lily
12-20-2007, 03:30 PM
Bu supporting Israel are we supporting apartheid? The answer to this in the past has always been bocott of country and goods. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/19/AR2007121902681.html?hpid=topnews)
For Israel's Arab Citizens, Isolation and Exclusion
By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, December 20, 2007; Page A01
KARMIEL, Israel -- Fatina and Ahmad Zubeidat, young Arab citizens of Israel,
met on the first day of class at the prestigious Bezalel arts and
architecture academy in Jerusalem. Married last year, the couple rents an
airy house here in the Galilee filled with stylish furniture and other
modern grace notes.
But this is not where they wanted to live. They had hoped to be in Rakefet,
a nearby town where 150 Jewish families live on state land close to the mall
project Ahmad is building. After months of interviews and testing, the
town's admission committee rejected the Arab couple on the grounds of
"social incompatibility."
They petitioned Israel's high court to end such screening, claiming
discrimination, a charge town officials are challenging.
"We can't just be good citizens," said Fatina, 27, who is expecting the
couple's first child. "If they won't develop our villages, then we will
choose where we want to live. The problem lies not with us, but with Jewish
society that does not accept the other."
The Zubeidats are players in a wider ethnic clash unfolding in the Galilee,
a northern region where Arabs, those who remained in Israel after its
creation in 1948 and their descendants, outnumber Jews. Israel's policies
have deepened the gulf between Arab and Jewish citizens in recent years,
through concrete walls, laws that favor Jews, and political proposals that
place the Arab minority outside national life.
This process of separation within Israel's original boundaries mirrors in
many ways the broader one taking place between Israelis and Palestinians in
the occupied territories.
With most of Israel's land controlled by a government agency, Israeli Arabs
have long had more trouble acquiring property than Jews, who outnumber them
five to one in a population of about 6.5 million people. In response, Arab
lawmakers joined a Jewish parliamentary majority this year in endorsing the
construction of a new Arab city in the Galilee, where demographic rivalry
and ethnic separation are most pronounced. Arabs say it will be the first
city built on their behalf since the state's founding.
But some Jewish political leaders have suggested that Israel's Arabs, who
commonly refer to themselves as Palestinian citizens of Israel, should
eventually live in a future Palestinian state, the subject of peace
negotiations inaugurated last month in Annapolis, Md. Israel's foreign
minister and lead negotiator, Tzipi Livni, said before the meeting that such
a state would "be the national answer to the Palestinians" in the
territories and those "who live in different refugee camps or in Israel."
Arabs and Jews study in separate schools in Israel -- the Arab system
receives fewer resources -- and learn Israeli history in different ways.
Israel's Jewish education minister, Yuli Tamir, ordered this year that Arab
third-grade textbooks note that Arab citizens call Israel's 1948 War of
Independence "the catastrophe." Many Jewish lawmakers reacted with scorn.
Except for a relatively small Druze population, Arabs are excluded also from
military service mandatory for all but ultra-Orthodox Jews, an essential
shared experience of Israeli life and a traditional training ground for
future political leaders. Arab lawmakers have lined up now against a new
proposal for Arabs to perform "national service" in lieu of time in the
army, an institution they hold responsible for enforcing the Israeli
occupation of the Palestinian territories.
"We have lost the Arab citizens of Israel," said Amir Sheleg, 63, who is
head of security for the Jewish community of Nir Zevi on Israel's coastal
plain. "They no longer want to be a part of the state, and I am sorry for
it."
Sheleg, burly and bald, patrolled in a black pickup truck along a concrete
wall that rises along the town's edge. The 15-foot-high barrier, funded by
the government, divides the leafy streets of Nir Zevi from the adjacent Arab
community of Lod. Rising crime, he said, prompted his town to begin building
the wall four years ago.
For Israel's Arab Citizens, Isolation and Exclusion
By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, December 20, 2007; Page A01
KARMIEL, Israel -- Fatina and Ahmad Zubeidat, young Arab citizens of Israel,
met on the first day of class at the prestigious Bezalel arts and
architecture academy in Jerusalem. Married last year, the couple rents an
airy house here in the Galilee filled with stylish furniture and other
modern grace notes.
But this is not where they wanted to live. They had hoped to be in Rakefet,
a nearby town where 150 Jewish families live on state land close to the mall
project Ahmad is building. After months of interviews and testing, the
town's admission committee rejected the Arab couple on the grounds of
"social incompatibility."
They petitioned Israel's high court to end such screening, claiming
discrimination, a charge town officials are challenging.
"We can't just be good citizens," said Fatina, 27, who is expecting the
couple's first child. "If they won't develop our villages, then we will
choose where we want to live. The problem lies not with us, but with Jewish
society that does not accept the other."
The Zubeidats are players in a wider ethnic clash unfolding in the Galilee,
a northern region where Arabs, those who remained in Israel after its
creation in 1948 and their descendants, outnumber Jews. Israel's policies
have deepened the gulf between Arab and Jewish citizens in recent years,
through concrete walls, laws that favor Jews, and political proposals that
place the Arab minority outside national life.
This process of separation within Israel's original boundaries mirrors in
many ways the broader one taking place between Israelis and Palestinians in
the occupied territories.
With most of Israel's land controlled by a government agency, Israeli Arabs
have long had more trouble acquiring property than Jews, who outnumber them
five to one in a population of about 6.5 million people. In response, Arab
lawmakers joined a Jewish parliamentary majority this year in endorsing the
construction of a new Arab city in the Galilee, where demographic rivalry
and ethnic separation are most pronounced. Arabs say it will be the first
city built on their behalf since the state's founding.
But some Jewish political leaders have suggested that Israel's Arabs, who
commonly refer to themselves as Palestinian citizens of Israel, should
eventually live in a future Palestinian state, the subject of peace
negotiations inaugurated last month in Annapolis, Md. Israel's foreign
minister and lead negotiator, Tzipi Livni, said before the meeting that such
a state would "be the national answer to the Palestinians" in the
territories and those "who live in different refugee camps or in Israel."
Arabs and Jews study in separate schools in Israel -- the Arab system
receives fewer resources -- and learn Israeli history in different ways.
Israel's Jewish education minister, Yuli Tamir, ordered this year that Arab
third-grade textbooks note that Arab citizens call Israel's 1948 War of
Independence "the catastrophe." Many Jewish lawmakers reacted with scorn.
Except for a relatively small Druze population, Arabs are excluded also from
military service mandatory for all but ultra-Orthodox Jews, an essential
shared experience of Israeli life and a traditional training ground for
future political leaders. Arab lawmakers have lined up now against a new
proposal for Arabs to perform "national service" in lieu of time in the
army, an institution they hold responsible for enforcing the Israeli
occupation of the Palestinian territories.
"We have lost the Arab citizens of Israel," said Amir Sheleg, 63, who is
head of security for the Jewish community of Nir Zevi on Israel's coastal
plain. "They no longer want to be a part of the state, and I am sorry for
it."
Sheleg, burly and bald, patrolled in a black pickup truck along a concrete
wall that rises along the town's edge. The 15-foot-high barrier, funded by
the government, divides the leafy streets of Nir Zevi from the adjacent Arab
community of Lod. Rising crime, he said, prompted his town to begin building
the wall four years ago.