Israel and Its Palestinian Citizens After October 7

"Security Constriction and Obscured Citizenship"

Introduction:

There is another chapter in the devastating war that Israel is waging against the Palestinians, from the river to the sea — that is, another facet that has long suffered from obscurity and marginalization. We mean the exposure of Palestinian Arabs, citizens of the State of Israel, to an unprecedented state of persecution and repression carried out by "their state" in the context of this war. This is an open call to pay attention to this side of the conflict, and to work internationally, regionally, Palestinian-wise, and internally — that is, within Israel — to stop these persecutions and to respect the legal status (even if diminished) of Arab citizens, despite the attempt by the nationalist and religious right in Israel to marginalize or undermine it, as happened with the passage of the Nation-State Basic Law (2018).

Palestinian Arabs, citizens of Israel, constitute about 20% of Israel's overall citizens, and they obtained citizenship after the declaration of the establishment of Israel in 1948 — the year that saw a wide-ranging expulsion and ethnic cleansing against the majority of Palestinians (the "Nakba"), carried out by Jewish forces before the declaration of the state, and continued by the Israeli security establishment after its establishment. This is how the Palestinian refugee condition in neighboring Arab countries came about, while the West Bank remained under Jordanian rule and the Gaza Strip under Egyptian rule until the June 1967 war, when Israel occupied these areas.

Most Palestinians in Israel have held onto their citizenship and their Palestinian-Arab identity, and this adherence has formed an important axis in their aspirations and in their political and social struggles, and has in turn contributed to strengthening their steadfastness in their homeland, and to achieving unique accomplishments, such that they gradually became a community possessing educational, social, and economic attributes and advantages that relatively surpass any other Arab group in the world — we can say that, relatively speaking, and compared to their numbers, they are the strongest Arab and Palestinian civil community in the world. However, these important achievements have not enabled them to obtain equal, participatory citizenship with Jews. The Jewish state, in its essence, legislation, and policies, has persistently placed them in the category of second-class "citizens," and in many cases has made their status closer to apartheid than to a normal democratic state — even by the Israelis' own expressions, as some of them consider their state to be a state of racial segregation. In general, Netanyahu's governments since 2009 have entrenched the matter of Jewish "ethnic supremacy" through a series of laws and measures, most importantly of all the passage of the Jewish Nation-State Law, which negates the partnership of Arab citizens and makes the state the exclusive property of Jews, whether in Israel or around the world. This is in addition to executive measures affirming that the state is not neutral between its citizens, but rather applies a double standard and works to position Arabs in a secondary category and status that facilitates pouncing on them, and on the remnants of their battered and obscured citizenship.

Perhaps the most important evidence for our claim regarding the secondary and shaky status of Palestinian Arab citizens in Israel is the long list of Israeli violations, official and popular, that accompanied the declaration of a state of war in Israel following the attack by Hamas and Islamic Jihad on October 7, 2023, on the Gaza envelope. What further aggravated the situation of the Palestinians of '48 after the start of the Israeli military operations in response to the Hamas attack and its aftermath, is the horror of the Israeli assaults on civilians in Gaza and the atrocity of the crimes against humanity, which have pained the conscience of every person in the world — let alone when it comes to members of the same people, who are prevented even from expressing a state of human sympathy or understanding for the human suffering of this part of our people, namely the Palestinians of Gaza.

After declaring a state of war, official and popular Israel, in its majority, began dealing with Palestinian Arab citizens as a "fifth column" of enemies, and calls emerged for their deportation and for pouncing on them, collectively and individually, as being "disloyal to the state" and to its agenda against the Palestinian people and its rights, and their rights, in their homeland — including calls from official bodies, Knesset members, and Israeli ministers. Within a month of the declaration of war, Israel's internal security apparatus began a clear tracking of every word or attempt at expression by Arab citizens that could be understood as an expression of "understanding" or justification for what Hamas did, or a defense of it being a Palestinian national movement and not "ISIS," as Israeli propaganda claims, or any position linking the "attack on the Gaza envelope" to the suffering of the Palestinians in their large prison in Gaza before October 7. A large campaign of unprecedented persecution and repression against Palestinian citizens and their activists.

Prepared by:

Prof. Dr. As'ad Ghanem

Mr. Basel Khalayleh