Thursday, June 17, 2010

Israel's Palestinian Minority Thrown into a Maelstrom


By Jonathan Cook

"The first reports of Israel’s May 31 commando raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla surfaced among the country’s 1.4 million Palestinian citizens alongside rumors that Sheikh Ra’id Salah, head of the radical northern wing of the Islamic Movement of Israel, had been shot dead on the lead ship, the Mavi Marmara. Salah is alive, but at the time his demise seemed confirmed when it emerged that large numbers of police had been drafted into northern Israel, where most of the Palestinian minority lives, in expectation of widespread violence....

If the blockade on Gaza is justified in the minds of Israeli Jews as collective punishment of the enclave’s Palestinian population for supporting Hamas, a similar skewed logic is being applied to Israel’s Palestinian citizens. According to this thinking, those who sent Zu‘bi to the Knesset and those who revere Salah should be held accountable -- and punished -- for their representatives’ actions. The minority seems only too aware that the calls to expel Zu‘bi from the Knesset or revoke her citizenship will not end there. A poll by Haifa University in May showed that 62 percent of Palestinian citizens feared they are under threat of expulsion from Israel. And Israel’s mood is likely to grow darker still."

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