Pappe Ilan. The Forgotten Palestinians: A History of the Palestinians in Israel

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opposed to being branded legally as a second-class citizens sheds light

on why Mapai could recruit so many Palestinians to its ranks in the

early years of statehood: Palestinians could, so to speak, collaborate

with the new rulers and yet feel that they had not given up their basic

rights and identity.

There were two basic motives for joining Mapai. First, it was the

establishment and joining it was like joining any state or governmental

organ; second, Mapai personally targeted those who were known to be

leaders or organizers in the Mandatory Palestine period and pressured

them to join – either by offering them beneﬁts or threatening them

with harassment.

Bulus Farah, a Communist activist and writer, recalls an emissary

from the Haifa mayor, Aba Hushi, offering him heaven and earth if

he would found an ‘Arab Workers Union’ afﬁliated with Mapai. ‘You

will have your own car,’ the emissary told him, and made ﬂattering

comments on his ability as a union leader.

Bulus Farah refused; he writes in his memoirs that the main reason

for this request was a wish to organize as many Palestinians as possible

as an ad hoc, unskilled outﬁt for picking the olives left behind by the

expellees and refugees. The Communist Party had already begun such

an operation in Ramleh and the Zionist trade unions wished to collect

this valuable trophy themselves.

It was not easy for Farah to decline the offer of a car and a job in 1948.

He used to have a bookshop, which was looted and destroyed during the

ﬁghting. And then one day, after refusing the comfort of a Mapai activist,

a woman came asking for a book which he had and he sold it to her and

‘the blood gushed in my veins and sweat poured profusely on the fore-

head. My happiness was complete. Now my mothers and sisters would

not feel deprivation. The road opened for me to live a decent life.’ But

she was the only client, it turned out, and he could not reopen his book-

shop. So this union leader and writer of the British Mandate era opened

a barber shop instead. In 1952 he became the secretary of the ‘Society for

the Defence of the Arab Minority Rights in Israel’, combining political

activism with a new professional career.

Those who were co-opted and those who still resisted developed

a similar complex attitude towards the wave of legislation that, in

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42 | THE FORGOTTEN PALESTINIANS

hindsight, determined the Palestinian community’s inferior position

within the Jewish state. The responses detailed above and the general

political behaviour of the political activists in the community showed a

resentment of such inferiority, whether they were members of Mapai

or the Communist Party. At the same time this attitude indicated a

certain trust in the Israeli democracy, or at least a strategic decision

not to employ national resistance tactics such as those which other

Palestinian groups would adopt later in the struggle against Israel.

This is also why this political group of activists decided to take part

in the ﬁrst 1949 Israeli general elections, although there was nothing

to celebrate in these elections for them. The Palestinians in Israel

did not yet possess the Israeli identity cards that allowed every citizen

to vote – in their case it was a far more complex process. On top

of that, they needed special permits to travel to the areas where the

polling stations were located; and yet they still went and voted.

The swiftness with which the political activists decided to test the

validity of the new democracy that was claimed to be in place is quite

amazing in hindsight. Without the emergence as yet of a legal cadre

to assist them, the Palestinian politicians decided to take their case

to the Supreme Court of Israel; this was the ﬁrst appeal case it had

ever presided over. Hanna Naqara took forward the legal part of the

struggle almost single-handedly, studying the law and ﬁnding its early

loopholes to the point that the military rulers became enraged and

occasionally put him in jail.

In the event, the Supreme Court’s judgment was as harsh as that of

the politicians:

The court asserts that a man who wanders freely and without

permit within the defence lines of the state and within the offen-

sive lines of the enemy does not deserve the court’s help and

assistance.

This was a cruel and cynical reference to the Palestinians who were

forced to wander in those places because they were expelled by the

Israeli army; some of the ‘offensive lines of the enemy’ were their

homes and ﬁelds. Pro-Zionist scholars, such as Amnon Rubinstein,

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tried to defend this harsh attitude as ‘motivated by emotional and

irrational grounds’, as it totally contradicted the Declaration of

Independence.

But the truth is the Court’s decision did not contra-

dict the ideological position of the state’s political elite and hence was

neither ‘emotional’ nor ‘irrational’. Moreover, in the coming years the

Supreme Court would endorse similar practices, although it would

also oppose them in other instances. In a recent article, the Israeli legal

historian Ilan Saban has shown that the matrix of legal and constitu-

tional policies initiated in those early years disabled the Supreme

Court from serving as the last buffer against state discrimination

against the Palestinians either as individuals and or as a collective. The

ediﬁce which had been built was such that only direct legal challenge

to Israel’s ethical and ideological raison d’être would have attained such

a role for the legal system, and this would have been suicidal for most

of its practitioners.

The activist core within the Palestinian minority did not conﬁne its

opposition to speeches in the Knesset and appeals to the Supreme

Court, but attempted to galvanize their public with a series of demon-

strations (in fact, the ﬁrst recorded demonstrations by Palestinians in

Israel were not against the law of citizenship but against the policy of

land expropriation). These demonstrations were brutally dispersed by

the army, and the local military governors imposed severe punishments

on the demonstrators who were arrested. Pre-emptive measures were

also common: whole villages were declared a ‘closed military area’

whenever the Shin Beit (the general security service, which we will refer

to from here onwards by its Hebrew acronym as was done by the people

themselves, the Shabak) had early knowledge of the intention to hold a

meeting or a demonstration. Hence the army could act against the

demonstrations behind a veil of secrecy and silence, without anyone in

the outside world knowing or reacting.

Palestinians have continued to demonstrate until this very day, but

this has always involved clashing with the full might of the Jewish state.

Already then, more often than not, in the case of a Palestinian demon-

stration, the army was appended to the anti-demonstration forces.

That usually meant more large-scale arrests, and a greater likelihood

of wounded and even dead demonstrators.

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44 | THE FORGOTTEN PALESTINIANS

The demonstrations against the law of citizenship included a

half-day strike, another mode of protest that would be used often

by the Palestinians as a collective national group, even before they

were recognized as such by others. As one of the ﬁrst Western political

scientists to be interested in the Palestinians in Israel, Joel Migdal,

noted, the modes of protest of the Palestinians in Israel were similar to

those adopted by other Palestinian groups. In his view they were a

mixture of realpolitik and self-assertion, namely ones that could be

tolerated by the powers that be to a certain extent but at the same

time solidiﬁed the collective identity.

We will come back to this

assertion when we discuss the junctures, such as in 1976, 2000, 2006

and 2009, when demonstrations were perceived by the authorities as

transcending the lines of tolerated activity.

The struggle against exclusion through the law of citizenship very

early on distinguished the Palestinian struggle inside Israel from that of

other Palestinian groups. The former wanted to be recognized within

the Jewish state, while other Palestinian forces were struggling against

the very idea of a Jewish state. In general we can conclude by saying that

until 1966, the state responded to these political and national impulses

with a mixture of alienation and oppression through the imposition of

harsh military rule. The community as a whole was suspected of being

a strategic threat to the state. The Israeli political elite’s plan for the

future included contemplating further ethnic cleansing and conversion

to Judaism, while little attention was given to Palestinians’ welfare and

well-being. The trauma of 1948 was in no way over by the end of 1949.

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CHAPTER TWO

THE OPEN WOUND

MILITARY RULE AND ITS LASTING IMPACT

THE MILITARY RULE imposed on the Palestinians in Israel deserves a

book of its own, but almost like the Nakbah itself, it is still repressed by

the traumatized victims and the guilt-stricken victimizers. The rule was

imposed on every area that had a large Palestinian population and was

based on the British Mandate’s Emergency Regulations. It lasted until

1966 and it affected every walk and aspect of life. ‘Hamimishar Ha-Zevai’

in Hebrew means ‘military rule’. But it was not only a noun describing

a legal reality, it was also the name of a unit within the Israeli army that

supervised a group of governors ruling under the regional commanders

of the army in the south, north and centre of the country. These ofﬁcers

had executive, legislative and juridical powers that only a very dictatorial

state possesses in modern times. Military rule scarred the Palestinians

in Israel for life, as much as the Nakbah tormented the Palestinians as

a whole.

Recollections of military rule are bitter and unpleasant – not only for

the Palestinian citizens themselves, but for the more conscious Jews

who were in powerful positions at the time. One governor-general

recalled how poor villagers felt obliged to give a royal reception,

comprising a sumptuous meal and very generous hospitality, every time

he or other governors visited, always accompanied by a large entourage,

as their livelihood totally depended on these guests’ goodwill.

The

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late Emil Habibi brought all these bitter memories to the fore in the

adventures of his ﬁctional hero, Saeed Abu al-Nahs, in his most famous

novel, The Secret Life of Saeed, the Pessoptimist, in which Saeed succeeds

in surviving the humiliation and degradation of his daily encounters

with governors and ofﬁcials, who have absolute power over his life,

by pretending to be the village’s clown and idiot.

Real life for many

was even worse. This harsh reality lasted for nineteen years, but was

not at all reported in the world at large, nor were most Israeli

Jews aware of it. In 2009, my son’s teacher told me that only through

the BA studies he undertook in his sabbatical year did he learn that

the Palestinians in Israel had lived under military rule. This ignorance

is still typical among many educated and professional Israeli Jews

today.

But it would be wrong to view the period as static; people’s lives did

improve as the years went by. Therefore it is useful to divide the mili-

tary rule period into two rough phases. During the ﬁrst, up to 1957,

the very existence of the community was in question. Their presence

was regarded by important ﬁgures in the Israeli regime as ‘unﬁnished

business’, and quite a few of the politicians and heads of the security

services still contemplated the removal of the Palestinian citizens from

the Jewish state. The second phase saw a relaxation in this expulsionist

impulse and a general reconciliation with the bi-national nature of the

newly founded Jewish state.

ETHNIC CLEANSING BY DIFFERENT MEANS,

1948–1957

In general the ﬁrst period was one during which the authorities, under

the guidance of the ﬁrst Prime Minister of Israel, were looking for

ways of downsizing the number of Palestinians in the Jewish state.

Although in 1955 some members of the bureaucracy that dealt with the

Palestinian minority had already abandoned this strategy and begun

to get used to the idea of a Jewish state that would include a sizeable

number of Palestinians, others, even after 1957, wished they could ﬁnd

a way of keeping the number of Palestinians in the Jewish state to a

minimum in every possible way.

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48 | THE FORGOTTEN PALESTINIANS

During the ﬁrst period, military rule was intended as the principal

tool for alienating the Palestinians from the state.

The negative

message came across, as we shall see, not only through a series of plans

for actual expulsion, but also through a policy designed to encourage

people to leave ‘voluntarily’. In years to come, a younger generation of

Palestinians would look with disdain at their elders and accuse them

of succumbing too easily to Israeli humiliation, of surrendering their

dignity and national pride without a ﬁght.

In fact, those saying this

had no understanding of how precarious their elders’ existence had

been in a state that was contemplating a future without them. Their

steadfastness and stubborn determination not to fall prey to the Israeli

policies is a chapter of heroism not defeatism, and one of the two main

reasons for the failure of this policy; the other was the existence of

Jewish policy makers who refused to be part of such a discourse and

strategy. Fortunately, some of these were senior enough to make a

difference.

The Palestinians faced quite an elaborate system of control and

oppression. Military rule was imposed mainly on the rural areas,

while the urban centres were put under tight civilian monitoring and

control. The military rule areas were administered, as mentioned, by

the Ha-Mimshal Ha-Zvai (military rule) unit within the Israel Defense

Forces, which had its own command. The members of this unit did not

have a direct presence in the towns and the cities where Palestinians

lived but their counterparts in the ‘civilian’ authority there emulated

their mode of control and enjoyed similar wide powers; hence these

areas for all intents and purposes came under military rule as well.

Politically, the military rule unit came under the Ministry of

Defense on the one hand and the Israeli secret service, the Shabak, on

the other. A special committee met every now and then to coordinate

strategy; at its ﬁrst meeting this committee deﬁned the Palestinian

community in Israel as a ‘hostile community’ which needed to be

constantly monitored and supervised. The Palestinians were described

there as ‘a ﬁfth column’ that at any given moment could join the

enemies of the state. Senior members of the Shabak, the Prime

Minister’s Advisors on Arab Affairs, a representative of the trade union,

Histadrut, and ofﬁcials from the ‘military rule’ unit were all members

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of this committee, which ‘managed’ the Palestinian community in

Israel until 1966.

It is important to stress that initially there was no dissent inside the

Israeli political and military elite about the necessity of military rule. It

was imposed on 21 October 1948 by David Ben-Gurion and was based

on the Defence (Emergency) Regulations established by the British

Mandate in 1945, which gave unlimited control to the military gover-

nors over the Palestinian community. According to these regulations

the governor had the right to arrest people without a warrant and

detain them without trial for long periods; he could ban their entrance

to a place or expel them from their homes; he could also conﬁne them

under house arrest. He could close schools, businesses, newspapers and

journals, and prohibit demonstrations or protests. This is a formative

chapter in the history of the state; these regulations are still intact

today, although in a less direct way, and have been the basis for Israel’s

policy in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip during the long years of

their occupation.

SETTING THE LEGAL INFRASTRUCTURE

The legal instruments of the military rule imposed on the Palestinian

minority in Israel in October 1948 were issued without reference to

these Mandatory Regulations. They appeared in two forms. Ofﬁcially

they were declared only after the inauguration of the ﬁrst Knesset in

April 1949. But even before that, the provisional council ruling Israel

until the ﬁrst elections published them in its Ofﬁcial Gazette – the

governmental ordinances which were based on these regulations. The

ﬁrst ordinance to be announced in such a manner was called the Laws

and Administrative Ordinance No. 1. It granted unlimited power to the

Minister of Defense to use any of the Mandatory Regulations deemed

useful for governance. The ﬁrst to be used by David Ben-Gurion, who

was both the provisional Prime Minister and Minister of Defense, were

those allowing the state to take over abandoned property and land left

behind by those who were forced out. This was issued on 23 June 1948,

even before much of Palestine had been taken over by the Israeli mili-

tary, when there were already more than 350,000 refugees. This is the

THE OPEN WOUND | 49

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50 | THE FORGOTTEN PALESTINIANS

clearest indication of the anti-repatriation policy of Israel, which both

prevented the original owners from coming back and also barred the

access of other Palestinians to their houses, ﬁelds and businesses.

The ﬁrst ordinance was very detailed, specifying movable and

immovable property as the objects of the conﬁscation. During April

1948 whole towns were emptied of their Palestinian population, who

more or less had to leave all they ever possessed behind; the govern-

ment was then already facing a wave of private looting by Jewish

soldiers and civilians, and wanted to take control not only of the

Palestinians’ homes in the towns, but also of their factories full of

machinery, warehouses ﬁlled with food and banks full of money.

The regulations and ordinances were recognized by many in the

new state as a necessary tool for a smooth takeover. But the nature of

these regulations, and especially the fact that had been used in the past

against the Jewish paramilitary forces, created a more profound and

ethical problem for some of the jurists of the new state, especially

among the senior ofﬁcials of the Israeli Ministry of Justice. They were

aware of their positions vis-à-vis the regulations when they had been

ﬁrst presented by the British in 1945. Yaakov Shimshon Shapira, the

legal advisor to the government and later a Minister of Justice himself,

had in 1946 used the following harsh words to describe the very same

regulations he was now exercising against the Palestinians in Israel:

The regime that was established in accordance with the emer-

gency regulations has no parallel in any enlightened country. Even

in Nazi Germany there were no such rules, and the actions of

Maydanek and its like had been done out of violation of the written

law. Only one form of regime resembles these conditions – the

status of an occupied country.

At that meeting in 1946 in Tel Aviv other well-known ﬁgures in the

ministry and some of the prominent lawyers of the Jewish community

at the time raised similar objections, even if they phrased them some-

what differently.

Many of the Mapai Knesset members did strive to abolish the regula-

tions as early as 1949. They suggested replacing them with new military

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regulations that would suit the situation in the new state. But no one

took it upon himself to carry such a legislative initiative to an effective

end. Two years later, in May 1951, no one in Mapai voted against the

following Mapam proposal in the Knesset:

The Emergency regulations of 1945 that are still intact in the

state since the Mandatory period stand in stark contradiction to

the fundamentals of a democratic state. The Knesset instructs its

committee for constitutional affairs to bring to the Knesset in no

less than two weeks a draft law abolishing these regulations.

The government deemed it useful to maintain the regulations for

as long as it could, and only in the next century would this legislative

process be completed.

THE EMERGENCY REGULATIONS AS A REALITY

The legal system found it difﬁcult to cope with such a regime, and one

judge in Tel Aviv, Shalom Qassam, refused to rule on the basis of these

regulations since they stood in direct contradiction to his conscience.

The two most notorious regulations were No. 109, allowing the

governor to expel the population, and No. 110, which gave him the

right to summon any citizen to the police station whenever he saw

ﬁt. Another famous regulation was No. 111, which sanctioned admin-

istrative arrest – arrest for an unlimited period without explanation

or trial.

However, the most important was Regulation No. 125, which

became an Israeli law in 1949, allowing the Israeli government to

impose military rule on any territory within the state. Ofﬁcially,

Regulation No. 125 focused on the prevention of movement into and

out of the designated area and sometimes movement within that area.

But the prevention of movement was used by the Israeli government

to expropriate land without being interrupted by protest or by legal

action taken by the victims of this policy. Without the right to move

freely the Palestinians had very little hope of ﬁnding work outside the

restricted area (and work was only to be found in the forbidden Jewish

THE OPEN WOUND | 51

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