The Proletarianization of Palestinians in Israel (ص 238)
غرض
- عنوان
- The Proletarianization of Palestinians in Israel (ص 238)
- المحتوى
-
claim.
238
"From thinning out peaches one week a year to leasing land
and residence in the moshav, that process of transferring
land from Jews to Arabs is a slow process which can go on
for years [says Peretz], but today we are at the beginning
of a chain of events, starting with work on plantations,
then work in the fields, milking the cows, lodging at the
moshav and leasing land -- one leads to another. If we
let normal economic processes operate in the State of Is-
rael -- and we should take into account that the Arab pop-
ulation is pushed into all areas which require manual work,
thus marginal as far as income is concerned -~ a situation
will be crdated in which the owner of a farm will decide,
for reasons of convenience and utility, to live in Tel-Aviv
and maintain Arab employees on his farm (turning into ab-
sentee landlords). It would not be because he prefers
Arabs on his land, but because there are no Jews who are
prepared to be agricultural workers. Hence, we will reach
a stage in which the Arab population will hold most of
the territories and that will cause an endless struggle
between the two nations."
Peretz proceeds:
"On the one hand, we have a million Arabs for whom getting
a piece of land and being an owner of land from which one
can make a living is a tremendous achievement. On the
other hand, we have Jews, members of moshavim, who see
alternatives to the farm. At first, that process will
ruin the village they live in, socially, but in the long-
run it might be a threat to the State as a whole."
Yaacov Galan, another moshav member, a descendant of an old Biluist
(Bilum -- early settlers in the 1880s). In support of the admittance of
Arab labor to the moshav, he argued:
"In my opinion, there was no difference between our atti-
tude towards the Arabs and the attitude of the Gentiles
towards Jews in the Diaspora. The objection to Arab labor
in Beer Tuvia is a discrimination against the Arab worker.
This is an almost religious objection, based upon the
ideology of our fathers: self-work, Jewish work, etc.
But things have changed. I argue, the Jew, precisely be-
cause of what happened to him, cannot say: the Arab,
since he is an Arab, will not work on my farm. And if
that was the decision, then it should be an uncompromising
one. Either they will not work at all -- neither in con-
struction, nor in garbage sweeping, nor in cleaning the - تاريخ
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- المنشئ
- Najwa Hanna Makhoul
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