Nimer Sultany writes:

On Tuesday, in my hometown of Tira, which is inside Israel’s pre-1967 borders, the shops were closed and the streets were empty. A general strike had been declared in protest over Israel’s policies, whether the ethnic cleansing in Sheikh Jarrah, the storming of al-Aqsa mosque, or the onslaught on Gaza.

As the Palestinian death toll continues to rise, commentators lament the shattering of coexistence inside Israel between Palestinian and Jewish citizens. Yet in my experience as a Palestinian citizen in Israel, no such coexistence existed in the first place. Coexistence implies a background of equality, freedom and mutual respect. In the context of Israel’s rule over us, however, coexistence is a fiction that conceals a reality of separate and unequal lives.

Like the vast majority of Palestinians inside Israel, I grew up in a separate Arab community and was educated in a separate Arab school system, from kindergarten to high school. As a law student, I was not able to rent a flat in the city of Rishon LeZion because of my background, and needed the help of a Jewish family friend, who signed the lease instead of me – to deceive those who are prejudiced. As a young lawyer, I needed medical treatment after I was assaulted in October 2001 by several baton-wielding police officers; residents of my home town were protesting against the confiscation of land, including that which belonged to my family. Every time I travelled abroad to study, I was racially profiled at the airport.

I have always found it puzzling that so many would argue that the problem lies merely in Israel’s 1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. But the facts are there for all those who want to see them. Israel’s political and legal system is fundamentally unequal. It glaringly omits the formal principle of equality from the bill of rights; it enables hundreds of Jewish communities to exclude non-Jews from residence; its constitutional law declares that Jewish settlement is a supreme value for the state; and Israel’s leaders repeatedly assert that Israel is not a state of all its citizens because it is a Jewish state. Israel’s courts are part of the problem as they sanctioned the colonisation of our lands and our general subordination, our exclusion from basic rights. [Continue reading…]