The Zionist Project in Palestine

Saturday, April 14, 2007

When a "Jewish majority" was impossible to achieve based on Jewish immigration and natural growth, Zionists had concluded that forcible "population transfer" (Ethnic Cleansing) was the only solution to what they referred to as the "Arab Problem." To excuse the "Jewish state" from any WAR CRIMES perpetrated against the Palestinian people (specially the ones committed during the 1948 war), Zionists have concocted a myth that the Palestinian people had willingly left their homes, farms, and businesses, and as a result they have forfeited their right to return.

BASED On Declassified Israeli Documents & Personal Diaries

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The Zionist Project in Palestine: Colonial Settlement, Land Robbery and Ethnic Cleansing

Nizar Sakhnini, 7 October 2005

About 8,000 Jews were living in Palestine before 1882. Creation of a “Jewish State” in such a small country with such a small Jewish community, which owned virtually no land to settle on, was practically impossible. Consequently, building an exclusive Jewish State in Palestine implied bringing Jews from the four corners of the world, acquisition of the land and ethnically cleansing it from its indigenous Arab population.


COLONIAL SETTLEMENT:

Hovevei Zion, the precursor of the Zionist Organization, sponsored the first wave of pioneer settlers, which started in 1882 and ended in 1903. About 35,000 immigrants arrived in Palestine within this wave. Almost half of them left within several years of their arrival.

Eliezer Ben Yehuda, a fanatical Zionist, was one of the settlers of the first wave. When his ship arrived in Jaffa in 1882, he found himself watching the Arab passengers on board and suddenly he realized that they were far more at home in the “Promised Land” than he was. Eventually he found that he could not swallow his doubts so he left “Eretz Yisrael” and became a Territorialist, believing that the Jews should seek a country in a land other than Palestine. (Karen Armstrong, Holy War: The Crusades and their Impact on Today’s World. Macmillan, London, 1988, pp. 60-64)

The second wave started in 1904 and ended with the break of WWI in 1914. It brought about 40,000 immigrants to Palestine. As with the first wave, nearly half of them left the country in later years.

According to Bar-Zohar, when the first immigrants from the Russian Zionist societies came to Palestine “it was no land flowing with milk and honey that greeted them… The hard labor, malaria, and hunger claimed many victims. Of those who survived, many decided to leave that accursed land on the first available ship. Later, Ben-Gurion was to contend that of every ten immigrants who arrived with the Second Aliyah, nine later left the country”. (Michael Bar-Zohar, Ben-Gurion: A Biography. New York: Delacorte Press, 1977, pp. 13-14)

This 2nd wave included a number of Socialist Zionists. Prominent among the new Socialist Zionist immigrants was Ben Gurion. Another socialist Zionist, Yitzhak Ben Zvi (2nd President of the State of Israel) arrived in Palestine within this wave as well.

The 3rd wave, which started in 1919 and ended in 1923, brought another 40,000 settlers. As conditions improved under the British Mandate in Palestine, few of them returned to their countries of origin.

The 4th wave, 1924 – 1929, brought 82,000 immigrants of who 23,000 left in later years.

In order to boost Jewish immigration to Palestine, the Zionist Organization entered into negotiations with the Nazis to facilitate emigration of German Jews. As a result of these negotiations, an agreement was signed, which allowed tens of thousands of German Jews to immigrate to Palestine. The 5th wave of Jewish immigrants, which took place during the period 1929-1939, brought 250,000 settlers and the 6th brought another 150,000 who arrived in Palestine between 1939 and 1948. (For a detailed discussion of the Transfer Agreement, see: Edwin Black, The Transfer Agreement: The Untold Story of the Secret Pact Between the Third Reich & Jewish Palestine. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co. London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, 1984)

The total number of Jews in Palestine in 1946 was 608,225 and the total land owned by them was 1,585,365 donums, which represented less than 7% of the area of Palestine. (Walid Khalidi, From Haven to Conquest, Appendix I, pp.841-843)

The ethnic cleansing operations perpetrated during the 1948 war and the Absentees Law as well as the Law of Return issued in 1950 facilitated confiscation of Arab homes and lands to build settlements for more colonial settlers who flooded Palestine following the creation of Israel.

LAND ROBBERY:

A pre-meditated and pre-planned campaign of land theft started shortly following the ethnic operations of 1948. A law was passed in the Israeli Knesset in 1950, the “Absentees Property Law ”. According to this law, any body that was not present directly before, during or after the war was, regardless of the reason, defined as “absentee” and his land as surrendered. Thus it was confiscated.

About 20 percent of the Palestinians in Israel were internally displaced in the 1948 war – in other words, while remaining in Israel, have been prevented from returning to their homes and villages. These displaced persons were considered as “absentees” and became refugees in their own country while their lands were confiscated.

More significantly was the fact that Palestinian Arabs who were driven out or obliged to leave during the war in 1948 were not allowed to return to their homes and lands. Those who tried to return were considered “infiltrators” and were shot to death by Unit 101 of the IDF, a company of paratroopers, which was formed under the command of Ariel Sharon.

Another law, “The Land Requisition Law”, was passed in 1953 to “legitimize” the expropriation of Arab lands. According to this law acts of theft and robbery of land were legal.

Moshe Smilansky, one of the pilgrim fathers of Zionism, published an article stating that: “When we came back to our country after having been evicted two thousand years ago, we called ourselves ‘daring’ and we rightly complained before the whole world that the gates of the country were shut. And now when they [Arab refugees] dared to return to their country where they lived for one thousand years before they were evicted or fled, they are called ‘infiltrees’ and shot in cold blood. Where are, Jews? Why do we not at least, with a generous hand, pay compensation to these miserable people? Where to take the money from? But we build palaces...instead of paying a debt that cries unto us from earth and heaven... And do we sin only against the refugees? Do we not treat the Arabs who remain with us as second-class citizens? Did a single Jewish farmer raise his hand in the parliament in opposition to a law that deprived Arab peasants of their land? How does sit solitary, in the city of Jerusalem, the Jewish conscience!” (From Haven to Conquest, p. 834)

ETHNIC CLEANSING:

Subjecting Palestinian Arabs to ethnic cleansing was an integral part of the implicit and explicit political Zionist thought and parlance all along.

In his diaries, Herzl made it clear that “the existing landed property was to be gently expropriated, any subsequent resale to the original owners was prohibited, and all immovables had to remain in exclusively Jewish hands. The poor population was to be worked across the frontier ‘unbemerkt’ (surreptitiously)… This population was to be refused all employment in the land of its birth… In 1901, the 5th Zionist Congress founded the Jewish National Fund. According to the by-laws of the JNF, acquired land became inalienable Jewish property and could no longer be sold or leased to non-Jews…” (Documented article published by L.M.C. Van Der Hoeven Leonhard in Libertas, (Holland) Lustrum, number 1960, pp. 1-5, reproduced in Walid Khalidi, From Haven to Conquest, pp. 115-124. See also, Benny Morris, Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-1999. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1999, pp. 21-22)

David Ben-Gurion believed that the Zionists had to exert pressure to force the British to act. But if necessary, he wrote in his diary, “We must ourselves prepare to carry out the removal of the Palestinians”. (Michael Palumbo, The Palestinian Catastrophe, p. 4, citing Ben-Gurion's Diary - published in Hebrew - vol. IV, p. 299)

In a report to the Jewish Agency Executive on 12 June 1938, Ben-Gurion stated “I am for a compulsory transfer; I don't see anything immoral in it...” (Simha Flapan, Zionism and the Palestinians, London: Croom Helm, 1979, p. 263)

Encouraged by the possibility of establishing a Jewish state as a result of the partition plan proposed by the Peel Commission in its report published in July 1937, a “Population Transfer Committee” was appointed by the Jewish Agency to come up with plans to rid the Jewish State of its Palestinian Arabs. Joseph Weitz, director of the Jewish National Fund, who served on the Population Transfer Committee, developed a plan for this purpose. In his report, Weitz wrote that the transfer of the Arab population from the Jewish areas “does not serve only one aim - to diminish the Arab population. It also serves a second purpose by no means less important, which is to evacuate land now cultivated by Arabs and thus release it for Jewish settlement.” (Michael Palumbo, The Palestinian Catastrophe, p. 4, citing CZA, Minutes of the Population Transfer Committee, 22 Nov., 1937)

The Peel Commission’s partition plan, which proposed to divide the country between the “Jewish colonists and the indigenous Arab population” was discussed in the meeting of the Jewish Agency Executive held on 12 June 1938. Partition as proposed by the Peel Commission would leave over 200,000 Arabs in the proposed “Jewish State”. The Jewish Agency Executive was discussing the problem of how best to get rid of these Arabs. The seventy-five year old Zionist leader, Menahem Ussishkin, stated that “There is no hope that this new Jewish State will survive, to say nothing of develop, if the Arabs are as numerous as they are today.” Berl Katznelson of Ben-Gurion’s Mapai party saw only disaster in a Jewish State with a large Arab minority and proposed a development plan to eliminate the Palestinian Arabs. He urged negotiations, with neighboring Arab States that might be persuaded to receive the expellees. (Michael Palumbo, The Palestinian Catastrophe, pp. 1-2, citing CZA, Executive Proceedings, 12 June 1938)

Other “Transfer Committees” were appointed during the 1948 war. An unofficial “self-appointed” committee, headed by Joseph Weitz, started its activities as of the end of March 1948. After the creation of the state of Israel the Provisional Government appointed an official committee the recommendations of which were submitted to Ben-Gurion in due course and were being implemented under the cover of war.

One of the key questions from June 1967 onwards was not whether Israel should maintain a presence in the newly acquired territories, but how it could be maintained without adding over one million Palestinians to the Arab minority of Israel. The old Zionist dilemma of non-Jews in a Jewish state had to be resolved. Against this background of Zionist expansionism, transfer ideas were revived in public debates, in popular songs, in articles in the Hebrew press and, most importantly, in cabinet discussions and government schemes and policies. (Nur Masalha, A Land Without a People: Israel, Transfer and the Palestinians 1949 - 96. London: Faber and Faber ltd., 1997, pp. 60 - 61)

New proposals for ethnic cleansing were outlined in an article entitled “A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s”, which appeared in the World Zionist Organization's periodical Kivunim in February 1982. The article was written by Oded Yinon, a journalist and analyst of Middle Eastern affairs and former senior Foreign Ministry official.

In his article, Yinon called for Israel to bring about the dissolution and fragmentation of the Arab states into a mosaic of ethnic groupings. He called for a policy of Israel that aims at bringing about “the dissolution of Jordan; the termination of the problem of the [occupied] territories densely populated with Arabs west of the [River] Jordan; and emigration from the territories, and economic-demographic freeze in them.” He added, “we have to be active in order to encourage this change speedily, in the nearest time”.

Yinon believed, like many advocates of transfer in Israel, that “Israel has made a strategic mistake in not taking measures [of mass expulsion] towards the Arab population in the new territories during and shortly after the [1967] war.... Such a line would have saved us the bitter and dangerous conflict ever since which we could have already then terminated by giving Jordan to the Palestinians.”

Moreover, Yinon suggested to encompass the whole Arab world, including the imposition of a Pax Israela on, and the determination of the destiny of, Arab societies: re invading Sinai and “breaking Egypt territorially into separate geographical districts.” As for the Arab East: “...the total disintegration of Lebanon into five regional, localized governments as the precedent for the entire Arab world...the dissolution of Syria, and later Iraq, into districts of ethnic and religious minorities....” (Ibid, pp. 196 - 198, citing Oded Yinon, A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s, [Hebrew], Kivunim, Jerusalem, No. 14, February 1982, pp. 53 - 58)

Failure of the different efforts to “transfer” all the Palestinians did not mean that such efforts were abandoned. Benjamin Netanyahu told Bar-Ilan University students on 16 November 1989 that the government had failed to exploit internationally favorable situations, to carry out “large-scale” expulsions at a time when “the damage [to Israel's public relations] would have been relatively small...” Netanyahu was referring to the Tiananmen Square massacre in June 1989 when world attention and the media were focused on China. He added, “I still believe that there are opportunities to expel many people.” Netanyahu later denied making the remarks but the Jerusalem Post presented a tape recording of his speech. (Ibid, p. 190, citing The Jerusalem Post, 19 November, 1989; Michael Palumbo, Imperial Israel: The History of the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, London: Bloomsbury Publishing Ltd., 1990 pp. 302 - 303)

After decades of Zionist efforts, Arab “demographic threat” was still haunting Israel. A conference was held on 19-20 December 2000 at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya to deal with the issue. The conference was the first of what became a series of annual conferences dealing with the strength and security of Israel. A major part of the recommendations was related with the ‘demographic threat’ posed by the Arab citizens of Israel. (For a detailed account on the conference and its recommendations see: The Herzliya Conference on the Balance of National Strength and Security in Israel, Journal of Palestine Studies, # 121, Volume XXXI, Number 1, Autumn 2001, pp. 50-61)

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Israel Land Laws (Preliminary List)

1. 1943 Land (Acquisition for Public Purposes) Ordinance. Laws of the State of Israel, Vol. 34, p. 190.
2. 1945 British Mandate Defense (Emergency Regulations). The Palestine Gazette 1442, no. 2 (27 Sept. 1945): 1058.
3. 1948 Abandoned Areas Ordinance, Laws of the State of Israel, Vol. 1, Ordinances, 5708 (1948), p. 25-26.
4. 1948 Emergency Regulations Concerning Absentee Property, Laws of the State of Israel, Vol. 1, Ordinances, 5708 (1948), p. 8.
5. 1949 Emergency Regulations (Security Zones), Laws of the State of Israel, Vol. 3, 5079 (1949), p. 56.
6. 1949 Emergency Regulations (Cultivation of Waste [Uncultivated] Lands), Laws of the State of Israel, Vol. 2, 5709 (1948/49), pp. 71-77.
7. 1949 Emergency Law Requisition (Regulations) Law, Laws of the State of Israel, Vol. 4, 5710 (1949/50), p. 3.
8. 1950 Absentees’ Property Law, Laws of the State of Israel, Vol. 4, Ordinances, 5710 (1949/50), pp. 68-82.
9. 1950 Development Authority (Transfer of Property) Law, Laws of the State of Israel, Vol. 4, Ordinances, 5710 (1949/50), p. 151.
10. 1951 State Property Law, Laws of the State of Israel, Vol. 5, p. 45.
11. Amendment to the Emergency Land Requisition (Regulations) Law of 1949.
Laws of the State of Israel, Vol. 6, 5712 (1951-1952), p. 103.
12. 1953 Land Acquisition (Validation of Acts and Compensation) Law, Laws of the State of Israel, Vol. 7, 5713 (1952/53), pp. 43-45.
13. Absentees’ Property (Amendment) Law, 5716 (1956), Laws of the State of Israel, Vol. 10, 5716 (1955-56), p. 31.
14. Amendment to the Emergency Land Requisition (Regulations) Law of 1949. Laws of the State of Israel, Vol. 9, 5715 (1954-55), p. 109.
15. 1958 Prescription Law (No. 38), Laws of the State of Israel, Vol. 12 (1958), pp. 129-33.
16. 1965 Absentees’ Property (Amendment No. 3) (Release and Use of Endowment Property) Law, Laws of the State of Israel, Vol. 19 (1953), p. 55.
17. Israel Land Law 1969. Laws of the State of Israel, Vol. 23, p. 283.
18. 1970 Legal and Administrative Matters (Regulation) Law (Consolidated Version), Laws of the State of Israel, Vol. 27 (1973), p. 176.
19. 1976 Absentees’ Property (Compensation) (Amendment) Law, Laws of the State of Israel, (1976).
20. Land Acquisition (Validation of Acts and Compensation) Law, 7 Laws of the State of Israel, 5713 (1952-1953), pp. 43-45.
21. The Negev Land Acquisition (Peace Treaty with Egypt) Law 1980, Laws of the State of Israel, Vol. 34, p. 1990.

Spotlight On The Palestinian Struggle: New Pressure To Relinquish Rights

By Jamal Juma’

30 March, 2007
Stopthewall.org

Palestinians in our homeland and the diaspora remember the 30th of May as Land Day. On this day in 1976, six Palestinians were killed and a hundred injured by Israeli forces as Palestinians went on strike against a massive land confiscation scheme in the Galilee. Land theft and colonization continues in the Galilee, Naqab and the West Bank until today.

More than 30 years later, we will again be out on the streets and in the fields confronting the Occupation. Over 20 protests and demonstrations will unite the people in villages and cities across the West Bank in a week of continuous mobilization, while Palestinians on the other side of the Green Line will hold protests against the ongoing racism and colonization of their lands. But is the world willing to see our protests and the reality on the ground?

In the West Bank, including Jerusalem, the Israeli Apartheid Wall, settlements and their road systems are de facto confiscating over half of our land and most of our water resources and agricultural fields. Israeli apartheid is creating something worse than Bantustans: Palestinian residential areas surrounded by 8-meter high cement walls and sealed by gates, checkpoints and terminals.

Never have Israeli crimes been so evident and well-known all over the world. To dozens of UN resolutions has been added the decision of the International Court of Justice calling for the Wall to be dismantled. Violations of human rights and international conventions are reported daily. Lately, high level officials and envoys from the UN, the US and European states have to line up if they are to receive appointments with the Fatah-wing of the new Palestinian authority “government”. By now, they should be well aware of our ghettoization as well.

Diplomacy of the unipolar world focuses on Palestine, but with what purpose? The US-Israeli axis toed by Europe has never been willing to allow any of our rights to be implemented. Thus, skepticism shrouds whether the hectic diplomatic agenda in Ramallah is aimed at furthering our rights or justice in the region.

Rather than any concern for the Palestinian people, US elites are increasingly bound up in a discourse of “negotiation” in response to new realities. Iraq and Afghanistan have turned into veritable quagmires for the “alliance of the willing”. Moreover, the mounting body tolls and expenses and never-ending scandals of corruption, outright lies and torture have convinced more and more countries to withdraw their troops. Oil profits are definitely flowing from Iraq but at the same time, the sectarian divides fuelled by the US turn against them as resistance movements. The lost occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan have put the US in the Middle East in the hands of Iran and Saudi Arabia, respectively the Shia and the Sunni regional powers.

While some still push to drive the madness further and to attack Iran, others look for diplomatic solutions. It is not only voices from the region that have suggested a move on Palestine as a pre-condition to get the US out of the Middle Eastern trouble; the home-made White House Baker report has stated the same. Our homeland and people have become the political card which is expected to save global imperialism from drowning in the Middle East.

If the US were willing to force Israel to grant us our rights, it would not require the current intense schedule of meetings. Our rights are internationally recognized and detailed; it only needs that the step be taken to implement them. The diplomatic traffic aims at finding a solution that appeases the Arab world and international public opinion without demanding anything from Israel. The question is how to coax the Arab world into normalization with Israel while bypassing our claims for our land and the right of our refugees to return to our homes. Not surprisingly, renowned experts of Middle East negotiations surface in the discussions as the neo-con strategy shows signs of strain. Baker’s able “multilateral” policy that shaped a 34-member alliance in the first gulf war has definitely given greater benefit to US hegemony than the current US policy. At the same time, another expert of normalization between Israel and the Arab world, Jimmy Carter, has joined the debate with his controversial book on Palestine.

US policy might slowly move from the stick to the carrot again, but the final aims of control over the Arab world and support for the Zionist agenda to continue its racist control over all of Palestine are beyond doubt. Pressure on the upcoming Arab summit has thus far been unsuccessfull in taking out the Right of Return from the Arab Peace Initiative. Now, efforts are being made to arrange direct meetings between Israel and leading Arab states. A new Camp David, a new “peace” between Israel and the Arab world on the back of our rights, is sought.

In the meanwhile, the newly formed Palestinian government has to be integrated into these plans to ensure it underwrites the formula. The ongoing sanctions against the Palestinian people represent the backdrop of international pressure and such efforts.

In this situation, it is neither Palestinians nor those in the Arab world that strive for justice and self-determination that need a deal. The ongoing resistance in Palestine and Iraq is the unpredictable factor that might change the cards on the table. It is time to underline the principles of our struggle and the baselines for peace and justice: the end of the occupation, equality for all of our people within our homeland, the right of return to their homes for our refugees, Jerusalem, home to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and cultural and economic center of Palestine as our capital, are integral parts of our right to self-determination. It is only when diplomacy is forced to see and change the reality on the ground in Palestine and accepts the pillars of our struggle, human rights and international law that justice comes closer.

The demonstrations and protests all over Palestine for Land Day are thus yet another call to our leadership and the wider region that they at least second, if not lead, the steadfastness and resistance of the people. Approximately 97 villages in the West Bank are completely isolated and slated for destruction or ethnic cleansing and some 4,500 houses are under demolition order to make space for Israeli colonization. Dispossessed farmers watch industrial estates growing on their land in a system designed to exploit and control. Six out of ten Palestinians live below the poverty line. Yet the calls that lead the demonstrations do not ask for food or survival. It is the calls for dignity and rights – the full implementation of our rights – that brings the people onto the streets. Another popular Intifada is inevitably building up as long as our rights are ignored and our future confiscated.

Palestinian grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign – www.stopthewall.org

Baker panel's mention of Palestinian "right of return" raises eyebrows

Wed Dec 6, 3:43 PM ET

A reference to Palestinians' "right of return" in the report issued by the high-level Iraq Study Group broke a diplomatic taboo which sparked immediate concern in Israel and surprise among Middle East policy experts.

The reference was buried deep inside a 160-page report that urged US President George W. Bush to renew efforts to revive Israel-Palestinian peace talks as part of a region-wide bid to end the chaos in Iraq.

"This report is worrisome for Israel particularly because, for the first time, it mentions the question of the 'right of return' for the Palestinian refugees of 1948," said a senior Israeli official, who was reacting to the US policy report on condition he not be identified.

A Middle East analyst who was involved in the Iraq Study Group discussions but did not participate in drafting the report expressed surprise when the reference was pointed out to him by a reporter.

"It's hard to know whether that language got in there because of carelessness -- I know there were many revisions up to the very last minute -- or whether it was a deliberate attempt to fuse something to the Bush rhetoric which wasn't there before," the analyst said.

The 1993 Oslo peace accords between Israel and the Palestinians calls for a resolution of the issue of Israeli and Palestinian "refugees" as part of a final status agreement that would include the creation of a Palestinian state.

But they do not use the term "right of return", which is a long-standing Palestinian demand -- rejected by Israel -- that Palestinians who fled or were driven out of what was to become the Jewish state in 1948, as well as their descendants, be allowed to return home.

Bush, in a 2002 speech in the White House Rose Garden, became the first US president to formally back the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, but he also did not mention a right of Palestinian 'return'.

The bipartisan Iraq Study Group's co-chairman is former secretary of state James Baker, who as the top diplomat for Bush's father in the early 1990s clashed with Israel over its handling of the Palestinian issue.

Among his group's 79 recommendations for a policy shift on Iraq, number 17 concerned five points it said should be included in a negotiated peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

The final point in the list was: "Sustainable negotiations leading to a final peace settlement along the lines of President Bush's two-state solution, which would address the key final status issues of borders, settlements, Jerusalem, the right of return and the end of conflict."

"'Right of return' is not in Oslo I or Oslo II, it's not in the Bush Rose Garden speech, it's not even in UN 181, the original partition resolution -- it's part of the Palestinian discourse," said the US analyst.

Israeli Arabs seek right to return to villages forcibly abandoned in 1948

Last update - 14:01 03/12/2006

Israeli Arabs seek right to return to villages abandoned in 1948

By Yoav Stern, Haaretz Correspondent

According to a position paper written by Mossawa - the Advocacy Center for Arab Citizens in Israel and presented in a conference in Nazareth on Friday, Israeli Arabs want the right to return to villages abandoned in 1948, educational autonomy and changes to the Israeli flag and national anthem.

The paper, written in close coordination with the Israel Higher Arab Monitoring Committee, was presented as part of the week-long Second Annual Days of Mossawa Festival and Nazareth Film Festival, which ended Saturday.

"Our goal is to achieve a historic compromise with the Jewish community in Israel," Mossawa Center director Jafar Farah told the conference. "The move by refugees of 1948 to their villages will not change the demographic balance or endanger the Jews. Unlike the refugees in Arab states, we are [already] here," Farah said. "The internal refugees [residents forced to leave their villages in 1948 who moved to other Arab communities within Israel] represent about one-fourth of the Arab population in Israel today."

Farah said the paper was spurred by a sense among many Israeli Arabs that they must have their say at a time when many Israeli organizations are working to frame a national constitution.

"We found ourselves in an absurd situation, in which Jews are deciding what is good for the Arabs because the Arab elites are not involved in the discussions. Now the decision makers will have to take our opinion into account," Farah said.

The 10-point position paper emphasizes the need to grant communal rights to the Arab public, including the increased use of the Arabic language; equality and fairness in immigration policy; the correct allotment of national resources; and fair representation. With regard to national symbols, the paper says: "The state's symbols, its flag and its national anthem are emotionally charged, public resources ... the state must give appropriate expression to the presence of Arab citizens in Israel and its historical relationship to the place."

Among the many jurists participating in the conference was Supreme Court Justice Salim Jubran, who said the existing Basic Right on Citizenship law must be amended to complete the constitutional protection of minority groups. He repeated his opposition to the Citizenship Law, which restricts the rights of Israeli Arabs to marry Palestinians.

Another participant, Dr. Raef Zreik, said the position paper does not refer to the Israeli Arabs' position regarding the Jewish majority in the country. He said the Israeli Arabs can officially recognize the right of the Jewish public to a state only as part of an overall peace agreement with the Palestinian people.