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Al-Ard (Arabic: الارد, "The Land") was a political movement made up of Arab citizens of Israel active between 1958 and some time in the 1970s. It was the first Arab dissident group of significance to emerge from within Israel that managed to attract the attention of parallel Palestinian nationalist movements outside.[1][2] Described as, "a non-violent, irredentist Palestinian political movement, which regarded the whole of Mandatory Palestine as an Arab territory," Al-Ard was committed to a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but expressed openness to a settlement based on the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine.[3][2][4]
Al-Ard called upon Arab citizens to boycott participation in the Knesset elections of 1959. Between 1959 and 1964, attempts to register the organization as an Israeli NGO and secure it a publishing permit largely came to naught, with some members of Al-Ard detained by the Israeli authorities for publishing a newspaper without oversight or permission in 1960. In 1964, Al-Ard was outlawed as an organization by the Minister of Defense. Three more of its members were arrested and later released into house arrest with no official charges ever laid.
Four al-Ard members formed part of an electoral list put forward for the 1965 Knesset elections, but the list was voided by the Israeli electoral authorities, the government, and the country's Supreme Court, who reiterated Al-Ard's status as an illegal organization. In 1967, three members of Al-Ard were convicted for collaborating with enemy organizations, and the movement ceased organizing by the 1970s. Many of Al-Ard's political ideas continue to enjoy some currency among Palestinian citizens of Israel today.
After bloody confrontations broke out between protestors and the police at the May Day demonstrations of 1958 in Nazareth, many Arab citizens were arrested. During an Arab public committee set up to protest their imprisonment, an alliance between Arab Communists and nationalists was forged, resulting in the establishment of a new organization called the Popular Front.[4] Attempts to officially register the organization with the Israeli authorities were denied. Regarded as potentially subversive, members were also denied travel permits by the military administration which made it impossible for them to attend meetings or lectures far from their place of residence. Some were also detained for investigation.[4] The Popular Front quickly disintegrated due to the hostile government and media reactions, as well an internal ideological split between the Communists and nationalists.[4]
The nationalists went on to establish Al-Ard, among whose founding members were Arab students from the Faculty of Law at Hebrew University.[4][5] The response of the Israeli authorities did not differ significantly from the response to the Popular Front.[4]
The emergence of Arab political organizing at this juncture is attributed by Elia Zureik to a number of factors. These include the massive expropriations of Arab-owned land in the first decade following the founding of the Israeli state, and the limited educational and employment opportunities for Arabs, which led some to try to escape across the border (one person was shot dead in such an attempt). Other factors contributing to the state of Arab resentment towards the authorities was the strict application of military rule to Arab localities which resulted, for example, in the deaths of 51 Arab citizens in the 1956 Kafr Qasim massacre. In the regional arena, there was Israel's collusion with the British and French in the 1956 Sinai Invasion and Israeli support for the French occupation of Algeria. An additional regional factor was the general level of politicization and upsurge in feelings of pan-Arabism that followed Gamal Abdel Nasser's ascent to power in Egypt in the 1950s.[4]
After its formation, Al-Ard made a number of attempts to register itself with the Israeli authorities, first, as a corporation, then as an non-governmental organization, and finally as a political party. Temporarily successful in its first endeavour, the second two efforts failed.[1]
Shortly after its split from the Arab Communist party in 1959, Al-Ard began to issue a weekly paper in that name, which the authorities quickly closed down.[2] Of this "first act" of al-Ard, Yoram Dinstein writes that it was, "[...] a newspaper filled with incitement against the State. In order to avoid the legal necessity of paying for a licence, the editors tried to give the newspaper the character of a one-time affair, publishing it under a different name each time."[5] According to Sammy Smooha, the group applied for, but was denied a permit to publish a periodical.[6] Among the subjects covered in the newspaper were the difficulties faced by Arab villagers in Israel under the rule of the military government or martial law.[7] Al-Ard's publications were confiscated in 1960, and six of the editorial staff were tried and convicted. [4]
In June 1960, seven members of al-Ard founded a corporation named Al-Ard Ltd., and attempted to register it with the Israeli authorities. The Registrar of Companies refused the application, describing their decision as "a security step and in the interests of the public." Mansour Kardosh, one of the seven and the owner of a factory in Nazareth, appealed to the Israeli Supreme Court asking it to order the Registrar of Companies to register Al-Ard Ltd. The Registrar of Companies invoked paragraph 14 of the Companies Ordinance which granted absolute discretion to the Justice Minister of Israel with no right of appeal. The Court refused the Resgistrar's argument, and upheld the appeal by Kardosh. The Registrar of Companies refused to accept the decision and appealed to the Court for a new trial. Convened in 1962, it ended with the court reiterating that the company should be allowed to register. This time the Registrar of Companies had to oblige.[5]
A subsequent request by Al-Ard to secure a legal permit to publish a newspaper was denied by the government who invoked the 1945 Defence Emergency Regulations. Appeals to the Supreme Court in 1964 were refused with the Court arguing it had no jurisdiction. Having exhausted its legal options, al-Ard took its case to the international community, circulating a petition to foreign embassies in Israel and to the United Nations.[4] Later that same year, Al-Ard was outlawed by order of the Minister of Defense. On November 11, the Supreme Court rejected al-Ard's appeal against the decision.[5][8] Three members of al-Ard were then arrested after Israeli authorities captured infiltrators at the border who they claimed had orders to meet with al-Ard. No formal accusation was made however, and the three were released into house arrest.[4]
In 1965, al-Ard organized a parliamentary slate under the name 'Arab Socialist List' in an attempt to participate in the Sixth Knesset elections. The government went to the military governor who banished four al-Ard candidates for, "provocative activities against the state." The Israeli Central Elections Committee also withheld approval for the list, seeing it as a reorganization of the al-Ard movement banned by the Minister of Defense the year previous.[4][5] The voiding of the list was appealed before the Supreme Court, but the application was denied with the Court accepting the Attorney General's plea that this was the same case as that decided the year previous in a different format.[5]
In December 1967, three members of al-Ard were convicted of giving shelter to Palestinian guerillas. The leadership of the organization fell apart, with four key members leaving Israel in the 1970s, three of whom affiliated themselves with the Palestine Liberation Organization in some capacity.[4] One of the four was Sabri Jiryis, a graduate of the Faculty of Law at Hebrew University and author of The Arabs in Israel (1966). According to Dinstein, he became involved in a "terrorist ring" after the Six day war and emigrated to Lebanon, "where he conducts anti-Israel propaganda."[5] William Frankel writes that Jiryis, who was Christian, left the Galilee in 1970, to join the PLO Executive Committee in Beirut and that he and two others, Mahmoud Darwish and Habib Qahwaji led the integration of "Israeli Arabs" into the Palestinian national struggle.[9] This resulted in the development of the "three circles" concept by the PLO, whereby it say itself as a representative of three geographically dispersed Palestinian groups: "the '1948 Arabs' (or Israeli Arabs), those from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the Palestinian diaspora."[9]
Al-Ard's political programme centered around a number of objectives, among them, "to achieve complete equality and social justice for all classes of people in Israel," and "to find a just solution for the Palestine problem as a whole, and as an indivisible unit."[2] While they called unsuccessfully for a boycott of the 1959 Knesset elections, they attempted to participate in the elections of 1965 after being outlawed as an organization in 1964.[10]
For Israeli newspapers, most of the public and the courts, "the essential aim of al-Ard is to struggle for Palestinian Arab nationalism, ignoring the will of the Jewish majority in Israel as well as the State's authorities."[4] Article 3 of al-Ard's constitution which was cited by Supreme Court Justice Vitcon as the basis for the decision to declare it "an illegal association denying the very existence of Israel," read, in part:
"An equitable solution has to be found by considering the problem as an indivisible part which has to be solved in line with the wishes of the Palestinian people, to respond to its aspirations and interests, to restore it its autonomy, to guarantee its complete and legitimate rights for being the main factor responsible for deciding its destiny in line with the high ideals of the Arab nation."[4][8]
Not recalled by the court was that al-Ard also held that, "recognition of the United Nations decision of 29 November 1947 [...] would provide a solution which would maintain the rights of both Israeli-Jewish and Palestinian-Arab people and would strengthen that stability and peace of the region."[4] Arab activists from al-Ard and those who followed in that political tradition thereafter have countered criticism that they do not recognize Israel's right to exist by pointing to this statement or making similar statements themselves. For the Palestinian Arab community in Israel, who did not share in the authorities' interpretation of events, the government's decision to ban al-Ard was perceived to be discriminatory.[4]
Al-Ard had disappeared from the public arena by the 1970s. While this was partially due to the actions of the State of Israel, the movement was also challenged from within the Arab community, particularly by the Arab Communist party who saw it as a competitive threat, even though its membership never exceeded 200 people.[1] The Communist Party denounced them in 1961 as, "reactionary national bourgoisie," even though the party itself often employed the same political rhetoric put forward by Al-Ard.[10]
The Palestinian Arab community inside of Israel, insecure and downtrodden, had never fully embraced Al-Ard, with some fearing that its actions might pose a threat to their very existence.[1] Many believed that the Communist party, an Arab party with Jewish membership that did recognize the state, would also have been shut down by the Israeli authorities had it counted only Palestinians among its membership.[2] However, despite these apprehensions, the ideas put forward by Al-Ard, particularly that of a renewed Palestinism, have reemerged among the Arab community in Israel time and again since.[1]
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