Today is Land Day, a date that is observed by Palestinian citizens of Israel (and Palestinians everywhere) to commemorate a notable confrontation on March 30, 1976, in which Palestinian Israelis first came together on a nationwide basis to try to preserve their already deeply eroded rights to their own land.
In that confrontation, Palestinian-Israeli organizers coordinated the holding of a nationwide nonviolent strike to protest the government’s issuing of yet another official order for the expropriation of land from Palestinian communities inside Israel. The (Labour) government tried to break the strike by sending the military– not just regular police units– into Arab towns and villages and forcing their residents to break the strike. In the fighting that ensued six unarmed demonstrators were shot dead and many more were were wounded.
Jonathan Cook has a great account of that day’s events in The National today. You can read it here.
Indigenous Palestinians currently make up around 1.2 million (20 percent) of Israel’s citizenry, and their political heft within the Palestinian national movement has been growing in recent years.
1976 was really the first time Palestinian Israelis had come together to fight for a cause of core national importance. The next major confrontation between them and the Israeli authorities came in October 2000, when the security forces intervened with excessive violence against demonstrations organized by Palestinian Israelis in northern Israel in protest at the IDF’s actions against Palestinians in the very-near-by occupied West Bank. Twelve Palestinian Israelis and one West Bank Palestinian were killed by the security forces there, giving rise to the government’s appointment of the “Or Commission” to investigate the causes of the whole affair.
The Or Commission confirmed what every Palestinian Israeli knew: that the security forces’ violence had been excessive and the longstanding grievances of their community as one systematically discriminated against in many areas of public life were real.
(You can find more English-language documentation about the systematic discrimination Israel practices against its Palestinian citizens on this portal at the HRW website, or through the website of the Israeli organization Adalah.)
13 thoughts on “Land Day: A key date for Palestinian Israelis”
Comments are closed.
You leave out that, in 1976, the military was sent in because there were riots.
Just a question. For many years we have been reading about the demographic time bomb of much higher Palestinian birth rates than Jewish, both inside Israel as well as in occupied territories. Yet for many, many years the Israeli-Arab population is listed as 20 percent. It never seems to increase. Is the Jewish immigration to Israel what is keeping the percentages the same or is the internal demographic issue just an urban legend? I am honestly confused.
N., thanks for clarifying that. There were riots, so you send the military in using lethal force. That explains everything. (Not.)
When it happened again in 2000, the Or Commission was extremely critical of the decision to use deadly force against unarmed demonstrators.
Jack, until recently, it has been the successive waves of Jewish immigration that the ‘balance’ roughly in the same place for many years. Now, though, there aren’t any more sizeable bunches of Jewish people anyplace outside Israel who might conceivably be persuaded/inveigled to migrate there. So the existing demographics will become more important.
Of course, the many highly Orthodox Jeiwsh Israelis have very large families, too.
Helena,
I recall that you supported Chas Freeman who believes that even peaceful demonstrators – e.g. the Bonus Army – should be broken up with harsh military force, even if it means that people get killed (which, of course, is what occurred). In that it evidently did not bother you to defend a man who actually advocates the use of harsh force against peaceful demonstrators, why does it bother you when force is used against, not peaceful but, rather, violent rioters?
In any event, in the US, when people riot, the normal response, if the police cannot restore order, is to bring in the national guard to restore order with force. And, in such circumstances, people nearly always get killed. That, unfortunately, is what happens when people riot.
So, I think your comment is off base.
N., thanks for clarifying that. There were riots, so you send the military in using lethal force. That explains everything. (Not.)
I think that this is an option – although not one which is optimal. Certainly, during the riots – beginning with the Watts Riots in 1965, where the National Guard was called in and, and then the Detroit and Washington D.C. riots where Federal troops were called in to protect lives an property may be justified. More recently, the Marines were called in when the LAPD and National Guard were unable to handle rioters in the 1992 Los Angeles riots.
Just for the record: One Jewish Israeli was also killed during the 2000 disturbances.
I know that this is a bit off topic, but since I’ve already asked you twice without a response, and this does concern population, perhaps you could provide an answer here?
Yes, as I’ve noted elsewhere that in and after the fighting of 1948, the Jordanian army expelled around 2,000 Jews from east Jerusalem. But the Haganah and Israeli army expelled around 60,000 Palestinians from west Jerusalem in that war (source: Mick Dumper’s Politics of Jerusalem, published by Columbia UP in 1997.) All those expulsions were equally hurtful for those thereby cleansed. But since 1967, Israel has moved nearly 200,000 Jewish settlers into East Jerusalem, including into the locations from which Jews had been expelled in 1948. Not a single one of the 58,000 Palestinians expelled from west Jerusalem has been allowed to return.
This is an interesting figure, because according to records I have seen, on the eve of the war in 1947, the entire population of Jerusalem (both East and West) was 165,000, of which fully two-thirds was Jewish. That would mean that according to you and Dumper (an appropriate name?) every single Arab from both sides of Jerusalem (including an extra 3,000 -5,000) was “expelled”.
JES, it’s OT and I really ask you not to use screechy bold… but my quick response would be that we’d need to look at the precise area from which this ‘cleansing’ was reported– maybe broader than simply municipal Jerusalem?
What’s true and evident is that West Jerusalem now has no Arab residents, though there are many beautiful old homes there well documented as being Arab-built and Arab-owned; I have met numerous Palestinians, especially in East Jerusalem, who have well documented histories of having been expelled in 1948; and not one of those expelled has been allowed back to their family property, or to exercise any other ownership rights over it– despite the fact that many of them live in what is described by Israel as a ‘unified’ city.
Actually, inasmuch as West Jerusalem is part of 1948 Israel this is not totally OT.
Well, Helena, why don’t you have a look for yourself at the precise data and get back to me. I think that, given the discrepancy in the numbers (i.e. that you, or Dumper, have included pretty much the entire Arab population of Jerusalem and thensome) that this is more than just an error in defining the municipal boundaries.
The fact that there are “beautiful old homes” there that were Arab built and owned is interesting. Talbiyeh, for example, was a mixed Arab-Jewish neighborhood – in fact the mukthar at the time of partition was Jewish. Rehavia – the neighboring neighborhood – was all Jewish.
BTW, today, by “Arab houses”, most Israelis simply mean a multi-story stone house. So, for example, most of the houses in Emeq Refaim built by the Templars in the late 19th century are not “Arab houses” either architecturally or based on who built and originally lived in them – they are actually German farmhouses.
As you can imagine, I have met numerous Jewish Israelis who lost all their property in Iraq, Egypt, Syria and North Africa and have not been allowed to exercise any ownership rights.
Helena, you might also find these experiences of interest:
http://lists.mcgill.ca/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind0002d&L=fofognet&P=578
Here’s another link to the accounts:
http://www.groupsrv.com/religion/about134292.html
JES, You’re right there are many Jews from Arab lands in Israel who lost their original properties– there are also many who didn’t, but who were able to sell them before leaving.
There were also plenty of Jews from those lands who didn’t want to go to Israel at all but who ended up elsewhere or, as in the case of many of them– especially in Morocco–who stayed right where they were.
Those Arab Jews who have property claims can (and do) of course address them to the relevant authorities– who are NOT the Palestinians. Indeed, inasmuch as some Zionist underground organizations worked assiduously to provoke (and aid) these Jews’ migration to Israel, including by stoking anti-Jewish tensions in those countries (Lavie Affair anyone?), then those Zionist organizations would also bear some responsibility for any material losses involved. But I’m puzzled why you think it has any relevance in this discussion of the dispossession of the Palestinians, as such, which is a matter between the dispossessed Palestinians and the government of Israel which took over their properties, in the first instance as a “Custodian”.
You’re absolutely right Helena. I picked up the scent of your red herring that you dragged across the road when I confronted you with an obviously bogus population statistic. Please get back to me when you check your figures.
Helena,
The displacement of Jews from the Arab regions was at least as real as the displacement of Arabs from Israel.
The stoking of interest in Israel was a limited matter – which is to say, you are exaggerating its importance in what happened to the Arab regions’ Jews. The pogroms and anti-Jewish laws in Arab countries in connection with hatred of Zionism and Israel occurred mostly spontaneously, making life untenable for Jews in Arab countries. I might add: the efforts to drive Jews out of Egypt were not solely the response to Lavon Affair (not Lavie) – since Jews were pushed out as a result of persecution before and after that time as well. Moreover, Egypt also drove its Orthodox Christian (i.e. Greek) population – several hundred thousand people – out of the country at around the same time. That suggests that the real issue for Arabs was the desire to develop an identity that excludes exotic “foreign” influences (e.g. Jews, among other people).
Note that roughly 856,000 Jews were displaced, for a variety of reasons but mostly due to intense hatred and persecution directed by Arabs at Jews. You say that the losses due to such events matter should be directed at Arab countries. But, in fact, peace with Palestinian Arabs appears to involve peace with the region, not just with such people. Perhaps you recall the Saudi peace plan? So, the issue is not so simple. There is a real connection, one you merely prefer to ignore.
The issues involved are, in fact, between Jews and Arabs in general, not merely between Jews and Palestine’s Arabs.