Democracy as Experience: Ahmad Sa'di speaks on living as a Palestinian in Israel

The Japan Palestine Medical Association (JPMA), a Japanese grassroots organization that supports Palestinian health and medical services in the West Bank and Gaza, has for some time been organizing lectures by guest speakers on the subject of the Middle-East ("Chutou wa doko e"). The latest of these lectures (Feb. 17, 2007), entitled "Is Israel a Democracy?: Living in Israel as a Palestinian," was given by Dr. Ahmad Sa'di, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University (Beersheba, Israel), who has written extensively on the social reality of discrimination faced by Arabs and other ethnic minorities in Israel and the occupied territories. It was my great fortune to have caught Dr. Sa'di's talk and to have had the opportunity to participate in the ensuing discussion. The following is an elaboration on some of the main points raised in the lecture, supported by references to relevant material from a sample of publications on the topics in question.

Given the myriad of misuses and abuses of the meaning-laden term "democracy," Dr. Sa'di thoughtfully avoided the heady theoretical approach typical of scholarly analysis in favour of an intuitive ― yet, in a sense, highly personal ― perspective on the age-old concept. He prefaced his talk by raising two simple points:

"The first point is that democracy is an experience. Democracy is about a way of living. It is not just a set of procedures [...] but it is about how people feel, how people experience their life within a certain political setting" [1].

The emphasis Dr. Sa'di places on experience over procedure takes as its starting point the social reality faced by the individual, prioritizing, in particular, the excluded ethnic minority perspective. The frame thus adopted offers a grounding in reality far more substantive than analyses derived from the ballot-box alone. The rationale behind this approach is simple: as anyone who has struggled against oppression knows, there is more to "democracy" than rules and regulations. Elsewhere, Sa'di has elaborated this point, writing that: "Citizenship is not only about a set of rights (civil, political and social) but also about the ability of the citizen to use these rights; experiencing citizenship is more significant than its mere formal experience" [2, p.31].

The question of "experience" in the context of the modern Israeli state is particularly pertinent. Dr. Sa'di, himself a Palestinian living in Israel, explains that:

"The legitimacy and the proclaimed raison d'être of Israel as a state that attends to the needs and interests of the Jewish people ― both its citizens and those who reside in other countries ― relegate [...] Palestinians to status of second class citizens, thus violating the principles of equality and shared citizenry which lie at the heart of the democratic experience" [2, p.25].

No tally of votes, legal framework, or lofty ideals will address such violations of the democratic experience. The answer lies rather in openly and honestly confronting the system of marginalization and exclusion sustained by the Israeli state and the interests that it serves.

Given this context, Dr. Sa'di turned to the problem of evaluation:

"The second point that I would like to make is: the best way to test something, test any theoretical concept or to test any institution is by going to the boundaries, to the edges of this institution or to test an extreme case of a theory, to test whether it works or not" [1].

In the context of the Israeli state, the Arab minority clearly stands out in this respect. Sa'di explains that "the flourishing research on the Palestinian minority seems to result from the understanding that the status of this minority represents the ultimate test case for the nature of the regime" [2, p.28]. As experienced by this minority population, the issue of racialized boundaries ― a subject on the topic of which Dr. Sa'di himself has written a great deal ― could hardly be more compelling. While the erection of Israel's new apartheid wall undoubtedly constitutes the most grotesquely visible manifestation of this phenomenon, less blatant but similarly destructive institutional boundary demarcation permeates Israeli society.

The origin of these boundaries may be traced back to the beginnings of the Zionist movement. Even before the emergence of the Israeli state itself, during the period of reign by the British Mandate over Palestine, boundaries between Palestinians and Jews were "constructed and constantly fostered through the functioning of exclusionary institutions" [4, p.138], notably through organizations such as the World Zionist Organization (WZO), the Jewish National Fund (JNF), and the Jewish Agency (JA). Institutional racism eventually led to more overt forms of violence. Sa'di writes that: "Given the technological superiority of the settlers and their methods of organisation, war became the main means for expulsion of the natives and the takeover of their land" [4, p.139]. David Ben-Gurion expressed the strategy succinctly, declaring that: "The war will give us the land. Concepts of 'ours' and 'not ours' are peace-time concepts only, and they lose their meaning during war" [5].

Ilan Pappe, in his new book "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine," has described in detail the orchestrated process, referred to as "Plan D," by which means this dramatic regional transformation ― known as the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, or Nakba ("The Catastrophe") to the Palestinians ― was effected:

"Once the decision was taken, it took six months to complete the mission. When it was over, more than half of Palestine's native population, close to 800,000 people, had been uprooted, 531 villages had been destroyed, and eleven urban neighbourhoods emptied of their inhabitants. The plan decided upon on 10 March 1948, and above all its systematic implementation in the following months, was a clear-cut case of an ethnic cleansing operation, regarded under international law today as a crime against humanity" [3, p.xiii].

With this plan carried out, a new state was established in 77 percent of Palestine's former territory, leaving in its wake a group of refugees constituting between 77 and 83 percent of the original Palestinian population. Among those who remained, another 2.5 percent of the original population ― or about 20% of the estimated 160,000 Arabs who found themselves within the newly designated Israeli borders ― also became refugees. Under the pretense of appropriating "abandoned property," a new oxymoronic category of "present absentees" (nokhehim nifkadim) was created. Journalist Atallah Mansour explains that "Palestinians who had not left their homeland even for a moment, but were absent by choice or by free will from certain lands (perhaps in order to be on other lands which they owned)―- all lost the lands from which they had been ‘absent.’ [...] The Arab lands there became battlefields during the war and were divided" [6].

While such "absentees" reasonably expected to eventually return and reclaim their land and property, such was apparently not in the cards. Well-organized legal manoeuvres on the part of Zionist organizations backing the new Israeli regime made certain that territorial gains would not be lost to the new Israeli citizens. In an article in New Left Review, Gabriel Piterberg describes this process in detail:

"A thinly disguised official entity called ‘The Custodian’ was authorized to sell absentees’ land (defined in Clause 1[b] of the Law) to the Development Agency, a government body created specifically to acquire it. This agency then sold it on to the Jewish National Fund. At the end of the chain these lands were privately farmed out to Jews only (this was the procedural significance of the JNF), and gradually became de facto private property, while remaining de jure in the keeping of the state" [7].

The struggle of the 'absentees' continues right up to the present day, with many refugees having become wage labourers for Jewish farmers who now occupy the land where they once lived [8]. Such disenfranchisement is indicative of deep institutional divisions between Palestinian and Jewish citizens within Israel, divisions which ― while existing before the ethnic cleansing of 1948 ― transformed in character within the context of the new "democratic" state. Sa'di writes that:

"[T]hese boundaries were redrawn in such a way as to keep the persuasiveness of the regime's democratic facade. An unbridgeable chasm was maintained between the form of the regime (the level of the formal procedures) and its content ― i.e., social relations (the way in which the various state and quasi-official institutions functioned). Thus, while officially the Palestinian citizens were awarded political rights (mainly the right to vote, run for office, and establish political parties), they have been discriminated against through laws, regulations and practices. Moreover, they suffer from exclusion, marginalization, institutional racism and prejudice. This form versus content duality entails many complexities at the theoretical level, as well as in the minority's everyday reality" [4, p.139].

In his talk, Dr. Sa'di enumerated five major categories of problems faced by Palestinians living in Israel. The first, highlighted by the situation of the 'present absentees' described above, is the issue of property ownership. Tied up with this first problem is the ever-present legal discrimination faced by ethnic minorities in Israel. Confronted with a growing Palestinian population within Israel, Sa'di notes that "there has been an obsessive concern with the birth-rate of the Palestinians and with finding ways to reduce it" [4, p.142]. To balance this demographic threat, various legal measures have been taken by the Israeli state in order to bolster the country's Jewish population. Dr. Sa'di highlighted in particular the 1950 Law of Return and the 1952 Nationality Law, which together enable any Jew entering an airport within national borders to acquire citizenship. While such laws preferentially benefit Jewish people, other laws explicitly target Palestinians. Perhaps most explicit in this category is the ban on marriages between Israeli citizens and Palestinians. Jonathan Cook has written that "Mixed Israeli and Palestinian couples are not only unable to live together inside Israel but they are also denied a married life in the occupied territories, from which Israel citizens are banned under military regulations" [9].

The third problem for Israeli Palestinians mentioned by Dr. Sa'di in his talk is that powerful Jewish organizations have become a part of the political structure. The case of the 'absentee' Palestinians whose land was stolen under various legal pretexts is emblematic of a larger pattern of private appropriation of formerly public property. Sa'di has written that one of the most powerful of organizations, the Jewish National Fund, was,

"according to a special law passed in 1953 [...] awarded the position of a quasi-governmental body. [A] sizable portion of Arab land was transferred to its ownership by the State, and its representatives have had a favoured position on the board of Israel's Land Authority, a body that manages the 'State land' that encompasses more than 92 per cent of the country's land area" [4, p.144].

An article by Arjan El Fassed that appeared last month in The Electronic Intifada noted that by 2003, "the Jewish National Fund had acquired ownership of a total of 2,555,000 dunams," compared to estimates of between 600,000 dunams [10] and 936,000 dunams [5] in 1948. [1 dunam = 1000 square metres] The significance of land ownership by this organization to Palestinians is clear: Sa'di writes that "the third of the JNF's articles of association declares that its aim is to purchase land and use it to 'build on or to have cultivated or also to lease the purchased land to Jews ... [It] could either itself develop the land or lease it, but only to Jews'. Subleasing was prohibited" [4, p.139] ― a policy of "Hebrew Labour" [5]. El Fassed further elaborates:

"An Israeli law of 1960 grants a substantial role to the Jewish National Fund in formulating Israel's land policies [...] While 'Israel Lands' cannot be sold, the Israel Lands Law (1960) allows their transfer between the state and the Jewish National Fund. Additionally, Israeli law grants the Jewish National Fund the same status as a public authority for the purpose of confiscating land" [10].

The territory confiscated by the JNF, land upon which thousands upon thousands of people had lived for centuries, now serves a variety of tokenistic commemorative roles. An area once occupied by 10,000 inhabitants in three villages, complete with schools and mosques, has been thoroughly bulldozed, its history erased. Re-branded "Canada Park," it is now a picnic area for Israelis from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, built with Canadian tax-deductible dollars through the Canadian Jewish National Fund [11]. Another village of over 4000 inhabitants was replaced by a pine forest commemorating Guatemalan Independence Day [8]. Similar examples abound.

Two more categories of problems for Palestinians in Israel were mentioned by Dr. Sa'di in his talk. The fourth issue that he brought up was discrimination in social benefits, which he remarked "do not function according to universal criteria" [1]. As an example, he pointed out that the expenditure for a Jewish pupil is three times what an Arab pupil receives, failing even to live up to the segregationist doctrine of "separate but equal" as practiced in the U.S. up until the 1960s. Along with discrimination in social benefits, Palestinians also face restrictions on cultural development. Here, Dr. Sa'di mentioned the control exerted by Jewish bureaucrats over the content of textbooks, and actions which have consistently blocked the establishment of an Arab University in Israel.

Dr. Sa'di concluded his talk with a simple message: that there is a "deep contradiction between the structure of the [Israeli] state and its content," a contradiction that "found expression in [Israel's] Declaration of Independence" [1]. This is the contradiction of a state which, while maintaining "complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex," and guaranteeing "freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture," simultaneously promises to "open the gates of the homeland wide to every Jew and confer upon the Jewish people the status of a fully privileged member of the comity of nation" [12]. This contradiction, Dr. Sa'di noted, has excluded Palestinians from the decision-making process.

Dr. Sa'di concluded: "Democracy is a process ― a process of integration of the variety of groups" making up the national population. When excluded groups are not allowed to participate, "particularistic regimes have to open or collapse" [1]. As in the case of the black population in South America, and that of the black people in the United States, he predicted that the Israeli nation would not survive without change, and that change must include dialogue with the excluded Palestinian minority.

Of this group, Sa'di recently predicted:

"The unbridgeable gap between ideology and consciousness [...] suggests that deep contradictions in the existence of Palestinians in Israel will prevail in the future [...] The sorrowful implications of this contradiction [...] might change some of their manifestations; nevertheless, they too are set to continue" [13].

REFERENCES

1. Lecture by Ahmed Sa'di organized by the Japan Palestine Medical Association (JPMA), Tokyo, Japan, Feb. 17, 2007.
2. Ahmad Sa'di, "Israel as ethnic democracy: What are the implications for the Palestinian minority?" Arab Studies Quarterly, 22(1): 25-37, 2000.
3. Ilan Pappe, "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine," OneWorld Publications, 2007.
4. Ahmad Sa'di, "Construction and reconstruction of racialised boundaries: Discourse, institutions and methods," Social Identities 10(2):135-149, 2004.
5. "Jewish National Fund's Violation of International and Domestic Law," Report prepared by the Palestine Land Society, August 2005. Originally quoted from Meron Benvenisti, "Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land," Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000, p.120. link
6. Atallah Mansour, "Arab Lands in Israel: A Festering Wound," Palestine-Israel Journal of Politics, Economics and Culture 4(2), 1997. link
7. Gabriel Piterberg, "Erasures," New Left Review 10, July-August 2001. link
8. Isabelle Humphries, "'Present Absentees': Refugees Still Living in 1948 Palestine," Islam Online, Oct. 10, 2002. link
9. Jonathan Cook, "Marriage Ban Closes the Gates to Palestinians," CounterPunch, May 19, 2006. link
10. Arjan El Fassed, "Decision on UN consultative status for Jewish National Fund postponed," The Electronic Intifada, Jan. 25, 2007. link
11. Ismail Zayid, "Canada Park: Canadian Complicity in a War Crime," Outlook: Canada's Progressive Jewish Magazine, Sept./Oct. 2001. link
12. Declaration of Israel's Independence, 1948. link
13. Ahmad Sa'di, "The Politics of 'Collaboration': Israel's Control of a National Minority and Indigenous Resistance," Holy Land Studies 4(2):7-26, 2005.