stay for the whole week and come back home only at the weekend. I will never forget the
weekly trip on that bus; it was always full of Israeli soldiers because they were heading to
a military base near al-Taybeh. That hour on the bus always seemed eternal. Along with
other students from my village, we did not have a permit to leave the village to go and
study in al-Taybeh, so we were afraid to speak with each other, consequently we never
spoke on that bus, we were even afraid of breathing. We were so afraid because we
saw other students being caught without permits and they were physically and verbally
assaulted by the soldiers and detained until their parents would take them out from the
police station and pay high fines for them to be discharged.
Also, at the university level there was a fixed quota for Arabs. Each year only two
Palestinians were allowed to attend each university in Israel. Also, in this case there were
always questions about the few Palestinian students, who managed to obtain a student
permit. Higher education was opened for us only after the 1980s. However, things did not
really change. Today, it is true that Palestinian students inside Israel don't need permits to
study, however, the barriers that they have to face in order to have access to universities
are still tough and discriminatory. The education level in the Arabs schools is quite
inferior from the Jewish-Israeli ones, which is the consequence of State discrimination in
allocation of resources. Therefore, Palestinian students will be disadvantaged, compared
to the Jewish-Israeli students, once they have to undergo the university entrance exam.
This is why many Palestinian students have to go abroad in order to enroll in universities.
Another example of today’s discrimination, which has its foundation in the military regime,
is the fact that, until today, there are no industrial zones in Arab communities inside of Israel.
It is almost impossible for Palestinians to get a permit to start an industrial activity,and this
results in a lack of income for Arab municipalities, since industrial activities could increase
the taxes paid to the Arab municipalities in Israel and help the municipalities to develop.
All the industrial zones inside of Israel belong to Jewish-Israeli authorities, even if many
of them are established on lands which belong to Arab villages. This is a clear economic
discrimination policy implemented by the State of Israel, in order to ensure that there is no
economic development and sufficiency within Arab villages.”
Admission Committees
Since the Kaadan case in 2000,115 two different frameworks for admission
committees have been created to ensure that Palestinian citizens of Israel can
still be denied the right to live in certain Israeli towns; these being the Israel
Lands Administration’s Decision No. 1015116 and the Admission Committees
115 In 1995 the Kaadan family was denied by the Katzir Cooperative Association the right to buy a house
in an Israeli town called Katzir. The argument was that the community only wanted Jewish residents.
The Kaadan family took the case to the Israeli court and in March 2000 the Supreme Court ruled that
the family could not be denied the right to move to Katzir.
116 Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, “Adalah Submits Amended Supreme Court
Petition Demanding Cancellation of “Admission Committees” for Illegally Excluding Arab Citizens of
Israel from Communities Build on State-Controlled Land”, 2010. Available at: http://www.adalah.org/
en/content/view/7112
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