The Arabs In Israel
By Sol Stern
.The New York Times Archives
July 25, 1976, Page 165
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On March 30 of this year, savage rioting erupted in several Arab towns in the Galilee region of Israel. Thousands of Arab teen‐agers blockaded roads and stoned military vehicles. Israeli soldiers responded with firearms. When it was all over seven Israeli Arabs were dead, with scores on both sides injured. It was the worst outbreak of communal violence in Israel's history. Coming on the heels of similar demonstrations by Palestinian Arabs on the occupied West Bank it created shock waves throughout an already beleaguered country. Having previously convinced themselves that “their Arabs” had been reconciled to the Jewish state, many Israelis were now wondering whether there was a new Palestinian nationalist time bomb within their own borders.
The most immediate cause of the Galilee incidents was a decision by the Israeli Government to expropriate some privately owned Arab land for a Jewish development project. But the grievances of the Arab minority of 500,000 (almost 15 percent of Israel's total population) go much deeper and make for a serious and much neglected aspect of the Israeli‐Arab conflict. This book by an Israeli Arab presents a full bill of particulars. (It was first published in Israel and heavily censored by the Israeli military, the author says. The present version has been completely rewritten and updated and includes the censored material.)
Born in a small village in the north of Israel, Sabri Jiryls graduated from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and practiced law in Israel. In the early 1960's he helped organize the El Ard group—the first openly Arab nationalist political party in Israel. Before the group could run candidates in the elections, however, it was banned by the Israeli Government. Jiryis was put under house arrest and eventually he left the country voluntarily. Today he is an official of the Palestine Liberation Organization, reportedly one of the “moderates” urging a compromise two‐state solution.
In a sense the title of the book is misleading; it is not so much about the Arab community in Israel as it is a lawyer's brief for the prosecution, with the Israeli Government in the dock. It is a coolly argued case, relying primarily on official Israeli sources, Knesset debates and court records. As with any lawyer's case, there also is a good Baal of willful omission here. Jiryis characterizes Zionist policy toward the Arabs in the pre‐independence an0 post‐independence periods as one of force against a helpless community. He never mentions Arab attacks against Jews or the instances of Arab terrorism. Still, Jiryis's ideology and prejudices aside, there is disturbingly ample documentation here to sustain the charge that the Israeli Government has treated its Arab minority in a sometimes brutal, often cavalier fashion.
The most devastating part of the book is its description of the system of military government imposed upon Israel's Arab citizens for almost 20 years after the creation of the state. The underlying assumption of that system was that every Arab was a security risk whose movements and activities had to be constantly monitored and controlled. Arabs could not travel within the country without special passes from the military governor. They could be summarily exiled from their home villages and restricted to special zones, all at the discretion of local military governors and without recourse to the courts. In some cases entire villages were forcibly emptied and their lands then turned over to nearby Jewish settlements for cultivation.
All this was done in the name of military security. Eventually the arrangement bred an unresponsive bureaucratic apparatus totally unrelated to any military concerns, and which interfered in all aspects of the communal life of the Arabs. The military governors cultivated and promoted their own favorite Arab leaders, preferring those who would foster the interests of the ruling Labor Party. The system had become such a scandal by the early 1960's that all the opposition parties, including those of the right, were demanding its repeal and charging that it was being prolonged by the Government simply to promote its own political fortunes in the Arab sector. The military government was finally lifted in 1966 but the memory still rankles; its aftereffects still poison relations between Jews and Arabs.
Unquestionably the condition of the Arabs has materially improved in re cent years—a fact even Sabri Jiryis would concede. But the protests of minorities often become most militant when things start to get better. More and more Arabs go to the university, more villages get electricity and capital improvements. But there is every indication that the Arabs of Israel still feel that they are last on line. Painful as it is for a supporter of Israel to admit, there is much truth to Jiryis's contention that Israeli officials “are dedicated to the interests of the Jewish citizens above all others and that at best the Arab is only a second‐class citizen.”
The question is what course the Israeli Arabs will choose in their inevitable struggle against that status. Will they follow Sabri Jiryis toward alignment with the P.L.O. and a separatist Palestinian nationalism? Or will they insist on their civil rights and full integration within Israeli society? Jiryis simply assumes that a resurgent Palestinian nationalism is the inevitable consequence of the Israeli Arabs' condition. But it is an assumption made with hardly any discussion. Indeed Jiryis is so busy documenting Israeli Government policies that he hardly deals with the different currents of opinion within the community he claims to speak for. Even after the bloody events in the Galilee, most articulate Israeli Arabs were still asking to be accepted as Israelis. That extraordinary fact provides the Israeli Government with a last opportunity and a portentous challenge. ■
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The Arabs in Israel, 1948-1966
Author: Sabri Jiryis
Publisher: Institute for Palestine Studies
Publication Year: 1968
Language: English
Number of Pages: 180
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Abstract
A classic account of the situation of Arabs in Israel in the 18 years following its creation.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sabri Jiryis, born in 1938 in the Christian Arab town of Fassuta, is an Arab Israeli writer and lawyer, a graduate of the Hebrew University law faculty, and prominent Palestinian activist. In 1966 the first edition of his book The Arabs in Israel was published in Hebrew.
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