Lives of Palestinian citizens under constant threat in Israel’s ‘sick society’: Ex-Palestinian Knesset member

By Muhammed Enes Calli

ISTANBUL (AA) - Israel’s violent and bloody campaign against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip has killed more than 15,000 Palestinians, including well over 10,000 children and women, and displaced at least 1.7 million others.

While Gazans are suffering what many have described as one of the worst humanitarian tragedies of the current century, Palestinians in the West Bank have also been facing increasing Israeli aggression and violence.

Since Oct. 7, more than 240 Palestinians have been killed and over 2,850 others injured by Israeli forces in the West Bank, while more than 3,200 have been arrested or detained.

But there is another entire group of Palestinians suffering at the hands of Israel: the Palestinian citizens of Israel, who constitute over 20% of its total population.

“I feel that we are the missing 1.7 million Palestinians,” Sami Abu Shehadeh, a Palestinian-Israeli politician who leads the Balad party, told Anadolu in an interview.

Balad is a party dedicated to advocating for the rights of the Palestinian people in Israel, and Abu Shehadeh, 47, served as a member of the Knesset from 2019 to 2022.

“Most of the world doesn’t know about us. They don’t know about our existence. When the state of Israel was established in the war of 1948, which brought about the Palestinian Nakba, the Palestinian catastrophe, the state of Israel was established on the ruins of the Palestinian state,” he said.

Since 1948 until today, Palestinians in Israel have been suffering “from racist policies,” condemned to the “periphery of everything in the state of Israel,” he said.

“We are underrepresented in everything in the state of Israel; in the government, in the Knesset, in all the important government authorities, in all the important decision-making processes, in sports, in culture, in everything. So this is why most of the world doesn’t know about us,” he said.

After 1948, some Palestinians remained in present-day Israel, while others stayed in the Gaza Strip, which is why many people like Abu Shehadeh have relatives in Gaza.

“I am living in the city of Jaffa, which is part of the city of Tel Aviv. In the war of 1948, 98% of the population in my city was expelled,” he explained.

“Those who went south are living as refugees in Gaza nowadays. So, when the state that I am a citizen of, Israel, is bombing Gaza, they are killing my family and all the relatives of the families here in Jaffa.”

- ‘This is a sick society’

Abu Shehadeh and his wife have both lost relatives in Israel’s attacks on Gaza.

Apart from the personal loss and grief, he said life itself has become much more difficult for Palestinian citizens of Israel, to the point where they are even “prevented from saying that we are against the war.”

“If you do not adopt the Israeli narrative, exactly how it is being spoken by the Israeli army spokesmen, you are considered a terrorist supporting Hamas,” he said.

“Those who are talking about peace, cease-fire and the end of bloodshed are considered illegitimate voices. And the extremely crazy people that are talking about atom bombs, total destruction of Gaza, and the killings of people in Gaza are considered legitimate. This is a sick society.”

We are seeing many people who have “lost their sanity and their humanity,” he said.

He said there is a lot of support from people for all the destruction and the bloodshed in Gaza, who “think that this is not enough.”

“Few days ago, a very important poll was published regarding Israeli public opinion, and there is a huge majority that thinks that the Israeli military is not using enough violence. Imagine with all this destruction and killing of children and women. There’s still huge support for that,” he said.

“It’s very dangerous because I think Israeli society is a sick society. The way they are learning history and the way they are brought up on the narrative of the Holocaust and the narrative of being the victim all the time, all across history, is making the vast majority in the population blind to the pain and to the suffering of the Palestinians.”

He emphasized that only “a very small minority” within the Jewish Israeli community in Israel advocates for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without a military solution.

Despite being a former lawmaker, Abu Shehadeh himself faced Israeli police brutality because of an anti-war protest in Nazareth, the largest Palestinian Arab city inside Israel.

Although the protest had less than 50 people, making it legal without a permit, police used force to disrupt it and detained Abu Shehadeh for hours.

“I have a very severe eye problem. I’m nearly blind … The police started shouting and pushing me … and continued violently pushing and shouting. Then I asked them why they were doing this. So they told me that I was detained,” he said.

“They took me to the police station nearby … We were telling them that this is illegal, this is against the law. They said what are you talking about? There is no law.”

- ‘Netanyahu has ended his political career’

On the potential consequences of the current Gaza crisis, Abu Shehadeh thinks Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “has ended his political career.”

For him, it is certain that Netanyahu and “those who led Israel to this crazy situation” will be pushed out, including part of the leadership of the Mossad intelligence service and other security services.

“The Likud party, which has led Israeli politics in the last two decades, is going to be much weaker than what it is now. We are going to see a change in Israeli politics. The problem in this change is that we are not hearing serious Israeli politicians and leaders that are talking about peace, justice, and equality for all,” he said.

“We are not seeing serious leadership which is presenting a different view for the Israeli audience, a different way of thinking about a better future for all Israelis and Palestinians.”

Abu Shehadeh believes Israel is also “paying a very high price for its war” in terms of diplomatic relations and how it is viewed in the world.

“I think that a lot of the Arab world and a lot of the Islamic world and a lot of other states have seen what we have been talking about all the time; that Israel has nothing to do with a democratic regime, that Israel is very far from a democracy, that there’s a lot of racism within the state of Israel, and that it is a dangerous state, not just for the Palestinians, but that the foreign policies of Israel are dangerous for all its neighbors,” he said.

From international supporters of Netanyahu and the Israeli government, particularly the US, “we cannot expect anything,” he added.

“The United States of America is part of the war … They are responsible for the crimes that are happening against my people in Gaza,” said Abu Shehadeh.

“They are sitting in this Cabinet and they are part of the decision-making. They supported Israel with weapons, with missiles, economically and politically. So they are part of the war. And they are also paying a price for this one-sided foreign policy.”

However, he added that there are a lot of countries at the moment “who will support a Palestinian state.”

“I’m feeling that this time we will get … a much more serious peace process that might lead to a better future,” he said.

“We have the chance … to bring the whole area out of this ongoing conflict … to end this conflict and to build a better, peaceful future for all of the people who are living in this part of the world.”