User:Tiamut/Ard
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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.