Report: Israeli Palestinians
and the Middle East Peace Process

by Don Peretz and Maya Peretz

Abstract
This report covers the period from July 20 to September 13 1998, when Don and Maya Peretz with their interpreter-guide, the Nazareth journalist and writer Atallah Mansour, worked in Israel as AFSC consultants. The interviews they conducted focused on the current status and situation of Israeli Arab citizens, mostly in Haifa, Akko, and the villages in western Galilee where Don served in 1949 as an AFSC representative with UNRPR, the UN relief organization that preceded UNRWA. The objective of the consultation was not only to reestablish contacts with Palestinians who were associated with the Quakers during and since 1949 but also to report on the perceptions of the Middle East peace process among these Israeli citizens and the expectations of its effects on their present and future lives. Our survey did not cover visits to the "Little Triangle," the Negev, Jaffa or Jerusalem, other regions in Israel where large numbers of Israeli Arab citizens live. It was limited to the north of the country, with the largest Palestinian population centers, the cities of Haifa, Nazareth, and Akko.

The Galilee region, not included in the original UN partition plan, was to constitute a part of the Arab state that never came into existence. Instead the region was conquered by Israel in the 1948 war and integrated within its borders. Since Israel was established, the majority of Galilee inhabitants have been Arab despite official policies to change the character of the area.
In the half century since AFSC began relief operations among refugees in northern Israel it has been transformed from an undeveloped Palestinian hinterland into a region of relatively modern Arab and Jewish cities, towns and villages. Fifty years ago cities like Haifa and Akko had large Arab populations and there were few Jewish settlements in western Galilee. Akko which in 1949 was mostly Arab and Haifa which was binational in character, although still considered "mixed," have become Jewish rather than Arab centers. Now there are nearly as many Jewish settlements in Galilee as Arab due to the Israeli government campaign to "Judaize" the region.
Formerly small Arab villages have turned into towns and towns into cities largely as a result of the increase in population from about 150,000 in 1948 to nearly one million today. Overwhelming construction, paved streets, electrification, municipal water and sewage facilities and paralyzing traffic jams caused by thousands of motor vehicles of all kinds give evidence of "modernization." Whereas fifty years ago horses, donkeys, mules, and even camels were widely used as work animals, today they are as rare as the automobile half a century ago when the Quaker jeep was often the only motor vehicle to be seen. New modern multi-lane highways and connecting roads have considerably shortened distances between population centers and greatly simplified travel. TV antennas, satellite dishes and video rental stores are prevalent as are "pelephones" ("wonder" or cellular phones) even in the hands of drivers.
Signs posted on shops and offices are in both Hebrew and Arabic and often also in Russian since the large Jewish immigration of the 1990s from the former Soviet Union. Hebrew is widely understood and many Palestinians speak it fluently while a rudimentary knowledge of English is not uncommon.
Both men and women dress predominantly, like their Jewish neighbors, European style rather than in traditional Arab garb; often young women can be seen in shorts or mini-skirts. The traditional Arab headdress, the keffiya, is occasionally spotted on older male villagers while some Muslim women in towns cover their heads with a scarf.( A recent development in East Jerusalem is the appearance of many very young women in Islamic dress covering their body from head to toe).
Today there are few towns or even villages without at least one physician whereas as in the 1940s a single doctor might serve three, four or five villages. Some towns have several physicians and the number of Palestinian professionals - doctors, lawyers, architects, accountants, etc. - has increased by thousands. University graduates, from Israeli, American and European institutions, are numerous, many more than in some of the surrounding Arab countries. Palestinians, including those who are citizens of Israel, are among the most highly educated group in the Arab world. The political knowledge and sophistication of Israeli Palestinians is further enhanced by wide availability of cinema, news broadcasts, political discussions and commentary on radio and TV from all over the world.
In addition to the predominant family-run shops, "7-11" type markets and gas stations are widely present; in larger urban centers like Nazareth there are also Western style super-markets. In many of the smaller stores young children are employed and one sees them along the highways selling fruit, flowers and baking goods and working in fields among adults. Fresh produce is widely available in street stalls; the traditional food culture has made its impact on the supermarket. An occasional Chinese restaurant was even spotted in Arab centers like Nazareth.
Yet even though in these fifty years various positive changes in their lives might have brought the Galilee Arabs and Jews closer together, this hardly seems to be the fact. While some Palestinians in Israel try to make best of their situation as minority citizens of the state and, due to their acquaintance with the Hebrew language and Jewish way of living, gained better understanding of the majority culture, the same is not true about most Jews. While a Palestinian from Galilee may identify himself as an Arab citizen of Israel, and some even complain that they are often called "Jews" by those under the occupation, to an average Jew a Palestinian is an Arab, and "Arab" frequently equates with "violence." Israeli Arabs are rarely portrayed in the media in their everyday lives; rather, they are usually mentioned when an act of violence occurs. There is hardly any differentiation between Palestinians who are citizens of the state, and those in the occupied territories. (Actually, the word "occupied" is used mostly by the left; the right refers to the West Bank as Judea and Samaria, and in usual parlance, they are called simply "territories"). During the Gulf war, broadcasts of Scud missile attacks were accompanied by pictures of Palestinians "dancing on the roofs;" articles about Arab family life are headlined when there is abuse or violence. Mothers in the Galilee complain that the Israeli TV produces no children's programs for Arab children.
At meetings of the "Copenhagen group" between representatives of Arab countries and Israeli Jews, Israeli journalists protested that Israeli-Egyptian peace remains "cold" mainly due to the lack of Arab media efforts to present Israel and its citizens' everyday life realistically. At a meeting in the Van Leer Institute, an Israeli recalled being apprehended for this situation by an Egyptian colleague: "See down there," the Arab reporter pointed to the street below their hotel window, "there are a million people who know nothing about you." This seems to be a mirror reflection of the situation in Israel in respect to its Arab citizens.
Despite modernization, the Arab and Jewish sectors of Israeli society have not experienced its effects in the same degree. In many respects including health, education and welfare services, Arab standards lag behind those of the Jewish community. Although infant mortality has significantly decreased among both Jewish and Arab Israelis in the last half century, the difference between the two communities remains two to one. There is still great disparity between government budget allowances for education, municipal and public services. Although one in five Israeli citizens is Palestinian, the latter constitute nearly half the country's prison population.
Land, housing and water allocation are among the most critical issues. Although the Arab population has increased six-fold since Israel was established the land available has diminished by two thirds or more as a result of government confiscation. Often villagers are employed on land they formerly owned that has been turned over to a neighboring Jewish settlement.

Turan - An experiment that failed

The name Turan comes from the Arabic for "the meeting place of shepherds" because herdsmen from the villages in the region used to gather there. The village is the site of Professor Henry Rosenfeld's classic anthropological study, "They Were Fellahin," which describes the "de-peasantization" of Israeli Arabs and their transition from farmers to an urban working class within the Jewish economy. The present situation in Turan where AFSC initiated an experimental agricultural program during the 1950s is typical.
At the time, Turan was still largely a farming village. At first the work of the several volunteers the Quakers recruited was backbreaking, involving removal of stones from the fields and construction of a road for agricultural machines before seed planting. Later, the volunteers were taught to use tractors, more advanced irrigation methods, fertilizers, pesticides, etc. to raise productivity. Although the Quakers brought tractors to replace horse or ox-drawn ploughs, and vegetables replaced traditional wheat and barley crops, the program was not a success.
Ajaj Adawi, Rosenfeld's principal informant, closely associated with the eight AFSC volunteers, describes the decline of agriculture in Turan. He attributes the failure of the Quakers' program as part of deterioration in agriculture throughout Israel's Arab villages. Turan like most other Arab villages lost a large part of its land which was taken over by the government. Inadequate water supply and competition with the far more advanced Jewish methods contributed to the decline.
Village politics also disrupted the Quaker program. The request for volunteers led to quarrelling among various families although AFSC representative Bill Minor judiciously sought to balance the team of volunteers by negotiating with family heads to obtain "balanced" representation from each hamula.
The theory behind the project was to develop cooperation among the villagers however the cooperative idea failed despite the fact that many villagers voted for the Israel Communist party. Some volunteers demanded money for their efforts or hoped to acquire prestige from the project. Eventually the Ministry of Agriculture ended the project because of the quarrels it provoked. Of the eight volunteers only a couple remained farmers. The others found employment as drivers, factory hands, or other non-farming jobs in neighboring Jewish towns.
Ajaj maintains that the villagers learned things from the project such as the need to clear stones from the fields and innovations such as how to use machinery. Today however land is so scarce that there is little if any room even for housing to accommodate the growing population. When a son marries, sometimes a home for the young couple is built illegally on the roof of the parents' house.
Of Ajaj's eight sons and one daughter, four sons must wait until they can find land for a new home. One of his sons is the village tax collector; two others and his daughter are university graduates, one with an MA from Haifa University written on the history of Turan. Why, Ajaj asks, do Jews who only yesterday came from Russia get immediate housing while he has no land to build for his family? Nearby on Mount Turan, he explains, there are several hundred acres registered in the name of the village; but when the local council requested the right to use some of the land for young couples, the government offered to exchange it for a much smaller area outside village jurisdiction.
Ajaj ascribes the decline of Turan's agricultural economy to the fact that it has become much cheaper to buy food produce from Jewish distributors than to grow it in the village. For example watermelons from the Jewish sector are eight times as abundant as those grown on a similar plot of un-irrigated Arab land. Ajaj himself has abandoned watermelons because of rising production costs and the difficulty of marketing. He now purchases his dairy products at the village store supplied by Tnuva, the Histadrut cooperative. When the Quakers first came to Turan during the 1950s he had 500 goats that produced milk, cheese, etc. As the cost of feeding them increased he sold most, then ten years ago sold the last of the animals because the cost of maintaining them became prohibitive. The same with eggs, bread, and other basic commodities. As a result villagers have turned from farming to work as plasterers, house painters, construction workers and factory hands.
Seventy six year old Ajaj has become disillusioned with the Israeli political system and stated that he always casts a blank ballot in national elections. But his youngest son claims that the family always voted for Rakkah, the largely Arab Communist party that attracts votes of the country's discontented minority. Ajaj states that the elections have "destroyed family solidarity" dividing members among the diverse political factions during balloting. The largest hamulas or family groups usually win in the local elections, he asserted.

A Palestinian Senior Statesman

Another "old" Quaker acquaintance who lived through the chaotic days following the 1947-49 war and the establishment of Israel is Sami Gerasi, considered by many a senior statesman in the Israeli Arab community. When he retired ten years ago Gerasi had one of the highest posts held by an Arab in the Israeli government - he was head of the probation department dealing with juvenile delinquents in the ministry of welfare's Nazareth or northern office. During his forty year career he was also appointed to several government commissions to investigate the status and problems of the Arab minority. These included a survey of the borders or land requirements of Arab villages, an investigation of crime among Palestinian youth, studies of social conditions in the Galilee community, land use by the minority, Arab education in Israel, and others. Since retirement Gerasi has chaired the International Christian Committee in Israel, one of the NGOs belonging to Ittijah, that seeks to promote the rights and further the interests of the Arab citizenry.
Beginning in the 1940s Gerasi's life was devoted to improving social standards and conditions of the Palestinians in Israel. Upon graduation from St. Lukes school in Nazareth he was awarded a scholarship by the British mandatory government to continue his education at the London School of Economics where he was tutored by the noted economist Harold Lasky. A number of Lasky's Arab students later became leaders in various Middle East countries. While at LSE Gerasi formed close friendships, not only with Lasky but with several other Jewish scholars, including Moshe Sharett (then Shertok) who was to become Israel's first foreign and later its second prime minister.
Gerasi returned to Palestine on the eve of the first Arab-Israeli war, in 1947. As the mandate was ending he was assigned to assist the senior probation officer for northern Palestine in the department of social welfare. When the civil war erupted between Jews and Arabs following the UN partition resolution in November 1947, British officials began a hasty retreat from Palestine and Sami Gerasi was asked to replace his supervisor, an English woman, as the senior welfare and probation officer for the north. Before he could take over the office in Haifa where he worked was blown up; he was seriously injured and hospitalized and still bears scars from the 1947 explosion.
Shortly after leaving the hospital Gerasi was appointed to chair a committee of Palestinian District Officers, formerly with the mandatory government, to assist the thousands of Arab refugees who had fled their homes and were stranded in Haifa's port. Many were packed into small boats that landed in Beirut and other towns along the Lebanese coast. By the time the mandate ended and the British departed only some 2,000 of Haifa's 50 to 60,000 Arabs remained.
With the establishment of the Jewish state Gerasi returned to Kafr Kana where he remained until the Israeli army occupied Galilee including his hometown and neighboring Nazareth. The International Red Cross then asked him to organize a relief committee for the thousands of Palestinians from towns and villages near Nazareth sheltered in churches, former British army barracks, schools, empty offices, hospitals, etc.
Owing to his reputation for work with the refugees Israeli authorities appointed him director of welfare services in the Nazareth region, but they still intervened in the smallest details of every task. Israel's occupation made life hard for the local population: Israeli Arabs needed army permits to move beyond their villages. Gerasi required a permit to travel from his home in Kfar Kana to Nazareth only four miles from where worked.
Arab employees in any kind of government position - teacher, clerk, cleaner, etc. were checked by Israeli security agencies for affiliation with nationalist groups or the Communist party. According to Gerasi, the military government even interfered in marriage arrangements between Palestinians. In one case a young man employed as a teacher, about to marry a bride from a Communist family, was warned that he would lose his job if the wedding took place.
Gerasi's activities included discussion of child care, health and medical issues with women's groups. When the military government learned that he was to address a woman's organization affiliated with the Arab Workers Congress headed by a local Communist, they forbid him to attend the meeting. With some 400 women waiting for him, Gerasi disregarded the military order but as soon as he appeared at the meeting, the military governor sent a squad of soldiers to remove him.
Since then, the situation improved drastically; today's younger generation has no idea of how constrained their parents' lives were under the military regime. After 1966, security restrictions were greatly relaxed and the Labor government began to pay more attention to the problems and demands of the minority whose votes were essential in the increasingly close national elections. Several committees were established to report on conditions and requirements of the Israeli Arab community including surveys of education, health, social welfare, local government and land problems. Because of his reputation for fairness, efficiency as a government official, and his standing in the Arab community Gerasi was appointed to several and headed a few of the committees.
In his Ph.D. thesis from Brandeis University analyzing problems of Arab youth in Jewish urban centers, Gerasi described how, unable to find employment or adjust to village life, many young Arabs fled to the large Jewish cities where they became delinquents involved in crime and drugs. Even though several of his Jewish colleagues applauded the study, the government totally ignored it and failed to implement any of its recommendations.
The Israeli authorities similarly disregarded most findings of Gerasi's commissions; little was accomplished as a result of their work. When a commission studied ways to revise school texts, it discovered that books used in Arab schools failed to mention "Palestine" but referred to the country as "Eretz Israel." Even the Minister of Education at the time, Yigal Allon, was shocked, but it took months before the situation was remedied.
Gerasi maintained that failure of government to respond to problems is indicative of an inner conflict symptomatic of the increasing tensions between attempts to be a Jewish state on one hand, and a democracy on the other. Like many Palestinian intellectuals, Gerasi does not believe that Israel can be both a Jewish and a democratic state. The situation can be ameliorated only if both Arab and Jewish perceptions of the state are changed, primarily through education.
School texts, Gerasi observed, should present a more equitable history of the country, place more emphasis on human rights and the role of Palestinian Arabs in developing Israel. Arab citizens should be much more involved in planning and in the execution of government plans.
As a result of growing impatience with government indifference to the minority's problems Arab leaders of over fifty local governments and Knesset members established an organization to articulate their grievances, the Committee of Arab Mayors and Heads of Local Councils. Although the government did not recognize the new organization, it became the principal spokesman on behalf of the minority and now includes representatives of most Israeli Palestinian political factions, religious groups and social organizations.
Israel's Arab citizens could contribute much to developing coherent and constructive policies, even in negotiating peace with the neighboring countries, but they have been excluded to-date, Gerasi observed. Until now their concerns have not been heard in the negotiations between Israel and Palestinian representatives.
One of the unrecognized issues is the problem of internal refugees, i.e., Israeli Arab citizens who in 1947-49 fled or were driven by the Israel army from their native villages and towns to other places within Israel. Originally about 50,000, they and their descendants have increased to about 200,000. They still are attached emotionally to their original homes. Since Oslo in 1992 this sentiment has been politicized in the Committee for Defense of the Rights of the Uprooted Palestinians that seeks return of the refugees to their homes. Even though the Israeli authorities destroyed over 300 villages during and after the 1948 war, the former inhabitants still feel attachment to the churches, mosques, cemeteries and land of their origin. Difficult as implementing actual return to original villages appears to be, the "right of return" should be accepted as a principle, "it is a value that cannot be ignored," Gerasi insisted.
Gerasi, now seventy six years old, represents an older generation of Arab leaders who sought accommodation with Israeli Jews and who were willing to concede the country's identity as a Jewish state provided that the non-Jewish minority receives equal and just treatment. Since Oslo, and especially since the Likud coalition took control of the government, many accommodationists have become embittered because of retrogression in treatment of the minority; they have become frustrated and disappointed because matters of concern to Israeli Arabs were not dealt with in the peace process.

A New Generation of Leaders

Since the Israeli Arab community is relatively young with little if any knowledge of military government and other restrictions that were later relaxed, they compare their life situation, not with conditions during the first two decades of the state or to conditions in the surrounding Middle East countries, but with the lives of fellow Jewish citizens. The relative richness and glitter of Jewish urban centers is perceived as both alien and attractive to youths from small Arab towns and villages where their options are quite limited. Whereas the peace process raised hopes of a better life which - it was widely believed - would follow the end of enmity between Israel and its neighbors, these hopes have been frustrated by Netanyahu government policies. One consequence is determination by a young generation of community leaders to take affairs into their own hands. Men and women activists have organized a complex of new NGOs devoted to coping with the problems of the community and confronting the government on the inequities between majority and minority living conditions. Here, the positive aspects of several decades' contact with a Western style Israeli democracy (within the Jewish sector) have had an impact on the younger generation.
The increasing number of Arab students in Israeli and Western universities and links with the Israeli peace movement and Jewish social activists have affected even the most militant among the angry young Arabs with ideas for peaceful strategies to cope with political and social change. These youths are represented in the several dozen organizations and coalitions striving for more equality in housing, education, health, social welfare, etc. They work through education, consciousness raising and demonstrations within their own community, through lobbying in the Knesset, and by means of cases brought up to the Supreme Court through the legal system.
Familiarity with conditions in Jewish society has aroused a new awareness among Palestinian women about the necessity for more equitable family relations. Several women's groups are struggling to improve the status of the Arab woman within the family and in the community. Difficult issues are dealt with such as family violence, preventative health measures and the need for child care, especially since more and more mothers are entering the work force. Government discrimination in these matters is also felt with more funds allocated in the Jewish sector than in the Arab for early childhood education.
Ameer Makhloul and Jaffar Farrah represent this new generation. Makhloul, director of Ittijah (The Union of Arab Based Community Associations), is from a small village in northern Israel. His father, a retired school master, writes poetry and now takes courses at Haifa University in Arab culture and literature. An elder brother was a local leader of Rakkah, the largely Arab Israel Communist party.
Ameer recently broke with the party over strategies for dealing with problems confronting the minority. Rakkah, Ameer maintains, perceives itself as an Israeli movement striving for integration of the minority into Israeli society. He, on the other hand, now advocates separation rather than integration; he calls for the Palestinian community to become self sufficient and to diminish its dependence on the Jewish establishment. He believes that the integrative approach has failed; failure was inevitable, he asserts, because attempts at cooperation have usually led to Jewish hegemony; e.g., meetings between Jews and Arabs were almost always conducted in Hebrew and in Ameer's view Jewish participants often displayed a superior attitude. Until now the integrative approach has been superficial, restricted to the fringes of society. Separation of Palestinians and Israelis (he refers to Jews as Israelis) within the country will eventually lead to mutual satisfaction. There is a need to change "the rules of the game," to develop a new kind of cooperation between Israeli Arabs and Jews that he calls "mutualism." He draws a parallel between Israel and the Soviet Union: a similar approach failed in the USSR where Russians usually dominated attempts to integrate the country's diverse ethnic minorities.
Israel is now in a process of transition, he maintains, in which the cleavages of society are expressed in a variety of new political parties and factions based on ethnic and religious differences. Religious parties like Shas, representing the Haredim, that demand cultural autonomy could form alliances with the Palestinians who also seek cultural autonomy. Like many Palestinians, the Haredim also oppose compulsory military service. The fissures within Israel society that will lead to its destruction - secular versus religious, Ashkenazi versus Sephardi, Jew versus Arab - are already weakening the country's social cohesion, reversing the Zionist goal of forging a united nation. No party has come forward with a solution, he asserts.
Despite Labor's supposed sympathy for Arab citizens, Ameer believes that its control and domination of Israeli Arab society has been unhealthy even though Labor brought many benefits to Arab villages and had an understanding attitude toward Arab education. Within Arab society he perceives three principal trends: Islamic, Communist and nationalist with the first rapidly increasing. On the other hand many Palestinians have become opportunists, exploiting the current situation for their own benefit; e.g. in the village of Rama many Christians have joined the Israeli army to profit from the advantages awarded to veterans. Some Druse have even formed a Druse Zionist movement to display their loyalty to the authorities.
Jaffar Farrah is a founder and leader of the Committee for Educational Guidance for Arab Students (CEGAS)established in 1991 by Israeli Arab university graduates. It seeks to diminish the huge gap between Jewish and Arab students in the country's educational system. Until the 1990s attempts to improve Arab education were largely made through the Jewish political parties. However it became increasingly evident that if the gap were to be closed Arab citizens would have to work through their own initiatives and institutions. Arab students needed their own dorms, their own research centers, and eventually, their own university. However attempts to establish an Arab university in Israel were blocked by the government.
It took nearly half a century for Israeli Arabs to initiate these efforts, Jaffar explained, because from 1948 until the mid-1960s the community was still recovering from the Nakbah, the disaster that overwhelmed Palestinian society following the U.N. partition resolution. Until 1973 there was hope that help would come from the larger Arab world, especially from revolutionary Egypt and its president, Gamal Abdel Nasser. Nasser's impact extended throughout the Arab world, including Israel where his picture could be found in many Palestinian homes. The Egyptian president's collapse, observed Farrah, was like awakening from a bad dream.
After 1973 the Israeli Palestinian community realized its own unique situation and began to assume responsibility for coping with its own problems. Land Day in 1976 was a critical event that underscored the sharp division between the country's Arab minority and the Jewish majority. The Land Day strike was organized in opposition to government confiscation of Arab land in the Galilee; the strike erupted in violence resulting in several Arab casualties. Ever since 1976 Land Day has been commemorated by the country's Palestinian nationalists with demonstrations and renewed protests against the minority's second class citizenship status. Land Day also led to organization of several groups by Israeli Arab citizens seeking equal rights, groups such as the Committee for Defense of Arab Lands and the Committee of Heads of Arab Local Councils, none of which were recognized by the government.
The 1982-83 war in Lebanon and the Intifada opened a new phase. Initially assistance was sought through the PLO but these efforts also proved to be futile. The end of the Intifada and the political repercussions of the Oslo agreements began the present era of political and social activism evidenced by the proliferation of new NGOs devoted to improving all aspects of life in the Arab community.
CEGAS is one manifestation of this new dynamism. Its objectives include increasing the pool of Arab academics within Israel and encouraging Palestinians to study in the country rather than abroad. If students do go abroad, they should be given every incentive to return and to assist in development of their own society. Until now far too many Israeli Arabs who study abroad fail to return.
CEGAS began its activities with research that showed the percentage of Israeli Arab university students was lower than the percentage in the West Bank, lower even than in refugee camps. Although Arabs were close to a fifth of the country's population in 1989, they constituted only 7.9 percent of Israeli university students. Only 9.5 percent of university age youth received a higher education in 1989; by the early 1990s the figure decreased to only 5.3 percent.
CEGAS has an extended program to help Palestinian university students including assistance in finding living quarters, tutoring, and finding employment to pay the costs of higher education. The organization manages the only Arab co-ed dormitory in Israel, according to Jaffar, intended as an example of its dedication to equality of men and women and to developing a "new, healthy " society. Outreach extends to more than two dozen towns and villages where CEGAS offers scholarships, helps students find jobs, and busses them to matriculation exams.

next >>>>