January 19, 2003	Sunday	Ziqa'ad 15, 1423

TEL AVIV: A group of young Arab men are sitting in the courtyard of a lovely but not quite finished house on a cold night, huddled for warmth around a small fire. They are drinking strong coffee, talking, about the upcoming Israeli elections, and waiting for bulldozers that could come and destroy the house.

House demolition is usually a normal state of affairs in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It is used by the Israeli government as punishment for and as a deterrent against terrorism. The young men gathered against the chill this evening are not in Gaza or the West Bank. Nor are they suspected terrorists.

Depending on who you talk to, they are either in or just outside the northern Israeli town of Ara, a village well within the “Green Line” recognized internationally as the legitimate border of Israel. They are Israeli citizens. But they are also Arabs.

“There is no democracy for Arab people (in Israel),” says Assad, one of the young men around the fire. “Just for the Jewish people”.

Case in point is the land just outside what Israel officially considers the border of the village of Ara. The village’s inhabitants say that the land is theirs.

The army confiscated it but it remains vacant. Residents and human rights activists maintain the confiscation was a pretext for the eventual development of the area by Jewish Israelis.

Prior to the confiscation, Ara residents had farms in the area, but these dwindled and eventually disappeared in the 1980s. Israeli society moved on, so did the people in Ara. They became doctors, lawyers, teachers, and labourers. And their families continued to grow. Muanis Weeshahi, in whose unfinished house the men are sitting, is engaged to be married in May. Two years ago, his father paid for the land and the house being built on it — 150,000 US dollars.

Three other houses in various stages of construction are nearby. But in the last few days, the authorities gave notice that “illegal houses” would be demolished because of the lack of permits. One local man had his house demolished, and one week later received the permission he had originally sought to build it. Determined not to let this happen again, the people of Ara are holding 24-hour vigils, and they swear they won’t leave.—dpa