From Challenge # 57 September-October 1999

arabs in israel

A New Effort to Protect Arab Land and Housing

Since the Palestinian catastrophe (naqba) of 1948, 51 years have passed, and the Arabs have lost the bulk of their land reserves. We may estimate the measure of that loss, if we consider that before 1947, Arabs owned – through various types of title – about 43% of the land that was to become Israel, whose territory amounts to ca. 21,000 square kilometers. Arabs owned, that is, some 9000 sq. km. About half of this was inscribed in the land registry (called tabu); the rest – the land of the Muslim religious trust or waqf, for example – lay under more traditional types of ownership, which the Turks and later the British tended to recognize. As for the remainder, Jewish land ownership amounted to 7%, and around 50% was "Sultan's" or "crown land", what we would today call "state land". 1

Today, after decades of expropriation, Arabs own about 3.5% of the land: their holdings have diminished from 9000 sq. km. to 735 sq. km. 

Israel has used some 36 laws in order to confiscate these lands. The main ones were these:

1. The Absentee Property Law (1950). This enabled the State to take over land left by refugees of the 1948 War.

2. Land Ordinance: Acquisition for Public Purposes. This was a regulation of the British Mandate, 1943, adopted by Israel. It has been used in confiscations to the present day.

3. Defense (Emergency) Regulation 125. (Likewise British, from 1945.)

4. Agricultural Settlement Law: Restrictions on the Use of Agricultural Land and Water (1967).

The authorities have dispossessed the Arabs by other means as well: for example, by manipulating municipal boundaries, and by persuading people who owned land outside a village to exchange large tracts for a small parcel of confiscated "refugee land" inside, on which they can build. The current ratio of such exchanges is 15:1 – i.e., "You give us 15 dunams, we'll give you one." 2

The bottom line: The Arabs in Israel today are more than 1,100,000 people, almost a fifth of the population, but they have only 735,000 dunams out of the State's 21 million. (A dunam is a thousand square meters, a tenth of a hectare, roughly a fourth of an acre).

Since 1948 the Arab population has increased by a factor of 6.6 while its land reserves have been cut by 84% (considering only the registered tracts). In the next twenty years, this population is expected to double. The lack of land reserves has already resulted in overcrowding and desperation. Zionist policies prevent the Arabs from moving to the Jewish cities, with the result that they have to find solutions within existing limits. Because of population growth, a number of villages have had to be reclassified as cities, but they have not undergone any process of urbanization, and they remain – with respect to infrastructure (more exactly, the lack thereof) – big, overcrowded villages. The need for building permits is tremendous, but Israel scarcely gives them.

In the Galilee alone, the authorities have orders to demolish some twelve thousand houses. (Editorial, Ha'aretz, April 7, 1998.) Of the homes built without permits in Israel in 1998, 57% belonged to Arab families (who constitute 18% of the population). When it comes to actual demolitions, the discrimination is blatant: In 1993, out of 535 illegal homes belonging to Jews, 32 were destroyed; out of 531 illegal homes belonging to Arabs, on the other hand, 275 were destroyed. In 1994, the number among Jews was 24 out of 452; among Arabs, 419 out of 661.3

In the Arab section of Lod, during the last few years, 600 homes have been built without permits. In the Galilee village of Majd al-Krum, in the last half year alone, the number reaches almost a hundred. We find much the same situation in many Arab localities. The reason for all the illegal building is not disrespect for the law on the part of the Arabs. (The law, after all, has bulldozers.) The reason is quite simple: the Arabs have despaired of ever getting the Israeli regime to grant them permits.

The multifarious plans for dispossessing the Arabs of land and homes

1. Master Plan for National Construction and Development # 35 (NMP 35)

This is a countrywide plan in which the State sets forth its goals for buildings, roads, infrastructure and development. No account is taken of Arab needs.  The development and planning goals are intended for Jews only.

"The document of principles prepared by the planning team of National Construction and Development Master Plan 35 (NMP 35) portrays a grim picture of discrimination in land allocation. Most of the land in Arab villages is designated for housing, with few reserves for development or industry. In rural Jewish cities, the National Construction and Development Master Plan 35 (NMP 35) designates 49.6 percent of the land for housing, 8.35 percent for industry, 3.6 percent for public institutions, 21.7 percent for parks and the remaining 16.75 percent for what it calls "other" purposes. But for Arab towns and settlements only one percent is planned for industry, and the vast majority - more than 80 percent - is designated for housing, guaranteeing that the Arab towns and villages will serve as "hotels" for workers who must commute to factories far from their homes.

"Although the NMP 35 planning team was aware of a lack of land for municipal use in Arab villages, the planners never said where the villages could find land to match the norms customary in the Jewish sector." (4)

In fact, we shall see, not only does the State fail to release lands for Arab development, but it even takes big bites out of the little that is left – for the sake of the Jewish population:

2. The plan for Highway # 6.

The building of this enormous road has run into opposition among Jewish groups on ecological grounds. Its course will swallow 300 square kilometers, extending from Beersheba in the Negev, up through the coastal plain, and branching to Rosh Ha-Nikra in the northwest and to Rosh Pina in the northeast. It will be built over lands that belong to nineteen Arab towns and villages. The road will completely wipe out a neighborhood of Shfar'am called Sirkis. In 1992 the Nitzotz Publishing House put out a book on the dangers that this plan poses to Arab lands. 5  It received wide notice in the Arab community, but Arab leaders chose to refrain from opening a popular struggle against the plan. Several heads of Arab local councils were even so fortunate as to win franchises to build petrol stations on the future highway.

3. The judaization of Galilee: Expansion of Karmiel and Misgav. 

 In the Galilee today, including Haifa and Tiberias, there are 400,000 Arabs and 700,000 Jews. By the year 2020, the balance is expected to shift: there will be a million Arabs and 900,000 Jews. A governmental plan called "Star of David" (1997) is intended to change this situation. (See Challenge # 43.)

Part of the plan deals with the city of Karmiel, which Israel founded in 1965 on the lands of several Arab villages: Nahef, Dir al-Assad, Be'neh, and Majd al-Krum.

In the last decade, Karmiel has spread to the east and west, gaining thousands of new dwelling units. Immigrants from the former Soviet Union have swelled its population from 20,000 in 1990 to 45,000 today. The "Star of David" plan foresees an increase to 130,000 by the year 2020. To meet this need, the plan provides for the confiscation of lands from the Arab villages Sakhnin and Rameh.

The plan for Karmiel goes hand in hand with the one for Misgav, a regional council of 27 so-called "lookouts" (mitzpim), totaling 4000 Jewish residents. Founded in the early eighties, Misgav controls 183,000 dunams in the western Galilee. Much of this land belongs to Arab farmers, who cultivate it. According to Israeli municipal law, a regional or municipal council can confiscate 40% of the privately owned land in its domain for "public purposes" (a term, which the Knesset has always refused to define). Misgav makes frequent and cynical use of this prerogative by issuing new plans for settlements, roads, and public buildings.

In contrast with the 4000 Jews of Misgav and their 183,000 dunams, the 200,000 Arabs in the area have control over only 80,000 dunams, which continue to be eaten away from one year to the next.

Within the area under Misgav's jurisdiction, a struggle has been going on for the past six months near Sakhnin, an Arab city. Misgav is allowing the army to transplant a huge base to this area. The base is presently at Kiryat Motzkin, on a developed stretch of the coast between Haifa and Acre. Coastal land is valuable, so the authorities want to replace the base with a nice new neighborhood of villas. Where better to move it than next to Sakhnin, whose 20,000 Arabs, with only 9000 dunams, crave land for development? Until now, choked off by the Misgav clusters, as well as a Misgav industrial zone, Sakhnin could at least cast an eye on the open land to the west. Now Misgav invites the huge army base to take it, completing the noose on Sakhnin.

In March 1997, Nitzotz published a book in Arabic on the judaization programs, entitled Misgav and Karmiel: Judaization in the Guise of Co-existence. Apart from showing the dimensions of the Israeli land grab, the book took issue with the local Arab councils. Instead of fighting against the plans, they preferred to join Misgav in phony projects with names like "Celebrating Co-existence". They catch the crumbs off the table, while the Arab communities lose precious time and ever more precious land.

4. The plan for Nazareth Elite.

Founded in 1957, the "elite" or "upper" Jewish city at once received 14,000 dunams, which were taken from the land reserves of Arab Nazareth. In 1991, in the midst of the Gulf War, Israel allotted the new city an additional 7300 dunams from Nazareth. Even more was added later, so that today, with 50,000 inhabitants, Nazareth Elite possesses 26,000 dunams. Arab Nazareth next door, with 60,000 persons, has 12,000 dunams. And the grandiose plans for Nazareth 2000? They have not eased the housing shortage in the Arab city one iota. The Israel Lands Authority has not released a single dunam. On the contrary, there are now plans to confiscate 9400 dunams from the surrounding villages of Ein Mahel, Kana, and Tur'an, so that Nazareth Elite may expand. (The new plans are discussed in Challenge # 47).

5. Plans for the mixed cities, especially Jaffa. For two decades now, Jaffa – with 20,000 Arabs – has been aggressively targeted for complete judaization. If the nationalistic-economic transfer works and the Arabs depart, that will accelerate a similar process that is also underway in Haifa and Acre.

Two plans are being implemented in Jaffa – under the names Ajami and Tzahalon, the Arab neighborhoods for which they are intended. The Ajami plan would create a thousand deluxe dwelling units (including hotels) beside the sea. Most of this section was put under government ownership after the 1948 war, and the Arabs have lived there ever since as protected tenants. (See Challenge # 41.) But now the government is selling the buildings to private contractors, who have been luring the tenants with money, trying to get them out. (See Challenge #s 53 and 54 on the Sawaf family.)

The Jaffan Arabs face an immediate shortage of 1000 units. They are unable to buy new apartments in their neighborhoods. Real-estate deals have driven the prices sky high, even those of the most miserable hovels. Nor is there much of an option to rent. Young married couples cannot afford $500 per month. The result: they live with their elders and siblings, sleeping on balconies or in illegal additions.

The Nitzotz, which is centered in Jaffa, is conducting a multi-faceted campaign to ward off these programs of judaization and privatization.6 Unfortunately, the local Arab leadership does not take part. It is now enjoying its second term in the ruling coalition of the Tel Aviv-Jaffa municipal government. Their motto would appear to be: "When you lack the will to beat them, join them." So, for example, they demanded that two-thirds of the thousand units to be built in Ajami be reserved for Arabs. The city turned down the demand. They remain in the coalition, nonetheless, and do nothing to mobilize the people. One family, the Sawafs, after losing its home amid real-estate deals, has been living for the last nine months in a tent in a public park. We shall doubtless see more tents soon. Except for the Nitzotz and ODA, however, the local leaders look the other way.

6. Plans for the Bedouin population in the Negev and Galilee. Today there are about 100,000 Bedouin in the Negev and 35,000 in Galilee. (In 1947 there were 65,000 in the Negev, but after the war only 11,000 remained. Expulsions continued until 1959.) 7 Today's Negev Bedouin are confined to about 10% of the area they controlled 51 years ago. They claim to own large tracts – at least a million dunams, one twelfth of the Negev – basing this partly on registered titles but mostly on generations of unwritten intertribal acknowledgment. (Most Galilee Bedouin, by contrast, have registered titles.) In an attempt to coax the Negev Bedouin into development towns, the State offers partial compensation to those who agree to move. Much of the Negev's land remains in dispute.

In 1976, under Yitzhak Rabin, the notorious "Green Patrol" was created – a paramilitary wing of the State, whose methods exceed gentle coaxing. The purpose of the Green Patrol is to expel the Bedouin from their lands and concentrate them in the development towns. The Green Patrol has listed its achievements during its first busy decade. Here is our summary, using the Patrol's terminology. 8

                       ·      Lawsuits against invaders: 750

                       ·      Lawsuits against illegal building: 1000

                       ·      Lawsuits against persons violating the law of agricultural settlement: 4600

                       ·      Dunams returned to the Jewish national fund: 350,000

                       ·      Dunams cleared of invaders and returned to the State: 3,000,000

                       ·      Herds cut from 200,000 to 70,000

In order to accomplish all this, the Green Patrol has no lack of techniques: destruction, fear, burning, and spraying fields. No new structure, not even an outhouse, escapes the Patrol's civic eye. Its members function like cowboys, rounding up steers and sending them to the corral. The "corrals", however – seven development towns in the Negev and a similar number in Galilee – are mere reservations, lacking industrial infrastructure, agricultural reserves, minimally adequate classrooms or health services.

Between the State of Israel and the Bedouin, the conflict over the question of land continues. The ODA and the Nitzotz have taken part, during the past decade, in the struggles of unrecognized Bedouin villages in Galilee, especially Ramya and Kubsi, both of which are under almost unbearable pressures to move to reservation-developments.

The official Arab leadership accepts the situation. The ODA does not.

Ever since the Labor Party regained power in 1992, the Arab leaders in Israel have reconciled themselves to the existing situation. Although programs to confiscate land and block housing solutions go forward full speed, the leaders in all Arab parties, across the board, have given up the popular struggle of the seventies and eighties. Instead, they content themselves with lobbying and under-the-table deals. It is as if they have translated Arafat's surrender at Oslo onto their own local level. Their message is, "Let's not be extremists, rather let's exploit what we can within the existing framework." In many instances, Arab representatives participate in Jewish municipalities and local councils, knowing very well that as a minority, the most they can do is give a "kosher certificate" to racist, anti-Arab policies.

The housing shortage and the land confiscations, together with the impotence of the Arab leadership, have led to spontaneous popular outbreaks during the last two years:

                       ·      April 1998: The clash over house demolitions in Um al-Sahali (Challenge # 49);

                       ·      September 1998: The massive clashes in Um al-Fahem over the confiscation of land in Roha (Challenge # 52);

                       ·      May 15: The chasing of collaborators from Baqa al-Gharbieh (Challenge # 56);

                       ·      June 21: Clashes between the population and the police in Lod over the demolition of an unlicensed house. Metal bullets wrapped in rubber were shot at the demonstrators.

The desperation of the masses, and their need for a trustworthy "address" that will focus the fight against the racist housing policy, have led the ODA and the Nitzotz to establish a popular committee under the title, "The Right to a Roof". The Committee opens its ranks to every Arab community or citizen that is ready to stand up for that right. The Committee will choose the path of collective struggle, refusing to sit still and puff up illusions about the government's intentions.

The first assembly, which took place at Majd al-Krum, elected the Committee and adopted the following principles and goals:

1. The right to housing is a universal right of every citizen. It is not to be linked to commercial or economic interests. The Right-to-a-Roof Committee denounces the privatization of governmental housing, which results in rising prices. This process injures the working class above all, which cannot afford the increasing costs of renting, building, or buying an apartment.

2. The Arab population refuses to accept any governmental plan that is made with a view to judaization or absorption of immigrants.

3. Years of experience show that the participation of Arab engineers and public figures in the building and planning councils does not succeed in changing the racist goals of the State, rather merely in giving them a cover. The Committee calls on Arab representatives not to take part in such councils.

4. The Committee opposes the building of Highway # 6 and calls on the Arab masses to organize, both locally and nationally, in order to prevent it.

5. The Committee calls for an immediate halt to all attempts to transfer the people of the unrecognized villages. Nor is it sufficient to "recognize" them. It is necessary to draw up plans by which they can build houses that will benefit from the same complete infrastructure that the tiny Jewish "lookouts" have, including connection to the national water supply, electric grid, telephone network, and all the other services a community needs.

6. The Committee calls on the army to desist from taking over the lands in Sakhnin and Roha (near Um al-Fahem). The Committee also opposes all military training activities near Arab localities.

7. The Committee calls on the governments of the mixed cities – Haifa, Acre, Ramle, Lod and Jaffa – to recognize the Arab character of their Arab neighborhoods. The process of judaization and privatization, which led to the eviction of the Sawaf family with its five children in Jaffa, must be ended.

Endnotes:

1. We are grateful to Professor Baruch Kimmerling for providing much of the information that enabled us to make these calculations. See also, Howard M. Sachar, A History of Israel, 2^nd edition, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1996, p. 437.

2. For a detailed study of this process in the case of the Galilean town Majd al-Krum, see Oren Yiftachel, "The Internal Frontier: Territorial Control and Ethnic Relations in Israel," Regional Studies, Vol. 30, No. 5 (August 1996), p. 493 ff.

3. We received these figures from Mr. Richard Redcliffe, a researcher of the Arab Association for Human Rights (HRA) in Nazareth.

4. "National Master Plan 35: Well-Planned Discrimination," Ha'aretz, March 8, 1999.

5. The Seven Stars Plan: A new settlement plan aiming to judaize the Arab triangle and to eliminate the Green Line, Arabic and English, Jaffa, Ha-Nitzotz Publishing House, 1992.

6. The Arab City of Jaffa Faces a New Plan of Judaization (Arabic), Jaffa, Ha-Nitzotz Publishing House, 1992.

7. Elizabeth Campbell, "No Safe Place: Ethnic Cleansing in the Negev," News from Within, Vol. 9, No. 9, October 1998.

8. Campbell, op. cit.

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