I hope this helps you....From Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi a professor at Haifa University...From Reflections On the History of Zionism and Israel :
"Palestinians in Israel live mostly under a separate but unequal system of education and social services. Discrimination against Arabs in Israel takes many forms; it is completely spelled out in legal documents, backed by the Supreme Court. Because they are defined as foreigners and because they are the enemy, Palestinians do not enjoy all the services Israel provides for its real citizens, the shareholders in the state. They are excluded from over 90 per cent of the land and have an inferior education system.
The 800,000 Palestinians who were entitled as of 1990 to Israeli identity card (ie permanent residence), were treated differently from members of the majority in every area of government activities and services. When the Interior Ministry budgets per capita allocations to local governments, there are two kinds of localities: Jewish and Arab. The prime minister of Israel claimed in 1986 that the per capita allocation for Arabs was 30 per cent of that for Jews. This was in response to critics who charged that it was only 10 to 20 per cent of the majority allocation! Similarly, per capita allocations by the Education Ministry for the separate Arab school system are about 10 per cent of the standard. One can see Arab schools without doors, windows or running water. There are "Jewish roads" and "Arab roads" in Israel. That means that roads leading to Arab villages have not been resurfaced for generations.
Israelis probably hold the world record in real estate ownership. More than 90 per cent own their apartments or homes, thanks to massive public housing programs and generous government subsidies. This is true as far as Jews are concerned. Ninety-nine per cent of public husing programs exclude Arabs. When Arabs build their own homes, the constructions are considered illegal -- and they are. To receive a permit to build in any locality, a master plan is required. The Israel government, in its wisdom, saw to it that master plans have been approved in only four out of 150 Arab localities.
The State of Israel took over the property of 600,000 Palestinians who left their homes during the 1948-49 War and were not allowed to return. The 150,000 Palestinians who remained under Israeli control were also subject to laws and regulations that depreived them of most of their land. The Palestinians living in Israel since 1948 have lost about one million acres of land. This land has been taken by perfectly legal means, by the authority of laws passed by the Knesset, which give the government the right of expropriation under clearly defined conditions.
Palestinians who left their normal place of residence during the 1948-49 War but remained in Israeli-held territory, were declared by the Knesset to be present-absentees -- a unique concept in the world's legal literature -- losing their rights to land and citizenship. In one case, this law covered a group of villages in central Israel, which were occuppied by the Jordanians in 1948 whle the villages' agricultural lands were under Israeli contorl. The 1949 Armistice agreements gave Israel control over the villages and their inhabitants. But the inhabitants were by then present-absentees and lost all their lands. |
