FRFI 169 October / November 2002
Interview with Mohamad Kanaana, General Secretary of the People of the Homeland Movement
One of the organisations FRFI met at the Assisi Anti-Imperialist Camp in August was Abnaa el Balad, People of the Homeland, a Palestinian organisation working within the pre-1967 borders of Israel. Lindsey Powell interviewed its General Secretary, Mohamad Kanaana or Abu Asaad for FRFI.
FRFI: What is People of the Homeland, and what are its objectives?
People of the Homeland: People of the Homeland is an Arab movement, active within the Arab population and operating within the historic borders of Palestine. Our goal is a secular, democratic state within the historical borders of Palestine. We believe that what happened in 1948 was a huge injustice towards the Palestinian people and we refuse to recognise the exclusive Jewish state. The movement is active within the Arab population inside Israel on several levels. We have connections with other Palestinian forces that believe in the same solution as ourselves. However, we also have relationships with progressive, non-Zionist, Jewish organisations which also believe in the democratic state of Palestine.
Our political aims are firstly, to fight for the right of return for all Palestinian refugees to the cities and towns that they were expelled from; secondly, to build a secular and democratic Palestine, and thirdly, to found a United Arab socialist bloc from the Atlantic to the Gulf.
What is the historical background of the organisation?
Abnaa el Balad was founded in 1964 after the criminalisation of the Arab land movement in Israel. Its purpose was to continue the land movement. In the beginning, our main activity was in the Arab villages fighting against the local conservative leaderships who collaborated with the Israeli security institutions. Later on many radical left students entered the movement so we could also find a place within the Arab universities. At the beginning there was a struggle between the right wing and the left wing within the movement, but the right wing was defeated. After 1976, Abnaa el Balad started to adopt the radical position on the question of Palestine, that is, the establishment of one democratic state.
Our movement doesn’t participate in Israeli elections, we don’t participate in the Israeli Knesset because we consider this parliament to be the summit of the Israeli establishment which makes all laws against the Arabs and which also represents the Zionist existence in our land. Every party that wants to participate in the elections has to swear allegiance to the Israeli state as the state of the Jewish people and to follow all Israeli laws, and we would never do that.
Do you have links with any of the resistance organisations in the liberation movements in the Occupied Territories?
We are a part of the Palestinian liberation movement and we have a relationship with the resistance organisations. We support all Palestinian organisations fighting for the same purpose and we support the Intifada. We are considered to be a part of the radical and revolutionary Palestinian left. However, we are a movement that is active in a legal and public way within the Arab masses inside Israel.
Would you describe the political work that your group carries out and how it has developed since the start of the Intifada?
Firstly, Arab people inside Israel are faced with many obstacles when trying to carry out political work. The might of the Israeli government affects Arab people in all aspects of their life: at work, at home, and within their education. In spite of this, we organise activity and action to express our solidarity with the Intifada and for the specific demands of the Arab population living inside Israel, especially against land confiscation and house demolition.
In October 2000, at the beginning of the Intifada, 13 Palestinians were murdered and hundreds injured or arrested by Israeli security forces. Politically active Arabs are always persecuted by Israeli security. I have been arrested dozens of times by Israeli security forces; after every public occasion I am arrested and interrogated. My first experience in the cells of the Israeli interrogation police was when I was 15 years old. I was tortured several times. Hundreds and thousands of our comrades have been arrested and tortured by the Israeli security forces. Some of our comrades from the West Bank and Gaza have even been killed by torture.
Has the political consciousness of Arab people inside Israel developed over this period?
The early days of the Intifada in October 2000 were evidence that the Arab population inside Israel had not been assimilated and it was also the first time that the whole Palestinian population from the Mediterranean to the Jordan jointly participated in a popular uprising.
You can divide Arab society in Israel into three generations. The first is the generation of the Nakba of 1948 that failed to prevent the Zionist occupation of Palestine. The second generation is that of the defeat of 1967 when Israeli aggression defeated the Arab world. The third is the generation of the Intifada, which proved the existence of an Arab identity amongst Arabs in Israel. This is a very complicated question, but we can say that all Zionist measures to assimilate the Arab population and make it part of Israeli society have failed. The first reason they have failed is because the Zionists consider Israel the exclusive state of the Jews throughout the world and reject citizen rights for any other nationality. The second reason is that Israeli reality is a reality of occupation so that no one can define themselves as Israeli and Palestinian at the same time. The third reason is the racist, apartheid Israeli policy towards the Arab population: the continuing land confiscation and house demolition, the discrimination in house building, in education, and in the work place. All this has forced the Arab community to renew its belief in a Palestinian identity.
For example there are 300,000 Arab citizens in Israel who are refugees in their own land. And there are also 60,000 people in more than 80 villages who live without water or electricity because the existence of these villages is not recognised by the Israeli institutions. And this is the so-called democratic oasis in the Middle East!
What has been the response of People of the Homeland to the arrest of Palestinian fighters by Arafat, and the role of the Palestinian Authority in branding certain parts of the liberation movement as terrorists?
We denounced the arrest of Palestinian fighters by the Authority and especially the arrest of Ahmed Sadat, the leader of the PFLP and his comrades and their gaoling under British and US control in the prison of Jericho. The Arab population is very angry with these measures of Arafat. For our movement this act is a betrayal of the Palestinian cause. We have also organised many demonstrations against these measures, but I also want to mention that after the assassination of Abu Ali Mustafa the general secretary of the PFLP [in August 2001] there have been weekly demonstrations in Israel/Palestine.
Would you say a bit more about your work with Jewish people and organisations?
Our aim is a democratic state in Palestine where Arabs and Jews can live equally. In a revolutionary comprehension of democracy, there is no problem of minorities within a democracy. In the Arab world there are many minorities and it is not a question of minority or ethnic or religious background, it is a question of citizenship. So the question of minorities in the whole Arab world, not just in Palestine, has to be solved in a democratic way, where everyone is a citizen and where there is autonomy for cultural minorities.
We have non-Arab members, Israeli Jewish members who also declare themselves as anti-Zionists and consider themselves as Palestinians. We also work together with non-Zionist trade union organisations in Jerusalem, Haifa and Tel Aviv, and now we are negotiating to launch a movement of Arab and Jewish organisations to fight for a democratic state in all the land.
The movement’s programme has three key points: the right of return for all refugees, the fight against Israeli apartheid policies and the establishment of one democratic state. We
are building contacts and communicating with many left wing Palestinian people and organisations to get the widest possible support for the project.
As Palestinians, and as victims of injustice, we feel the injustice of all the peoples of the world. Our fight is a fight against imperialism, and as Israel is in the forefront of imperialism in the region we are fighting also in the forefront of the anti-imperialist movement. It is very necessary for all anti-imperialist forces to co-ordinate and to build a front against imperialism. We adopt the slogan of Ernesto Guevara that where there is injustice that’s my homeland, and we say that where there is imperialism there is my fight.
