🤥 Palestinians in Israel live better than those in any Arab country.

Palestinians do not want to live in “any other Arab country”, they want to live in their own country, where their ancestors lived and are buried without being subject to discriminatory policies and institutionalized racism that renders them second or third class citizens.

Palestinians in Israel have higher indicators of poverty and mortality than Israeli Jews, and the institutional discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel is well documented. Nonetheless, if the standard we are using to measure quality of life is U.S. backed authoritarian regimes in the Arab world then we have a problem. 

For the first 20 years of Israel’s existence Palestinians in Israel lived under military law. Today they are subject to a host of discriminatory laws and considered to be second or third class citizens. To suggest they should be content with this status is degrading and condescending.

There are over 60 laws in Israel that discriminate and differentiate between Jews and non-Jews, most notably the right to self determination which is exclusively reserved for Jewish citizens of Israel. We are not asking you to compare the living standards of Palestinians in Israel to those in Muslim countries. We ask that you compare living standards amongst ISRAELI citizens.

The number of Palestinians who remained in what became Israel in May 1948 was about 150,000. They became entitled to Israeli citizenship under Israel’s Nationality Law of 1952. However, from 1948 to 1966, Palestinian citizens of Israel were arbitrarily placed under military administration in Israel, with their fate subordinated to the needs and interests of Jewish immigrants and Israeli security considerations. Even though they regained their freedom of movement and other rights after the military rule over them ended in 1966, they continue to be subjected to a system of oppression and domination through discriminatory policies that affect their legal status, access to land, resources and services and ultimately their human development.