The Palestinians inside of Israel are those Palestinians who were not expelled during the Nakba, the catastrophe of 1948. They have a very different history than other Palestinian groups, because they were part of the Jewish state from the beginning. The other Palestinians were either refugees inside historic Palestine or outside historic Palestine; they came under Egyptian rule in the Gaza Strip or Jordanian rule in the West Bank in 1967. During that very time, between 1948 and 1967, Palestinians in Israel were put under military rule.

Yes, military rule is now familiar to most people when it refers to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. It’s the same military rule based on the same British colonialist regulations that gives the army a totally free hand in regulating the life of the occupied population. The army can take people to prison without trial, they can destroy their houses, and, of course, in some cases expel or shoot them. This was the reality for Palestinians inside of Israel until 1966.

While Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank came under Israeli rule after 1967, the situation for Palestinians inside of Israel got better during this time. They became citizens. I would not say full citizens, but at least they were not subjected to military rule anymore.

But they suffered from more hidden kinds of segregation and discrimination. Much of this discrimination was, however, not yet legalized. Before the 2000s, most Israeli politicians tried, at least in theory, not to push for legislation that discriminated against people because they were Arabs and not Jews.

Yes. In 2000, the Israeli political elite began to legislate against Palestinians in Israel. All kinds of unofficial practices against them suddenly became legal. For instance, Palestinians always had very limited access to land — they could not expand their areas — but now it also became illegal for them to do so. It was also forbidden for them to talk about the Nakba.

All of this culminated in the Nationality Law in 2018, which officially stated that Palestinians can be individual citizens of Israel, but they cannot be part of a national community. And this refers not only to 1948 territory — from the river to the sea, there is only one nation, the law says, and this is the Jewish nation. There is no other nation there.

The discrimination against Palestinians inside of Israel is not as dramatic as in the West Bank, not to mention what’s happening in Gaza. But compared to Jewish citizens, they are second-rate, if not third-rate, citizens. Even before the changes of law in the early 2000s, as I argue in the book, they were living in a semi-apartheid state — some even say a full apartheid state. Palestinians were discriminated against all along because of who they were and not because of what they did.

Yes, we always joke about that. A sociologist in Haifa said, there is no need for a sample, because he knew all of them. I mean, Zionism is a colonialist movement that colonized Palestine for the last 120 years. But it is one of the few colonial movements that never learned the language of the colonized people and never mingled with them.

Even in apartheid South Africa, there were more relationships between whites and Africans than there [are relationships between Israelis and Palestinians] in Palestine. But that’s the nature of Zionism: it is a Jewish supremacy and exclusivity, and therefore the pressure on mixed couples is huge. Most of them find themselves outside the country eventually.

There is very strong segregation, particularly in the education sector. But the universities are a mixed space, the businesses as well. Public transport is not segregated. As one scholar has argued: This is not a petty apartheid. You don’t have separate toilets, benches, or buses. The segregation is much more hidden.

So, yes, there are meeting places. But I’ll give one example to illustrate my point: Israel created several development towns in the north of the country. The idea was that these would be exclusively for Jews and increase their number in the Galilee, because Israel was worried that there were too many Arabs in the area. This was a project called the Judaization of the Galilee.

There was, however, a lack of opportunities in the Palestinian villages around these towns. As a result, those Palestinians who were a bit better off were willing to pay twice or three times the rent in order to move to those new areas. These supposedly pure Jewish towns are now much more mixed than they were before. Sometimes life is simply stronger than state ideology. So there is interaction between the groups all the time. I was born in Haifa, where the interaction is probably even more visible.

The problem is that the political system, the cultural system, the education system — they all try to deliberately destroy this interaction and genuine coexistence. So from above, there is a great effort to make sure that this kind of living together is not nurtured and cannot develop. If you left it to people themselves, I think it would naturally develop. But if it develops, it defeats the whole idea of an exclusive Jewish state. The members of the Israeli political elite don’t want that.

That’s like saying because India had a female prime minister for a moment, the situation of women in India is absolutely fine. Of course, such symbolic achievements are important, but they never indicate the reality on the ground.

Most people under the poverty line in Israel are Palestinian citizens. They are constantly discriminated against, by the police, by the criminal system, everywhere. Not to mention the fact that if they express their Palestinian identity individually or collectively, they are in danger of being imprisoned in their own homeland.

Let’s take the health system for instance: Israeli doctors have immigrated in large numbers, and some of these positions were filled by Palestinian citizens. Normally it is very difficult to get into Israeli health facilities because there are quotas in these facilities. During the time when the Communist Party was quite powerful in Israel, Palestinians could complete their medical studies in the Eastern Bloc. Now they are doing it in Italy and Romania.

It is the same issue as in the mixed towns: sometimes reality defeats ideology. But if a Palestinian doctor today dares to show compassion with the children of Gaza, they are threatened with suspension, just because they put a humane post on Facebook.

When Israel was established, at least until 1967–68, it wanted to have a good relationship with both the Soviet Union and the United States. It also hoped that Jews from the Soviet Union would eventually immigrate to Israel. This is why it allowed the Communist Party to operate, whereas, for instance, any attempt of Palestinians in Israel to establish a pure national party was barred.

Some Palestinian people might have been attracted to socialist or Marxist ideology, but many of them found it to be the only party where they could express themselves as Palestinians. It was the only party in which Arabs and Jews were equally treated. There were other Palestinians in other parties, but they mainly served as tokens there. They were not treated as equal members. In the Communist Party, Palestinians and Jews were working on equal footing and treated each other with respect and equality. Probably, they had the best model for how life should have been.

Once Israel ceded its relationship with the Soviet Union — namely, when it was clear that the Soviet Union sided with the Palestinian liberation movement — Israel became less positive toward the Communist Party.

And like everywhere else in the Arab world, the Left did not deliver. It did not deliver the liberation of Palestine; it did not bring social justice, democracy, and rights. So a lot of people went to other ideological places. In Israel, Palestinians were attracted to a purer national identity, with no need to cover it up with communism, and to political Islamic ideologies.

No, there weren’t, because of two things: First, in the 1970s, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) decided that each Palestinian group should fight for the liberation of Palestine according to the circumstances in which it found itself. There was no pressure on the Palestinians in Israel to join the guerilla warfare that other Palestinian groups were engaged with, either in the occupied territories or from the refugee camps. Second, the Palestinian political and intellectual leadership in Israel made the strategic decision not to use guerilla warfare to secure their rights and contribute to the Palestinian cause.

This was a very conscious decision. And there was of course always the fear of a possible Israeli reaction. As we can see in Gaza today, such a reaction would have certainly been genocidal.

As I said, already from 2000 onward and especially since the election of the right-wing government in November 2022, the policy of the Israeli government and parliament became very harsh toward Palestinians, through both legislation and through practices on the ground. That was even before October 7. And another thing that had nothing to do with October 7 was the way that Israel allows criminal gangs to operate freely in the Palestinian villages and areas.

These are gangs of young people who are heavily armed — and nobody is trying to disarm them. Neither the police nor the secret service nor the army. They are allowed to operate absolutely freely. They are mostly engaged in fighting each other for space and territory. But as always, a lot of innocent people are being hit. Almost every day, we have a murder, including murders of children. It is very clear that some of them were collaborators with the Israeli secret service before the Oslo Accords, and they were recruited from the occupied territories. The Israeli government feels as if it benefits from what they call “Arabs killing Arabs.” That’s why they don’t care if people in Palestinians villages are terrorized.

October 7 was used as a pretext to remove even the little freedom of expression and protest that Palestinians in Israel used to have. Israel acted as if what Hamas did was something the Palestinians in Israel did. Therefore, they are not allowed to demonstrate any compassion to the Palestinian babies in Gaza. It is considered support for terrorism. People get arrested for such things without trial. This is why many people are afraid to speak out; they fear they might lose their jobs or be arrested. As one of the leaders of the Palestinian community in Israel put it, it is even worse than the days of military rule between 1948 and 1966. It is a very difficult and dangerous moment in the life of this community.

We had hoped that, once the initial shock and trauma had passed, those who still regard themselves as liberals in Israel would realize that the only way to change Israel is through the formation of a strong alliance between Palestinian and more progressive Jewish citizens. But that is not happening. October 7 turned those who regarded themselves as liberal Zionists into more extreme right-wing Zionists. So we don’t really have liberal Zionist political forces anymore. That means that the Palestinian community in Israel will be further isolated.

But that is in the short term. In the long run, I think that October 7 was a wake-up call that the way the Jewish state was developed — as a supremacist state, a racist state based on oppression, occupation, and ethnic cleansing — is not working.

Yes, Israel is still powerful and has powerful allies, and the Palestinians are weak and cannot liberate themselves or end their oppression. But they will continue their struggle. And the world is beginning to understand that they are the victims — and not Israel. These processes will persist. We can already see that those Israelis who want a normal, democratic, liberal life don’t find it in Israel. They go to places like Germany or elsewhere. And those left behind don’t seem to be capable of running a state.

I am not sure the United States will always be there to pay for Israel’s expenditures. We can also see that the international community has had enough, at least the civil society. Yes, this has not impacted many governments yet, but it will surely happen. Therefore, I think that, ironically, the Palestinians in Israel are the only people who can offer a bridge from the unacceptable reality of apartheid, genocide, and ethnic cleansing to genuine coexistence — as it existed in Palestine before the arrival of Zionism.

Yes. And one day, when there will be reconciliation and a different reality between the river and the sea, they are the ones who can create a win-win situation for both sides. Because if not, instead of restitution, we get retribution, and that is terrible to think about. That is why the Palestinians in Israel are such an important community. And instead of understanding that their future really is in the hands of this particular group of Palestinians, the Israelis are limiting and destroying it.