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From Labor Action, Vol. 14 No. 26, 26 June 1950, pp. 1 & 4–5.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
The policy of the Israeli government in relation to the Arab refugees from its territory is a sorry one, as has been pointed out in Labor Action before. Recent events have added horrid details to an already bad course.
The armistice line between Israel and the various Arab armies cuts across natural boundaries, villages, etc., and has separated many Arab peasants from the land they till. This was the case in the Hebron area; it involved 12,000 Arabs and about 55,000 acres of land.
Last year the Israeli army permitted the Arab peasants to cross the armistice line to sow the land and to recross. At harvest time the peasants came back, reaped the fruits of their toil and then returned to the other side of the line. This year something new was added.
This year the Arabs were permitted to plow and sow their land but when harvest time arrived the army found “security” reasons to prevent the Arabs from crossing the line and harvesting their crops.
The Israeli government claims that it is acting legally within its rights under the armistice agreement. This seems to be borne out by the fact that Jordan made no formal protest. However, as far as the average Arab peasant or Jewish worker is concerned, such “legality” cannot and does not remove the stigma that rests upon such an unreasonable, cruel and inhuman action.
Accusations have also been made by UN sources about the mistreatment of Arabs entering Israel without permission. These Arabs are reported to have been tortured in the prison camp near Rehovoth, then were put over the border at points in the desert that gave them little chance of survival. Many died but a few reached Ammam.
The charges against the prison camp were made once before and the Israeli government had reported that the camp was abolished. The recently reported atrocities at this prison camp show that the camp has been functioning all the time. The reaction of the Israeli government to the charge, and its promise to investigate, is an implied admission – this is clear to anyone familiar with the way the government and the Zionist movement usually react propagandistically when completely unfounded charges are made. Whether the current investigation will produce anything remains to be seen.
Many of the Israeli actions against Arab refugees have in the past been passed off on the vague justification of “war needs.” Neither of the above incidents can by any stretch of the imagination be justified under this claim. Such actions are wrong not only from the standpoint of socialism, labor and humanitarianism, but are wrong from even the narrowest selfish viewpoint of Israeli interests.
They can only add fuel to the propaganda of the warmongers, the Mufti and the Stalinists, in line with the latters’ accusations against the Jews as the despoilers and robbers of the Arabs. Such actions delay peace by preventing the growth of a popular desire for peace among the Arab masses, a peace so urgently needed by both Jews and Arabs.
The recent news has revived discussions about the position of Arab citizens in Israel. What is their status today?
The well-known statistician Leschinsky, in an article in the Jewish Forward of June 16, paints a rosy picture – a picture that is false and so easily disproved that one wonders how a reputable man like Leschinsky dares make such ridiculous statements.
According to Leschinsky, there is no unemployment among Israeli Arabs; there is no discrimination; Arabs have full freedom; Arab farmers are prospering; wages are equal; Israeli Arabs are better off than Arabs in other countries; in fact, the Arabs who are infiltrating Israel are not enemies or spies but envious Arabs who want to enjoy the privileges and benefits of Arab citizenship in Israel.
We agree with some of what Leschinsky says: the Arabs attempting to enter Israel illegally are not enemies of Israel. This undoubtedly true statement only completes the case against the Israeli government policy toward these unfortunates, a policy which Leschinsky supports. These refugees do not seek privileges or benefits; they seek only to return to their lands, from which they fled in fear. In return they will act as peacefully as peasants anywhere in the world. In time, by proper action, the Israeli government can win their loyalty.
It also may be true that Arabs in Israel are better off than ini other countries; but this is an indictment of the social conditions in the Arab states, and not praise of Israel.
The rest of the article is untrue, and to disprove it one need go no further than publications of Leschinsky’s own party, the Poale Zion.
On November 8, 1948, there were 69,000 Arabs in Israel; today there are 165,000. The increase is due to the acquisition of new territory by Israel, to the Israeli policy of permitting the return of wives and children of Arab residents, and partly to the illegal re-entry of Arab refugees.
Writing in the February 1950 issue of the Jewish Frontier (a Labor-Zionist Poale-Zion publication) Emanuel Kaplevitz has the following to say about the condition of the Arabs in Israel:
“Individual Arabs have improved their status but the Arab community as a whole has not made the desired progress and the relations between the government of Israel and its Arab citizens have not advanced to the optimum degree.”
On the positive side he lists the government's special attention to the religious and communal needs of the Arabs; the growth of the Brith Poali Eretz Israel (Palestine Labor League), the Arab tradeunion organization run by the Histadrut, which has grown a great deal through its control of jobs amid widespread unemployment. The league now claims more influence than the Communist Party in Nazareth and other important Arab sections. “The past year,” he writes, “has witnessed the beginnings of Arab initiative in the economic field.” He also lists: marketing associations formed in some villages; the organization of one Arab “kibbutz” (collective); and Druze Arab bus drivers have joined a cooperative.
On the other hand he reports:
“There also continues to exist a severe economic crisis amongst the Arabs. Workers are unemployed, former government officials have little hope of finding employment, farmers find it difficult to market their product, businessmen suffer from lack of customers. The exceptions to this rule are farthers who did not abandon their villages but even some of these have mistakenly been listed as absent and their land registered with the office for abandoned property and now have to pay high levies for property that is in fact their own.”
“Examples of activities of government departments that are constructive ... are unfortunately few and scattered ...
“In some parts of the country all restrictions on free movement have been lifted.”
We suspect that the definition of “some” when this is used in connection with freedom of movement is – very little, while the definition of “some” in relation to wrong registry of land is considerable.
An article entitled Crescent in the Shield of David in a recent issue of UN World confirms the picture of economic crisis among Israeli Arabs and has this to say about freedom of movement: “Arab citizens still need special permits to travel from one town to another.”
There is no discrimination against Arabs in cafeterias, etc., such as exists against Negroes in the U.S. However, the Yiddish press reports that even the Arab deputies in the Knesset (Israeli parliament) are almost completely isolated and that NO ONE talks to them.
Alvin Rosenfeld, writing in. the March 5 N.Y. Post, reports from Israel:
“For 12 long months an Israeli citizen – although not charged with, tried for or convicted of any crime – rotted in a local jail. He sat there, day in and day out; for some 365 days, simply because the state authorities figured that, free, he might possibly prove to be a danger to the community.
“The man, an Israeli Arab named Naif Salim el Khoury, had been arrested as a suspect in the murder of two settlers at the famous war-battered collective farm of Negba. Despite the fact that the charge was dropped for lack of sufficient evidence, the army decided to hold El Khoury anyway, since he was known to be anti-Jewish. The Arab was locked away on the order of the army chief of staff himself, and habeas corpus was forgotten.
“The incident, disclosed when El Khoury at last was able to appeal to the Supreme Court for his freedom (successfully), was but one of a series of small but disturbing happenings whdrein Israel has sidestepped or-ignored democratic principles ...”
Unofficial government spokesmen admit that a few Arabs are being held without charges even now, after the El Khoury case.
Normally and as a matter of routine, in the search for Arab “infiltrators” the army surrounds entire Arab villages in the wee hours of the morning and searches every house without warrants. These searches are not the brutal searches of the Gestapo or GPU. The army has invited the Arab deputies and the CP to go along. However, these searches are illegal and place the Arabs in a position of second-class citizenship.
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported June 19: “Prime Minister Ben-Gurion has announced the creation of a ‘security zone’ from Jerusalem to the beginnings of the Negev. This was taken as a measure against ‘infiltrators.’ Well-informed sources predict that if the ‘infiltrations’ do not stop all the residents of the Arab villages will be deported further inland.”
This can only be compared to the shameful treatment of the Japanese-American population of the West Coast by the U.S. government during the war.
It is undeniably true that the current bad position of the Arabs in Palestine was born of war. But whatever the Israeli government could claim about “military necessity” during the war, there is not even this shadow of justification now. The present no-war-no-peace situation cannot justify this kind of treatment of the Arab refugees and of Arab citizens of Israel.
The fact that legal redress in the form of Supreme Court decisions is sometimes obtained after long delay is slight consolation and ignores two basic dangers.
The first is, of course, the obvious one that the “emergency” pattern of relations with the Arabs will become permanent. This is especially dangerous since the present no-war-no-peace in the Near East tends to perpetuate these evils. These actions also tend to prevent the achievement of peace since it gives the opponents of peace solid arguments. They prevent the emergence of popular Arab demands for peace, as a real and effective force.
The other danger, and by far the greatest, is the apathy of the public, press and even the labor movement to these violations of democratic rights. In most cases the government does not even feel the need to apologize for its actions. And this is a government whose ruling party, the Mapai, claims to be socialist.
Such an attitude and such apathy help perpetuate the bad practices which are supposed to be temporary. Worst of all they show a lack of understanding of the road to peace and to Arab-Jewish Unity.
Arab-Jewish unity will not be achieved through holiday pronouncements about friendship. At best there is a long hard road ahead. The labor movement must mobilize itself to combat every action and policy that tends to divide Arab from Jew.
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