The idea of an ethnic transfer – stripping Arab Israelis of their citizenship and transferring the jurisdiction of their towns to a new Palestinian state – has always been seen as an extreme right-wing policy on margins of Israeli politics. The idea is most closely associated with Kahanists and openly racist Jewish supremacists. Yet that is exactly what President Trump’s plan, adopted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, proposes.
Under the plan, 300,000 Arab Israeli citizens in the “triangle” northeast of Tel Aviv and Wadi Ara would lose their Israeli citizenship.
NIF grantee Omdim Beyachad (Standing Together) organized a protest last week in the Arab Israeli town of Kfar Kassem, which is in the triangle region. Dozens of Jewish and Arab activists stood alongside Knesset Members, local mayors and other public figures to oppose that the racist concept of transfer and denying Arab Israelis their citizenship.
In a Facebook post, Standing Together said, “Imagine how 300,000 Israelis must be feeling to wake up this morning and find that the Prime Minister, who is meant to be their Prime Minister, has asked the US regime to include a clause in the peace plan calling for the denial of citizenship to 300,000 Israelis who were born here in their homeland and this is their place as much as it is the racists sitting in the government. This is what we are struggling for. The right of all the country’s citizens, whether Arab or Jew, even if they live in the Triangle or Wadi Ara, to know that this place is their place and the home of all of us, and that nobody can take it away from them.”