic and political development for USAID and the World Bank in 65 countries.
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