What the War Means for Palestinians Inside Israel

In the aftermath of Hamas’s October 7th terrorist attack, Israel’s military has been bombing the Gaza Strip, where it has killed more than three thousand Palestinians. Tensions are also mounting in the West Bank, where several dozen Palestinians have been killed since last week. While the media’s focus has, understandably, been on the more than thirteen hundred Israeli victims of the initial attack, and on Palestinian civilians now facing siege and aggression in the occupied territories, there are two million Palestinians living inside Israel itself, making up approximately twenty per cent of the country’s population.

I recently spoke by phone with Amjad Iraqi—an editor at +972 Magazine and a policy analyst at the think tank Al-Shabaka who comes from a family of Palestinian citizens of Israel—to discuss how Palestinian Israelis are reckoning with this month’s events, and what the war may mean for their future. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we also discussed the distinct forms of discrimination that Palestinian citizens of Israel face, how the relationship among different Palestinian communities has changed over time, and what Hamas’s tactics mean for any future state that recognizes equal rights for its inhabitants.

How would you describe the symbolic or practical relationship between Palestinians who are citizens of Israel and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza?

Most Palestinians—about seven hundred and fifty thousand—either fled or were expelled during the 1948 war. But, after the armistice lines were created between Israel and the surrounding Arab states, you still had about a hundred and fifty thousand Palestinians on the Israeli side of the border. And the state decided to grant these Palestinians citizenship, and their descendants to this day still have that Israeli citizenship. So, historically, we are part of the Palestinian people. We originated in historical Palestine as it was understood from the British Mandate period. And we’re still part of that Palestinian society, but with this specific legal class and legal status.

How do the rights of Arab or Palestinian citizens within Israel differ from the rights of Jews in Israel?

From the early days of the state, up until 1966, Palestinians inside Israel were placed under military rule—the same infrastructure that we’re familiar with in the West Bank. There were curfews and orders and even arrests. This entailed a lot of harsh restrictions on Palestinians, including on their political organizing, and social and cultural expression. But one of the most pivotal things was that Israel confiscated masses of land—not just from Palestinian refugees who were expelled or who fled but also from Palestinian citizens inside. My home town, Tira, shrank by about a third from its original size. Military rule was lifted in 1966, and since then you’ve had this gradual progression, let’s say, of Palestinian citizens’ rights.

But, even to this day, there is an extensive legal infrastructure that inherently makes Palestinian citizens unequal to Jewish citizens. You can go all the way back to these laws that were used to appropriate land and property. But you also have things like the Law of Return, which allows Jews from anywhere around the world to come and get automatic citizenship. Meanwhile, family members of Palestinians, even those who are citizens of Israel and who originated from that land before 1948, are actively denied that right. The Citizenship and Entry Into Israel Law basically bans family unification between citizens of Israel and people in the occupied territories. This is one of the most racist laws because it is first and foremost about demographics. There is the Admissions Committees Law of 2011, which basically enables housing segregation. And these are not just ancient laws. Especially in the Netanyahu years, you had a huge proliferation of this very targeted discriminatory legislation, which inherently makes people second-class.

Do you feel that this situation has, broadly speaking, sparked camaraderie and solidarity between Palestinian communities within Israel and in the West Bank and Gaza? Or have the discrepancies between Palestinians who live in Israel and Palestinians who live in the occupied territories, for example, caused resentment instead?

It has always ebbed and flowed. In the first twenty years of Israel’s existence, Palestinian citizens inside the state were cut off from the Palestinian people. They were cut off from the rest of the Arab world. There was this enormous rupture. One second, they were part of a land that they were familiar with, and suddenly, within the space of one or two years, they became second- or third-class citizens. Their entire homeland was completely transformed and usurped.

After 1967, there’s this kind of irony that, when Israel began its occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, although it came with its own horrors for Palestinians there, for Palestinian citizens of Israel it actually opened up the community. Suddenly they were able to connect with family and others in the West Bank and Gaza. People were able to cross the Green Line. This idea of a one-state reality is not a recent invention. It happened the moment soldiers set foot in the Jordan Valley and on the Gaza coast, in 1967.

Ever since, Palestinian citizens have been reviving and restoring connections both on the personal and the collective level. And you see this steady trajectory of Palestinian generations returning to their identity of Palestinian-ness, especially this younger generation. With every passing decade, those connections only get stronger. You have organizations, you have political parties, you have cultural centers. And, even now, social media. Of course, there’s been a lot of repression and blockage, and inequality, but that was one of the openings.

Can you talk a little bit about the 2021 protests, and what they represented along these lines?

The real source and spark began in Jerusalem. You had these two struggles that were going on. One was around Jerusalem, specifically Damascus Gate, and of course the holy sites, such as Al-Aqsa, where Israeli police were using restrictions and brutality against a lot of worshippers and protesters. And, at the same time, you had this parallel struggle where Jewish settlers were basically trying to force out Palestinians from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.

These two parallel struggles galvanized a lot of Palestinian society across borders. And, as these struggles intensified in Jerusalem, you then had Palestinian citizens of Israel coming out into the streets. You also had Hamas enter with rocket attacks under the pretext of defending Jerusalem. And this led to a war in Gaza as well. Those events then became dual dimensions of what Palestinians call the Unity Intifada or the Dignity Intifada. This restored a sense of pride, and there was a synchronized resistance to the regime.

The flip side of that was also this violence which was being imposed by the state. You had the bombardment of Gaza. You had the brutality that was happening in Jerusalem and the threat of settler takeovers. Inside Israel, you had police brutality across Palestinian towns, and especially in mixed cities like Jaffa and Haifa, where there were some clashes between Jewish and Arab citizens. Though you had some violence on both sides, even inside the state there was a colossal asymmetry.