cover image Citizens Apart: A Portrait of Palestinians of Israel

Citizens Apart: A Portrait of Palestinians of Israel

Amina Minns. St. Martin's Press, $34.5 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-685-38700-9

Palestinian Arabs in Israel comprise 17% of that nation's population. This forcefully argued polemic charges that they are an oppressed minority, victims of a policy of official neglect and discrimination which permits their lands to be confiscated, building permits denied, the teaching of their culture and heritage forbidden in schools. Minns, a social anthropologist, and Hijab ( Womanpower: The Arab Debate in Women at Work ) claim that Israeli Jewish authorities seized most of the Palestinians' land between 1948 and 1966, when Arab towns were under Israeli military rule. The book describes the efforts of today's grass-roots community groups to counter what they see as the government's policy of deliberate nondevelopment of Palestinian Arab schools, social services, housing and sanitation. The authors' call for drastically revised immigration laws and a truly democratic ``de-Zionized Israel'' which ``works for all of its citizens'' adds to the controversial nature of this impassioned report, based in part on field trips conducted between 1987 and 1989. (May)