by Askia Muhammad

DURBAN, South Africa (Finalcall.com) �While world public attention has been focused on the diplomatic meltdown at the World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) concerning the loud protests of the 3 million Palestinians living under Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza, there are another 1 million Arabs living as citizens inside the Jewish state who are also complaining here.

The Palestinian-Arab citizens of Israel account for 20 percent of the total population there. They say they are not against Israel, they are not against the Jewish people. They simply want to live there as equals with the Jewish citizens.

They complain that the Israeli Constitution and the 20 laws in effect make that impossible. They claim that 250,000 of their number who are "internally displaced" inside the country, and the 100,000 who reside in what are called "unrecognized villages" are invisible victims in light of the high profile complaints made by the U.S. and Israel about language concerning the occupied territories in the WCAR and Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) declarations.

"I live in a village called Ein Hout," Muhammed Abu Hija, chair of the Association of 40 told reporters Sept. 6. His parents went there in 1948 after Israel declared independence in the land formerly ruled by Britain. His family was displaced from that village to a new village they call by the same name, less than one mile away. "Our houses still exist in the old village today," he said.

In 1946, before Israeli independence, the Jewish community controlled just seven percent of the land in historic Palestine, according to the Palestinian Arab NGOs in Israel, participating in the WCAR. Today, 93 percent of the land is state-controlled and most is zoned for exclusive Jewish use.

"I am an unrecognized citizen and I come from an unrecognized village. Unrecognized village means that you are not allowed to be connected to the basic services that every government should give to their citizens. We are not allowed to connect ourselves to the water, to the roads, to the electricity," said Mr. Abu Hija. "I live without these basic services."

Yet, 400 meters away a Jewish kibbutz has "the highest civilization, the whole basic services. Four hundred meters from our village I see every day, the cows of the Jewish kibbutz have water, and electricity, and roads until they are sleeping, and we don�t. There is not any reason to deal with us like that, except one reason: that we are Arabs," he said.