As the war between Israel and Gaza enters its eighth month, with over 45,000 Palestinian lives lost and the densely populated Gaza Strip reduced to rubble, a lesser-known crisis is unfolding within Israel’s own borders. The country’s Palestinian citizens, who make up a fifth of the population, are facing an unprecedented assault on their civil liberties and a dramatic intensification of the discrimination they have long endured.
A Precarious Existence
Life has never been easy for the roughly 2 million Palestinians who hold Israeli citizenship. Despite their legal status, they have been systematically marginalized, their identity and connection to the Palestinian homeland treated with suspicion. Laws like the 2018 nation-state bill, which declared Israel the nation-state of the Jewish people, have codified a principle of inequality.
Palestinian citizens are issued special ID cards that mark them out by race and religion, limiting where they can live and work. Even basic expressions of Palestinian identity, like discussing the Nakba—the mass expulsion of Palestinians in 1948—in public forums like schools, can lead to repercussions like withdrawal of funding. Democratic participation, while technically possible, is fraught with obstacles and intimidation.
An Escalating Crackdown
Since the outbreak of war in Gaza last October, the Israeli government has dramatically stepped up its repression of Palestinian citizens who dare to speak out. Those expressing sympathy for Gazans have been arrested, fired from jobs, expelled from universities. Hundreds were detained in just the first two months. The chilling effect is palpable, with most now afraid to voice their views even on social media.
“Palestinian professors are asking me if they can include materials about Palestinian rights in their syllabus,” says Hassan Jabareen, head of the legal center Adalah. Parents call him fearing their children studying abroad will be arrested for protesting the war upon their return. “People here feel they are under a military regime, despite being citizens.”
The Right to Protest Denied
While Jewish Israelis have held large rallies against the government and in solidarity with soldiers, Palestinians have seen their right to demonstrate systematically quashed. Organizers have been threatened with being sent to Gaza. The few permitted protests have been restricted to isolated locations under oppressive surveillance.
“We passed many wars and we have exercised our right to demonstrate…however they didn’t put a total ban on us – this is the first time that we have this kind of ban.”
Hassan Jabareen, Adalah
Veteran activists, both Palestinian and Jewish, say they have never been so afraid to protest due to the high likelihood of arrest—meaning months in prison for Palestinians. The repression is so severe that a Palestinian citizen was, for the first time, granted asylum in the UK earlier this year on the basis that it would be unsafe for him to return.
Entrenched Inequality
Of course, none of this is entirely new. Systematic discrimination has long been a fact of life for Palestinian citizens, enshrined in over 60 laws that directly or indirectly target them based on their identity. From education to employment to political participation, the disparities and indignities are entrenched at every level.
But as Jabareen warns, the draconian measures imposed under the cover of war will set dangerous new precedents, providing the pretext and legitimacy for further subjugation of an already embattled minority. “We have to fight that and we need international support to put the case of the Palestinian citizens on their agenda because, really, we are under risk.”
An Untenable Reality
For Palestinians in Israel, the realization is sinking in that even their most basic rights—to speak, to assemble, to protest injustice—can no longer be taken for granted. The illusion of equal citizenship has been shattered, the reality of their precarious existence laid bare. As one of the world’s longest military occupations grinds on next door in Gaza and the West Bank, they increasingly find themselves on the frontlines of resistance—and repression—within the self-proclaimed Jewish state.
It remains to be seen how Israel’s Palestinian citizens will weather this latest assault on their dignity and freedom. But one thing is certain: for a state claiming to be the region’s only democracy, the treatment of its most significant ethnic minority is rapidly becoming a moral and political crisis it can no longer ignore. As the Palestinian author and activist Majd Kayyal recently wrote:
“The war on Gaza is also a war on Palestinian citizens of Israel…our stance against repression and our solidarity with our people is not only a natural right but a moral duty.”
In their struggle for equality and justice, they may well find that they have more in common with those on the other side of the Gaza fence than with their self-proclaimed “democratic” state. The fallout of the Gaza war continues to reverberate through all facets of Israel’s fractured society.
