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The northern district of Israel, near the Sea of Galilee, is the location of the largest Arabian housing center it the country, the city of Nazareth. Approximately 75% of the 185,000 metropolitan region inhabitants are Palestinians. But they’re registered as Israeli citizens. They can vote and be voted for, as can the 1.5 million Arabs that live in the country.
Nazareth is a center of Christian pilgrimage, since. according to the Bible, Mary was born there and it’s where her son Jesus lived his childhood. The city was not included, after the 1948 partition, as part of the territory allocated to the Jewish state. The army, however, advanced towards the city, to defeat members of the Palestinian resistance who had controlled it.
Mikhail Frunze/Opera Mundi
The town of Nazareth is a pilgrimage center that was not included in the original plan of the Israeli territory
After ten days in combat, the leaders of the city surrendered before Ben Dunkelman, the commander of the 7th Brigade, who assured them against reprisals and committed to not evacuate the Arab population, despite the orders from his superior, General Haim Laskov. Dunkelman, a Canadian Jew, was irreducible and convinced Ben-Gurion, the main Israeli leader, to support his decision.
Arab families continued to live on the curved streets, steep hills and yellowish houses. Among these, the family of Areen Shahbari, 28, daughter of a middle-class Muslim couple, moderately religious, who continued to live in Nazareth. “My parents never talked to me about the war, they didn´t tell the story of our people,” says Areen. “The Nakba [the day of the catastrophe, as Palestinians refer to Israel's independence] strikes fear inside our homes and its celebration is prohibited in schools, which must comply with the official curriculum of the State of Israel.”
At 19, Areen finished high school and then studied psychology and communication at the University of Tel Aviv. “Only in college did I learn about the history of the Palestinians,” she says. “The teachers had more autonomy and some of them were discussing different points of views about the creation of Israel.”
Mikhail Frunze/Opera Mundi
Areen plans to live in Boston after her wedding in October, and fears for the future of his descendants
After graduation, she got a job in a major television channel, when the company was stimulating greater ethnic diversity on its team. She began as a producer and soon became the presenter of her own program, targeted to Palestinian women. “I was the first Arab to be hired as an anchor outside the department of journalism”, she says. “But I was also the only one on my team while I worked there.”
Areen kept her job for four years, and then went to study in Boston, in the United States. “I was tired of living in a country where we are seen as ‘the others’ and the government works against us”, she sighs. But she returned to Nazareth to spend a year. She created a small company that helps Palestinian opening and managing their own businesses, and also works as the city’ consultant for women's issues.
She will be married in October. The civil marriage will be in the U.S. The party, in Nazareth. “I feel sorry because the relatives who live in the occupied territories will hardly be able to come,” she says. “Only with special permission can they enter Israel, after going through the bureaucracy.” After the wedding, her plan is to return to live in Boston. She is worried, however, with the future of her descendants. “Every generation of Jews who move abroad remain Israeli citizens, but that right only exists for the children of the Palestinians”, she says. “My grandchildren might be able to return only as tourists.”
Areen’s boss in the municipal administration, Ramiz Jaraisy, belongs to Hadash, a political alliance led by the Communist Party. The leftist parties have controlled the city since 1973, when Tawfiq Ziad, a laureate Palestinian poet, took over as mayor. After he died, in 1994, Jaraisy replaced him and has been subsequently re-elected.
“Ramiz is putting Nazareth on the map,” says the Venezuelan Mariana Materon, 38 years old, having spent 18 of those years living in the city. “Israel is wonderful for the Jews, but does not give the same opportunities to Israeli Arabs. The best jobs go to those who serve the army, for example. But how could my children enlist in the military if the country's main enemy is our own people on the other side of the wall?”
Mikhail Frunze/Opera Mundi
The mayor's prestige is enhanced by being a good manager, by having developed the city’s tourism and building better quality public services. He’s greatly praised, however, for having become be the spokesperson of the Palestinian distress. “We strive to be recognized for our collective rights as a national minority,” says Jaraisy. “We don’t simple want to vote, we want the same guarantees as the Jews, autonomy in our schools, parity in the budget division. Israel is binational, it can´t have first and second class people.”
Deputy Haneen Zoabi, of the Balad party, goes further. Also an inhabitant of Nazareth, she does not hesitate to emphasize that “there is an irreconcilable contradiction between the Jewish character of the state and the democratic regime”. After her participation in the 2010 flotilla that tried to break through the Israeli blockade and land in Gaza, Haneen almost lost her mandate. A Knesset committee even voted for her impeachment, claiming betrayal of Israel. The Supreme Court, however, ended up revoking the decision.
“When it’s determined that a country belongs to or is subject to a certain ethnic, racial discrimination is inherent”, she explains. “The rights become uneven and the democracy basis ceases to exist. It is true that Israeli Arabs can vote, but we do not have the same access to land, jobs, education and housing that the citizens of Jewish origin have. Even our political guarantees can be withdrawn if institutions consider that we endanger the nature of the state.”
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One of the examples she presents is the so-called Nakba Law, passed in 2012, which authorizes the government to cut funds from any entity that carries out activities against the official version of Israel’s independence. “This is an obvious threat to the Palestinian’s freedom of speech and to the fairness in the presentation of the historical narratives that diverge from each other,” she says.
Another danger indicated by Haneen is Admission Committees Law, which establishes a kind of eight-ball rule for those who want to join any Israel community. “The residents may reject any family, claiming that they upset the lifestyle and the harmony of the place”, she explains. “It is not a formal measure against Israeli Arabs, but the risk of racial filter is evident”.
Mikhail Frunze/Opera Mundi
Ms Zoabi almost lost the mandate to have participated, in 2010, the flotilla that tried to break through the Israeli blockade
This issue is also addressed by Jewish intellectuals, such as new historians, led by Professor Ilan Pappé, currently teaching at the University of Exeter in England. Seven years ago he wrote a book entitled “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine”, which caused great commotion. Analyzing documents until then reserved, made him conclude that the Plan Dalet, approved by the Zionist command in March 1948, was intended to force the Palestinians to evacuate their homes and cities, besides applying a set of laws that would alter both the demographic composition and the land ownership. In the preface to his book, he quotes a phrase from Ben-Gurion: “I support compulsory transfer. I see nothing immoral in that measure.”
Several other historians deny this interpretation, such as Benny Morris, because they understand this plan as a contingency operation to counter the invasion of Israel by Arab countries. The official historiography rejects the evacuation complaint, saying that the Palestinians voluntarily abandoned their houses guided by their leadership, which relied on a victorious attack that would be performed by the nations allied to their cause.
Whatever the truth about these historical facts, certain measures which are part of Israeli law on property rights create a strong controversy. The homes of Palestinians who evacuated were passed on, without compensation, to state control, through the so-called Absentees’ Property Law. The government is also required to maintain the real estate stock of the Jewish National Fund, a public non-state entity founded in 1909. This organization, which owns 13% of the land behind the Green Line (excluding the occupied territories), can’t sell or rent properties, by its statutes, to the non-Jews.
“It can´t be said that a nation lives full democracy if its people do not have the same rights and opportunities,” reiterates Haneen. “The story made us Israelis, after all. Why are we treated with inequality? “
Translation: Kelly Cristina Spinelli