MOST observers of the Palestinian scene know that Israel does not have a constitution, but few try to know why it has chosen not to have one. The reasons are to be found less in the conflict between the religious right and the liberals and more in the Zionist entity’s eternal quest for “a final solution” to the Palestinian question.

The western media repeats ad nauseam that Israel is the Middle East’s only democracy; what it does not tell the world is that it is the only democracy in the world whose citizens do not enjoy fundamental rights.

To be meaningful a constitution must incorporate fundamental rights in it for the benefit of all of its citizens irrespective of religious and ethnic variations. However, if Israel were to have a constitution, it will have to give these rights not only to its Jewish citizens but also to the one million Arabs living in Israel.

True, Israel’s Declaration of Independence pledges “complete equality of social and political rights to all its citizens” irrespective of race and religion, but the declaration is a political document and has no constitutional value. What fundamental rights demand are written safeguards in the form of a bill of rights — as part of the constitution — against which the state’s actions could be challenged in a court by an individual whose fundamental rights had been violated. As the US State Department once noted, Israel guarantees the civil, political and religious rights of its citizens “by law”.

Amazing as it may sound, until 1995, courts in Israel did not have the power of judicial review — of the kind courts have, say, in America, where any citizen can go to a federal court to challenge a law, claiming that it is against the spirit of the American constitution. The court would then decide whether or not this was the case.

Israel never bothered to set up a constituent assembly; instead, the Knesset, which is a legislature, also serves as a constitution-making body. Over the decades, the Knesset has passed 11 “Basic Laws”, each basic law relating to some particular subject — the powers of the president and prime minister, the question of land ownership, the law of return, etc. In 1995, — hampered by the absence of a written constitution — the courts declared that they would treat the 11 basic laws as Israel’s constitution. This way Israel became the only country in the world which has a constitution of sorts given by the judiciary.

All these basic laws were passed by a simple majority. This is against the practice worldwide, because a constitution is a sacred document and must be enacted and promulgated by the will of the people, which may be in the form of a two-thirds majority of an elected assembly. Consequently, an amendment to the constitution must likewise be done through an elaborate mechanism that is tantamount to a popular ratification. This is completely missing in Israel’s case, because the basic laws were enacted by a simple majority and can be repealed or amended by a simple majority. Even more bizarre, a basic law can be suspended or repealed by emergency legislation. A sympathetic commentary on Israel’s constitution says Israeli citizens “have enjoyed a large measure of civil rights as a result of high standards of fairness” in the Israeli judicial system.

Nonetheless, it added, “certain infringements have been caused by the dictates of security.” The dictates of security obviously refer to how they view the Palestinians and their place or lack of place in Israel.

The effect of the absence of fundamental rights on Israel’s Arab population has to be seen to be believed, because Israel has now turned into an apartheid state in which Israeli Arabs are left with only two choices: either to live in ghettoes in sub-human conditions or leave Israel.

For instance, the Israeli authorities deliberately have not made a master plan for housing and development for east Jerusalem. Since housing is a basic activity which every human community must remain engaged in, the Arabs of east Jerusalem build houses on lands that have belonged to them for more than a millennium and a half. However, Israeli authorities call these houses “illegal” and demolish them. The same is true of most other Arab towns and villages which continue to shrink because Israeli authorities requisition their lands for roads and highways that either go right through Arab villages or nibble at them. There is no judicial remedy for this, because most Arab houses are supposed to be illegal since the villages themselves are regarded as illegal.

Because the villages do not exist officially, they do not get such services as water, sewerage, electricity and roads. Most Arab villagers get power through private generators, making electricity very costly, and they have to pay high fees for living in “illegal houses”.

Incidentally, Israel’s land policy is controlled not by the state but by two Zionist organizations — Jewish National Fund and Jewish Agency — which were created during the British mandate. As revealed by Susan Nathan, a most courageous Israeli woman, JNF today owns 13 per cent of land, consisting mostly of lands confiscated from Arabs. But according to its charter Arabs cannot purchase the land which was originally theirs. This is apartheid pure and simple.

An extraordinary Israeli invention is the term “Present Absentees”. This needs explaining. When fighting broke out after Britain pulled out, nearly 800,000 Arabs fled their homes. Most went to Lebanon, Jordan and other Arab countries — never to return. But hundreds of thousands fled to safer villages within Israel itself. When peace came and they returned to their villages, they found their homes flattened. By Israeli estimates, 400 — by Arab accounts 537 — Palestinian villages were levelled. Thus, present absentees are those Arabs who never left Israel and merely moved from one village to another within Israel to avoid fighting.

These Palestinians have all their movable and immovable property, jewellery and money in banks confiscated by Israel. But when they petition the courts for getting compensation for property and money lost, they are told they are “present absentees” and cannot get all that back. They cannot invoke fundamental rights because Israel does not have any.

One can understand Israel refusing to compensate those Palestinians who chose to live in Europe, America or some Arab countries. But the Zionist authorities have surpassed the Nazis in loot and plunder by refusing to compensate Israel’s own citizens, simply because they are not Jews. According to a rough estimates, the value of the lands, homes, jewellery and other assets left behind by the Palestinians — those abroad and the “present absentees” — comes to tens of billions of dollars. But the Palestinians have no judicial remedy for this.

This cruelty is heightened by the fact that the Jews themselves have managed to get from European governments every single penny for the assets seized by Germany during World War II. Instead, the money confiscated from the Palestinians is used to finance the migration of Jews to Israel from other countries.

The denial of rights to Arabs stems from the fact that Israel — official name Madinat Israel — is a state of Jews and not of all of its citizens. The law of return, passed by the Knesset in 1950, throws open Palestine for settlement to Jews from all over the world, but it does not give the same right of return to Palestine’s own sons of soil. This violates international law and the UN General Assembly Resolution 194 of December 1948 which calls for the return of the Palestinians to their homes.

Palestinian homes that escaped destruction in relatively big towns were occupied by Jewish immigrants. Susan interviewed a “present absentee”, Samira, who told her that when she finally managed to locate her house in Ein Hod, and wanted to take a look inside, its Jewish owner was angry and asked her to go away. This exactly was the case with Ghada Karmi, a Palestinian activist, who as a British citizen finally managed to reach her home decades later, but found it under the occupation of an American Jewish family.

The economic annihilation of the “present absentees” is reflected brutally in the kind of quiet and insidious war that is being waged against the Palestinians’ means of livelihood. Figures that are at lest half a decade old show that the Israeli authorities have destroyed 150,000 olive and citrus trees belonging to the Palestinians to make way for Jewish settlements and parks. Jews in kibbutzim keep an eye on their neighbours and report to the authorities if they see any signs of construction. Improvised reservoirs storing rain water are immediately destroyed.

Just as the Nazis had asked the Jews to wear the Star of David, so Nathan noted that, at one construction site, Arab workers were asked to wear helmets with Red Cross markings to distinguish them from Jewish workers. In one restaurant, an Arab woman was fired because she spoke to a colleague in Arabic, even though Arabic is one of Israels two official languages. The restaurant management’s plea was that its customers did not wish to hear Arabic.

Another cruel law against which there is no judicial remedy forbids a Palestinian from having a spouse from the West Bank. The result is that either couples keep their marriage secret — which gives rise to social problems — or, if the marriage is discovered, they are deported to the West Bank.

Fortunately, a growing number of Israeli Jews are becoming aware of the crimes committed against the Palestinians and the apartheid state into which the Ashkenazis, who dominate Israel, have turned their country. Specially revealing are three books — all of them by Jews, the first one being British, who have bared the racist nature of Israeli state and society and demolished, with facts and figures, both the myths on which Zionism has been constructed and the heinous nature of the occupation regime in Palestinian territories. The books are The Myths of Zionism by John Rose, On the Border by Michel Warschawski, and The Other Side of Israel: My Journey across the Jewish-Arab Divide by Susan Nathan.