"Death To The Arabs!"

Last Sunday was the 32nd anniversary of the first "Day of the Land"- one of the defining events in the history of Israel.

I remember the day well. I was at Ben Gurion airport, on the way to a secretmeeting in London with Said Hamami, Yasser Arafat's emissary, when someone toldme: "They have killed a lot of Arab protestors!"

That was not entirely unexpected. A few days before, we - members of the newlyformed Israeli Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace - had handed the PrimeMinister, Yitzhak Rabin, an urgent memorandum warning him that the government'sintention of expropriating huge chunks of land from Arab villages would cause anexplosion. We included a proposal for an alternative solution, worked out byLova Eliav, a veteran expert on settlements.

When I returned from abroad, the poet Yevi suggested that we make a symbolicgesture of sorrow and regret for the killings. Three of us - Yevi himself, thepainter Dan Kedar and I - laid wreaths on the graves of the victims. Thisaroused a wave of hatred against us. I felt that something profoundlysignificant had happened, that the relationship between Jews and Arabs withinthe state had changed fundamentally.

And indeed, the impact of the Day of the Land - as the event was called - wasstronger than even the Kafr Kassem massacre of 1956 or the October Eventskillings 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 inthe state. Not only had about 750 thousand Arabs been uprooted from theterritory that had become the State of Israel, but those who remained wereleaderless. The political, intellectual and economic elites had vanished, mostof them right at the beginning of the war. The vacuum was somehow filled by theCommunist Party, whose leaders had been allowed to return from abroad - mainlyin order to please Stalin, who at the time supported Israel.

After an internal debate, the leaders of the new state decided to accord theArabs in the "Jewish State" citizenship and the right to vote. Thatwas not self-evident. But the government wanted to appear before the world as ademocratic state. In my opinion, the main reason was party political: David Ben-Gurionbelieved that he could coerce the Arabs to vote for his own party.

And indeed: the great majority of the Arab citizens voted for the Labor Party(then called Mapai) and its two Arab satellite parties which had been set up forthat 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). EveryArab Hamulah (extended family) was told exactly how to vote, either for Mapai orone of the two subsidiaries. Since every election list has two different ballotpapers, one in Hebrew and one in Arabic, there were six possibilities forfaithful Arabs in every polling station, and it was easy for the Shin Bet tomake sure that each Hamula voted exactly as instructed. More than once did BenGurion achieve a majority in the Knesset only with the help of these captivevotes.

For the sake of "security" (in both senses) the Arabs were subjectedto a "military government". Every detail of their lives depended onit. They needed a permit to leave their village and go to town or the nextvillage. Without the permission of the military government they could not buy atractor, send a daughter to the teachers' college, get a job for a son, obtainan import license. Under the authority of the military government and a wholeseries of laws, huge chunks of land were expropriated for Jewish towns andkibbutzim.

A story engraved in my memory: my late friend, the poet Rashed Hussein fromMusmus village, was summoned to the military governor in Netanya, who told him:Independence Day is approaching and I want you to write a nice poem for theoccasion. Rashed, a proud youngster, refused. When he came home, he found hiswhole family sitting on the floor and weeping. At first he thought that somebodyhad died, but then his mother cried out: "You have destroyed us! We arefinished!" So the poem was written.

Every independent Arab political initiative was choked at birth. The first suchgroup - the nationalist al-Ard ("the land") group - was rigorouslysuppressed. It was outlawed, its leaders exiled, its paper proscribed - all withthe blessing of the Supreme Court. Only the Communist Party was left intact, butits leaders were also persecuted from time to time.

The military government was dismantled only in 1966, after Ben Gurion's exitfrom power and a short time after my election to the Knesset. Afterdemonstrating against it so many times, I had the pleasure of voting for itsabolition. But in practice very little changed - instead of the officialmilitary government an unofficial one remained, as did most of thediscrimination.

"THE DAY OF THE LAND" changed the situation. A second generation ofArabs had grown up in Israel, no longer timidly submissive, a generation thathad not experienced the mass expulsions and whose economic position hadimproved. The order given to the soldiers and policemen to open fire on themcaused a shock. Thus a new chapter started.

The percentage of Arab citizens in the state has not changed: from the firstdays of the state to now, it had hovered around 20%. The much higher naturalrate of increase of the Muslim community was balanced by Jewish immigration. Butthe numbers have grown significantly: from 200 thousand at the beginning of thestate to almost 1.3 million - twice the size of the Jewish community thatfounded the state.

The Day of the Land also dramatically changed the attitude of the Arab world andthe Palestinian people towards the Arabs in Israel. Until then, they wereconsidered traitors, collaborators of the "Zionist entity". I remembera scene from the 1965 meeting convened in Firenze by the legendary mayor,Giorgio la Pira, who tried to bring together personalities from Israel and theArab world. At the time, that was considered a very bold undertaking.

During one of the intermissions, I was chatting with a senior Egyptian diplomatin a sunny piazza outside the conference site, when two young Arabs from Israel,who had heard about the conference, approached us. After embracing, I introducedthem to the Egyptian, but he turned his back and exclaimed: "I am ready totalk with you, but not with these traitors!"

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 callthem "the 1948 Arabs".

In October 2000, policemen again shot and killed Arab citizens, when they triedto express their solidarity with Arabs killed at the Haram al-Sharif (TempleMount) in Jerusalem. But in the meantime, a third generation of Arabs had grownup in Israel, many of whom, in spite of all the obstacles, had attendeduniversities and become business people, politicians, professors, lawyers andphysicians. It is impossible to ignore this community - even if the state triesvery hard to do just that.

From time to time, complaints about discrimination are voiced, but everybodyshrinks back from the fundamental question: What is the status of the Arabminority growing up in a state that defines itself officially as "Jewishand 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". TheArab 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 ofIsrael, who lately tend to call themselves "Palestinians in Israel",are only one part of the stricken Palestinian people, which consists of manybranches: the inhabitants of the occupied territories (now themselves splitbetween the West Bank and the Gaza Strip), the Arabs in East Jerusalem(officially "residents" but not "citizens" of Israel), andthe refugees living in many different countries, each with its own particularregime. All these branches have a strong feeling of belonging together, but theconsciousness of each is shaped by its own particular situation.

How strong is the Palestinian component in the consciousness of the Arabcitizens of Israel? How can it be measured? Palestinians in the occupiedterritories often complain that it expresses itself mainly in words, not deeds.The support given by the Arab citizens in Israel to the Palestinian struggle forliberation is mainly symbolic. Here and there a citizen is arrested for helpinga suicide bomber, but these are rare exceptions.

When the extreme Arab-hater Avigdor Liberman proposed that a string of Arabvillages in Israel adjoining the Green Line (called "the Triangle") beturned over to the future Palestinian state in return for the Jewish settlementblocs in the West Bank, not a single Arab voice was raised in support. That is avery significant fact.

The Arab community is much more rooted in Israel than appears at first sight.The Arabs play an important part in the Israeli economy, they work in the state,pay taxes to the state. They enjoy the benefits of social security - by right,since they pay for it. Their standard of living is much higher than that oftheir Palestinian brethren in the occupied territories and beyond. Theyparticipate in Israeli democracy and have no desire at all to live under regimeslike those of Egypt and Jordan. They have serious and justified complaints - butthey live in Israel und will continue to do so.

IN RECENT YEARS, intellectuals of the third Arab generation in Israel havepublished several proposals for the normalization of the relations between themajority and the minority.

There exist, in principle, two main alternatives:

The first way says: Israel is a Jewish state, but a second people also livehere. If Jewish Israelis have defined national rights, Arab Israelis must alsohave defined national rights. For example, educational, cultural and religiousautonomy (as the young Vladimir Zeev Jabotinsky demanded a hundred years ago forthe Jews in Czarist Russia). They must be allowed to have free and openconnections with the Arab world and the Palestinian people, like the connectionsJewish citizens have with the Jewish Diaspora. All this must be spelled out inthe future constitution of the state.

The second way says: Israel belongs to all its citizens, and only to them. Everycitizen is an Israeli, much as every US citizen is an American. As far as thestate is concerned, there is no difference between one citizen and another,whether Jewish, Muslim or Christian, Arab or Russian, much as, from the point ofview of the American state, there is no difference between white, brown or blackcitizens, whether of European, African or Asian descent, Protestant, Catholic,Jewish or Muslim. In Israeli parlance, this is called "a state of all itscitizens".

It goes without saying that I favor the second alternative, but I am ready toaccept the first. Either of them is preferable to the existing situation, wherethe state pretends that there is no problem except some traces of discriminationthat have to be overcome (without doing anything about it).

If the courage is lacking to treat a wound, it will fester. At football matches,the riffraff shout: "Death-to-the-Arabs!" and in the Knesset far rightdeputies threaten to expel Arab members from the House, and from the statealtogether.

On the 32nd anniversary of the Day of the Land, with the 60th Independence Dayapproaching, it is time to take this bull by the horns.