The issue of Israeli Arabs has been a source of controversy since the beginning. Emad Gad sees where the debate has reached The Israeli political field is witnessing a sharp debate over Israeli Arabs. While the Israeli right believes that the Palestinians of 1948, or Israeli Arabs, cannot possibly be citizens in a Jewish state, and sees them as more of a fifth column, some Israelis and human rights organisations in Israel believe that Israeli Arabs have been subjected to an historical injustice and that the time has come for them to obtain their full rights. Over the last five decades, since the establishment of Israel as a Jewish state, the controversy over the future of Arabs who remained in the country after the 1948 War has never ceased. In 1948, they numbered about 160,000; now they number 1.2 million and account for almost one-fifth of Israel's population. Attitudes towards Israeli Arabs range from demands to incorporate them into Israeli society and the state, to calls to transfer them to other neighbouring Arab countries as part of a comprehensive settlement, much like the exchange of populations between Turkey and Greece. The issue of the nature and future of Israel's Arab population has been a source of internal debate since the state was founded. While the majority of Israelis did and still do doubt their loyalty to the state, seeing them as a danger, there are also Israeli Jews who have continued to defend the rights of Israeli Arabs. The debate recently surfaced once more following comments made by Israeli Minister of Transportation Avigdor Lieberman, of the National Union Party. Lieberman stated that Bnei Sakhnin, the soccer team that just won the Israel Cup, had no place in the Israeli soccer league because most of its players were Arabs. Several Israeli writers responded to these statements, along with NGOs working for equality and human rights in Israel. Lieberman made the statement in an interview with Tel Aviv magazine, part of Yediot Aharonot's network of local papers, published on 28 May. If Lieberman had his way, Bnei Sakhnin would not play in the Israeli soccer league. "They would represent the other league, and they wouldn't be based in Sakhnin itself. Maybe they could call themselves Hapoel Nablus," he said. Although the minister said it was "excellent" that the team's fans had stood silently in Ramat Gan Stadium while the Israeli national anthem was played, he added, "But I saw their leaders showing solidarity with [Marwan] Barghouti." Knesset member Ophir Pinas-Paz (Labour) described Lieberman's statements as racist. "What Lieberman is saying is pure racism," Pinas- Paz said. "Instead of using the unprecedented achievement made by Bnei Sakhnin and abiding by the government's obligation to implement the recommendations of the Or Commission to promote coexistence in Israel, Lieberman made a racist statement in an attempt to deny this achievement in sports." Pinas-Paz added that instead of thinking about transfer, Lieberman should look into establishing a stadium in Sakhnin. In the midst of this debate, Yigal Sarna wrote an article entitled, "A Letter to Israeli Arabs", published online by Yediot Aharonot on 8 June. The letter was essentially a long apology to Israeli Arabs for what they have endured since the establishment of the state of Israel. "Lately, you have been struck by panic on almost a weekly basis by a statement by yet another minister -- one by Sharon, then Netanyahu, and another by Lieberman," Sarna wrote. "It may seem that when the dawn breaks, you will be transported on trucks from your villages, facing another nakba of a new transfer to behind the dark mountains, or behind the wall. It may seem that territories and populations will be exchanged. Lieberman wants to transfer [Ahmed] Al-Tibi and exchange him for Yitzhar. This is the language of 2004. "After having reached the best solution to the Palestinian problem, with the use of Apache helicopters, assassinations, disengagement, walls and fences, and the targeted elimination of a paralysed sheikh, what else do we have to solve? Only the problem of all problems: the Arabs who live among us, the one million Muslim Israeli citizens, you, whom they have called a fifth column, a cancer, a Trojan horse, or simply 'the Arab sector', as they say in the polite language of authority. You, who lived many long years under the burden of martial law and rulers who spoke Arabic with a stammer. You, who have always been treated as suspect citizens. You, with whom every interview begins with a demand that you condemn the latest crime committed by your brothers from the Muqataa. "You are our domestic Arabs. You have learned in our schools such a decidedly Jewish curriculum that some of you speak Yiddish in your sleep or spend your nightmares fighting the Cossacks portrayed in the poems of Chernyakhovsky. You are our neighbours in both the little and big triangles, from Umm Al-Fahm to the villages of the Galilee to the poor cities of the Negev. You are the sincere voters who in every election campaign fall prey to the solemn programmes to resolve the conditions of your life. You are those whom the Shin Bet recommends be given immediate rights, particularly their basic right to eavesdrop on you, harass you, and interrogate you. "You are still here, despite all this, living, working and hoping for the best. I used to think that only a Jew could remain where he is after having experienced such a web of suspicion, blood libels, false arrests and tardy exonerations. You have bowed your heads every time a few suspects from the community have been arrested and a minister or an officer brands the entire community guilty. You have not taken to the streets, except on Land Day and other inflamed occasions. You have remained silent; you have learned and become Israelis to the extent that I am sometimes led to believe when I visit your neighbourhoods that you are the native Israelis, the original Israelis. "Perhaps this is the desire of the minority to be like the majority. Perhaps this is the lesson you learned from your school curricula, from always living next to us. Perhaps it stems from your knowledge of Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, which has stemmed your desire to live there. Perhaps all these things have made you a pseudo-Jewish minority in the land of Israel. Maybe it is your desire to belong: beauty queens, soccer teams, artists, contractors, workers building the country, tilers and bleachers, newscasters, actors in the theatre and cinema, singers, film directors, novelists -- a master of irony like Emile Habibi, whose descriptions of our complex relationship -- equal parts sadness and strangeness -- have been matched by only a very few. "When I think, my Arab Israeli brothers, of all the years of our problematic marriage, of the web of contradictory relationships, of the self- fulfilling prophecies, the feuds and the mutual lies; when I behold your tiled roofs, the joy of the victorious sons of Sakhnin; when I listen to your politicians who have learned, and then perfected, all manner of artifice and stratagems -- I know you will remain here, with us, forever. You will never leave us. We have been through everything together, and we now form one body. No minister will be able to come between us. If we are lucky, we will live together; if not, we will go down together." In light of the campaigns of hatred and incitement, and threats of transfer, Yigal Sarna's article offers an alternate picture of the relationship between Jews and Arabs in Israel, a picture that offers the hope of coexistence and the possibility of providing an example of shared existence in a region that desperately needs such a model. But Sarna's words and convictions are still the exception in Israel. More prominent are the partisans of separation, transfer and "ethnic and religious purity". To follow the debate on this issue within Israel, please visit the website Arabs Against Discrimination (www.aad-online.org).
