Jack the Lad- in Israel, here are a couple for you to read until I finish organizing the rest of the documentation I'm gathering for you on the subject of equality (or the lack of it) in Israel for non-Jews.
This is from the perspective of an American Jew who was living in Israel. I am posting the introduction and one paragraph from Rebecca's letter. The rest can be found at this site: http://www.nimn.org/.
"WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE, MY PEOPLE?"
by Rebecca Elswit
This is a powerful eye-witness report of the Israeli police riot and attack on Palestinians at the Al-Aqsa Mosque that occured on July 29, 2001. That day, Tisha B'av on the Jewish calendar, an ultra-nationalist group, the Temple Mount Faithful, led a provative march on the Mosque carrying banners that read, "The Temple Mount is Ours!" In anger, some Palestinians tossed about 30 stones down on some Jews praying at the Western Wall, below. This was all the excuse needed for the police in riot gear to charge up the hill firing rubber buttlets. Hundreds of Palestinains took refuge in the Mosque, from which they threw shoes at the police to prevent them from entering. Hours later most of them were able to run home. Many were arrested. Rebecca Eslwit posted this heart-felt email to the NIMN email list. We thank her for sharing her experience and her feelings with us.
"then they brought another kid. and they were twisting his arm (i dont know who 'they' is, the police or the army, everything is blurry), and they were twisting it and twisting it and he was screaming and they were twisting and then it broke. and it was like behind his back, up by the opposite side of his neck. and he stopped screaming. and i started. i screamed what the hell are you doing, like, really really loudly and then i screamed some more, just noise, because i could not stop. i did not mean to scream. it just came out. and then they pushed me away and yelled at me to get out of the area. crying, choking on my sobs. i calmed down a bit, and then a religious guy said to me, baruch hashem, ken?, which is like, thank god, yeah? and i just looked at him and said in hebrew 'they are also people' and then he yelled, she thinks they are also people. and a bunch of people stood around me yelling about how i could think that, and death to the arabs,and some other stuff that i didnt understand."
The following is from the Palestinian perspective (those happy Palestinian Israelis you mentioned who are enjoying equal rights with Jews in Israel proper):
The Palestinian citizens of Israel constitute a national, ethnic and religious minority and account for 20 percent of Israel's population: 1,057,800 out of a total population of 5,757,900. They are those Palestinians who were not exiled as a result of the 1948 war, but stayed within the borders of the new state of Israel. Between 1948 and 1966, the Palestinian citizens of Israel were subjected to military rule that applied only to them. Since 1948, Israel has maintained an officially declared state of emergency.
The vast majority of the 1948 Palestinians live in all-Palestinian towns and villages, which are located in three main areas: in the Galilee in the north, in the "little triangle" in the centre, and in the Negev in the south. There are also six mixed Jewish-Arab cities.
The 1948 Palestinians are subject to a wide variety of overt and more covert forms of discrimination in their individual rights, opportunities, and provision of services. Palestinians have the lowest socio-economic status of all groups in the state, and wide gaps exist between Jews and Arabs in among other things income, health provisions, education levels, employment and housing conditions.
Under the provisions of the International Covenant for Civil and Political Rights, to which Israel is a state party, Israel is obliged to offer effective protection against discrimination to all its citizens and special safeguards for the rights of minorities.
Despite the fact that the State of Israel was founded on Zionist principles as a "Jewish homeland", nearly one million citizens or about 20 precent of the State's population are Palestinians. This community identifies itself as an integral part of the Palestinian people, while at the same time are citizens of the State of Israel, however, they are not provided with the same rights as Jewish citizens of the State. Institutionalised inequality, discriminatory policies, and informal prejudice all combine to prevent Palestinian citizens in Israel from attaining social and economic equality.
At least twenty discriminatory laws are in place which work to disadvantage the Palestinian population in Israel. The existence of these discriminatory laws has been brought to light in an international arena because it is apparent that local legal measures, including attempts to utilise the Supreme Court, cannot be successful alone in achieving equality and minority rights protections.
By 1993, the Palestinian population had lost over 80 percent of its land through State expropriation, much which was taken under the Absentees' Property Law (1950). This law classifies the land left by the Palestinian refugees in 1948 as "absentee property", and also declares that those citizens who were compelled to leave their land but who remained within the State as "present absentees". Pursuant to this law, the population of tens of Palestinian villages became "uprooted" citizens, cut off from their land and often their livelihood. Moreover, before 1948, it was estimated that between 12 percent and 18 percent of agricultural law was Waqf property. After the establishment of Israel, the Waqf was deemed to be "absentee property", transferred to the Custodian for Absentees' Property and unavailable for use by the Palestinian community. The loss of Muslim Waqf sites caused further hardships as the income generated from this land had been used for schools, clinics and orphanages, and to administer a system of charity. As a result of these losses, the Palestinian community's economic base shifted from agriculture to wage-labor and service-oriented employment. Coupled with the lack of sufficient services and resources from the government, the Palestinian minority suffers from a disproportionate share of the country's economic, social, and health-related problems.
Israel has kept the situation of the 1948 Palestinians out of the international limelight for obvious reasons, as well as the State's particular sensitivity to international opinion. While Israel has signed most of international human rights treaties, it continues to violate or disregard provisions of these covenants. As a result of these violations, the Palestinian minority has legitimate reason to request that UN actors and other State Parties to these conventions take action to guarantee Israel's compliance, namely to repeatedly hold Israel accountable for violations of the rights of Palestinian citizens of the State.