'It's like the situation of Irish freedom fighters

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When Andrew Hornung recently visited Israel, he talked to Palestinians there ab.

out the oppression they live under and their fight against it THE road from Afulah to Hadera is called the Wadi Ara. From the arid valley bottom where the main road runs, smaller dusty roads rise winding to the many big villages hung on the hillsides. As you climb the road to Umm el Fahm you notice a hammer and sickle painted boldly on the side of a house.

I didn't need this sign. In Beersheva, a hundred miles to the South, I had said I was going to a village called Umm el Fahm. "They're all Communists and PLO members there," came the swift response.

A boy took me through the narrow streets to a tiny shop near the offices of the village council. The shopkeeper was a young man in his middle twenties.

"I was arrested twice," he said impassively. "In 1967 • with two others, colleagues from school. A colleague had left school and gone to Jordan and joined the Resistance. He came back and bombed the factory where Dodge produce military vehicles. I was charged with helping him. I was given a year in jail for that. I was sixteen and a half.

•'The second time was in December '72. I was one of thirty three then. About seventy of us were detained altogether. Udi Adiv was the main person. He was charged with leading an independent underground organisation which considered itself part of the Palestinian Resistance.

'He and the group were influenced by the ideas and analysis of the Democratic Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine because it was the only group that immediately on. its establishment declared that the exploited Jews are partners, or can be partners, of the Palestinian struggle.

'Udi Adiv was sentenced to 17 years in jail. They threw the book at him because he was Jewísh. He was probably the first Jew to be actively a militant in the Palestinian struggle. Hassan who runs the bookshop here got four years. I got six was time.

'I was released in December "78. We have both been under a restriction order - we can't go out before eight in the morning, we can't stay out after eight in the evening, we can't leave the village and we have to report to the police every day - for the last nine months. There's another three months to go, but they can renew the order."

'What was the charge that led to the detention?' I wanted to know. "Nothing - no charge. There's no court hearing. The order is handed down by the military, commander of the region and that's that."

"Is there no appeal?" 'Sure there's an appeal, but it takes a year to be heard by the High Court."

"Palestinian prisoners with Israeli citizenship are detained with criminals and the same goes for prisoners from annexed East Jerusalem. Palestinians from the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and trom the camps are kept separate, but also with criminals.

'We have demanded political status. There have been hunger strikes and appeals to the International Red Cross and the UN, because the UN Assembly passed a resolution that Israel should treat the prisoners as freedom fighters and political prisoners. It's like the situation in your country with the Irish freedom fighters"

Prisons

We talked more about the prisons, the beatings, the humiliations, the petty vindictiveness and, again, the Resistance: the strikes, the hunger strikers. 'The prisons are a school . .. This is why they try to put activists in solitary confinement and prevent young ones from coming into contact with more experienced militants.

"It's impossible for an ex-prisoner to ge work in a bank, in teaching, in a hotel or any state-run organisation. Can't get factory work. For that you need a special recommendation from the police. In every factory there's a special department, personnel, headed by a person who is usually an ex-officer with a direct link to the police.

'On the West Bank there is a lot of activity on this question.

Here there is a group of ex-prisoners who have set up a committee, the Committee for the Defence Political Prisoners, which has been active on the question and has just published a pamphlet about prisoners and their rights.

Then the shop-keeper switched to talking about the village itself. "I'll tell you something about our situation here.

"As you know, the economic base of our society, agriculture, has been destroyed. Whole villages have been destroyed and the people driven out. So we became a minority without homes. Leaders have been arrested or have left, clubs and newspapers have been closed down.

'Over the last 34 years we have gone through a new process of development. The main economic activity was farming, but. we have gradually lost out land through confiscation by the Zionists and so gradually we became workers.

'Not workers on the land but in factories, in the big towns and villages, particularly in the service sector, in hotels and suchlike. We are paid less than the Jewish workers. The West Bankers who work here get paid even less than us.

"Only a few remained farmers.

•'The authorities build no industrial base in the villages. The villages are no more than dormitories, big, bad dormitories. Umm el Fahm, for example, used to have 120,000 dunams, a very big area of land, and so the authorities confiscated the majority and now there are only . 15,000 dunams.In 1948 the population was 4,000, today it is 20,000.

Refugees

•'There are also refugees in Umm el Fahm - the refugees are not just outside the borders of Israel. These refugees come from the surrounding villages that were destroyed by the Zionists.

'Of course we are starved of funds. There is no investment in the village. The council has a budget which is about a tenth of what it would be if it were a Jewish settlement.

Villages

"And of course our villages, being old, don't already have the infrastructure - electricity, sewage systems, drainage and so on - that the Jewish settlements have from the beginning. In any case, the ministry doesn't usually approve of the budget drawn up by the council.

"Naturally the council's role is restricted. It has responsibility for a large part of the schooling, yet the police involve themselves in the appointment of teachers.

"Every student has to learn about Zionism, not a word about Palestinians. The word isn't mentioned. And our school is far too small.

•The restrictions placed on the local council led certain leftist Arab village councils to come together in a single organisation, but this was banned from the outset. The authorities could see that once Palestinians begin to organise, they will organise as Palestinians"

The Umm el Fahm council has on it four members of the front connected with the Israeli Communist Party, Rakah, of whom two are Rakah members. There are nine representatives of families, one from the Jewish religious party and two from Abna: el Balad, the Sons of the Village. The shop-keeper supports Abna el Balad.

Account

He began to give an account of Palestinian organisation within the Israeli borders.

"First there, was the El Ard movement in the middle sixties. It developed out of Nasserism and concentrated on the question of Arab nationalism and Arab unity. It didn't develop ideologically as a Palestinian movement.

•The leading members were professionals and it wasn't, organised as a political party with cells and branches. The masses sympathised but they weren't organised. So when the High Court banned it, it didn't survive.

"After the, defeat of 1967, Nasserism was very much weakened throughout the Arab world. The independent Palestinian struggle really began in this period. The Sons of the Village grew up against this background, focussing on the daily struggles of the Palestinian people.

'We believe that the basic solution is to build a democratic, socialist society in Palestine. In this society both Jews and Arabs can realise their rights. We understand that this solution cannot exist without the support of the Jews in Palestine or at least their majority.

''There can be no real national liberation in Palestine separate from socialism. So when we demand a secular, democratic society we immediately face the question of what the Jews want. They already have a bourgeois society in which they have democratic rights. Why should they destroy this to live in a common society with Arabs?

'We have to talk about a socialist society. There is a good objective basis for it.

After all, state property is already on a vast scale, rich farmers are few, individual capitalists are not strong and there is a big trade union movement, if you can call the Histadrut that.

'Abna el Balad has a programme and it has a varied activity. We believe you need to build clubs, funds, workers' comm tees, women's- organisations and so on.

'In Umm el Fahm we are fighting for a democratic workers' committee. You know there are workers' committees representing the biggest sectors like ports and Lod airport - there are thirteen of these and they can call strikes without the approval of the Histadrut.

'We are trying to build such a committee here.

Branch

'Our first branch here was in 1969. We have a club house and run cultural, political and social activities. We produce leaflets against the government's oppressive measures. We try to lead struggles for democratic rights.

'We lead demonstrations, hold public meetings on important national questions and in support of the struggle on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip and we organise commemorative events, like on June 5, the anniversary of the '67 War.

'We educate our youth and our members about Palestinian history and the situation of the revolutionary forces all over the world and about imperialism.

Subject

•'The face that we are a subject people on an occupied land is, after all, a daily reality. -And in case we forget it for a moment, here on the hill where no Jews live, the police are around to remind us.

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pamphlets that you should read Organiser no.92 July Abram Leon's book Abram Leon came to