82 chapter two Described as sustained by their “uninterrupted relationship” to the land and “continued connection” to the Palestinian people, the national identity of the Arabs in Israel is explained as having withstood efforts by the Zionist project to truncate their identity into an “Israeli Arab” affiliation.73 From this, the HD outlines racially discriminatory land, economic, immigration, and citizenship laws, among others, enacted by the State of Israel, arguing that the principle of equality is a key constituent of Israeli citizenship, without which genuine Arab affiliation with the state is impossible. Significantly the HD also addresses the Jewish narrative. Of all of the published ‘vision documents’, the HD is the only statement which seriously acknowledges the Jewish narrative of persecution. Having outlined the Palestinian narrative of the Nakba and the process of the Zionist settlercolonial project in Mandate Palestine, the HD states: We are aware of the tragic history of the Jews in Europe, which reached its peak in one of the most horrific human crimes in the Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazis against the Jews, and we are fully cognizant of the tragedies that the survivors have lived through. We sympathize with the victims of the Holocaust, those who perished and those who survived. We believe that exploiting this tragedy and its consequences in order to legitimize the right of the Jews to establish a state at the expense of the Palestinian people serves to belittle universal, human, and moral lessons to be learned from this catastrophic event, which concerns the whole of humanity.74 Despite heated discussions among its drafters as to whether to include the Jewish narrative in a document meant to communicate the Palestinian social and historical experience, the HD is able to accept the Jewish narrative, but outside of a Zionist framework. In doing so, the HD illustrates that the two narratives are not antithetical to one another, providing an important preliminary framework for mutual recognition and genuine coexistence. Response to the Rise of Arab Civil Society: The Case of Ameer Makhoul The political initiatives of the Arab citizenry are shaped by the particular dynamics of their citizenship. The patterns or degrees of inclusion (whether full, partial, differential or exclusionary) are central to understanding how individuals and social collectives respond to the practices of the regime. In other words, patterns of inclusion and exclusion are 73 Ibid., 8. 74 Ibid., 15.