One of the salient and important items on the Zionist agenda, besides ‘the Judaisation of the Land’, is to impose the so-called Civic Service project on the Arab Palestinian youth of 1948 to draw them individually and collectively towards ultimately serving in the Israeli military. Indeed, since the first Israeli gathering within the strategic Herzliya Conference series in 2002, the ‘demographic issue’ became top of the agenda.
The conference has recommended taking the absolute necessary steps to protect and preserve “the Jewish majority” by the total Judaisation of the Galilee, the Arab triangle area and the vast expanse of the Arab Naqab region, besides offering “the Palestinians of ‘48” a choice between full Israeli or Palestinian citizenship! Specifically, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, during the 2003 conference, revealed that he commissioned concerned Israeli institutions to prepare a practical plan to include the Palestinians of ‘48 to be drafted to serve in ‘a civic service’ project. Sharon’s comments at the time were directed at the Arabs in particular who have to deal first with the issue of absolute loyalty to the Zionist state before speaking about their civil rights because, in his opinion, “loyalty comes before rights”!
Thus, it became incumbent upon all the Palestinians of ‘48 to prove their absolute loyalty to the Zionist state and to all what it stands for before attaining any right in it. That is really a form of satanic deceit because total loyalty to the Zionist State and its doctrine actually means negating all Palestinian human, civil and cultural rights, as well as ownership of their lands, farms, homes and rights of residency in their native holy land of Palestine. Indeed, the essence of the Zionist doctrine, which established the Zionist state is based upon negating any Palestinian presence in ‘the land of Israel’. Sharon clearly and directly stated the Zionist objective in his statement: “Our job is to design the form of Israel as a Jewish State in which all share rights and equal obligations to support the state through some form of a civic service.”
This statement is categorically self-contradictory because the democratisation of a political state can never be attained with the Judaisation of the same state where non-Jews will never have equal rights unless they become Jews! In fact, this is exactly what the Zionist state has been trying to accomplish throughout the years by trying to implant the sense of loyalty in the hearts and minds of its Arab Palestinian citizens (Muslims and Christians) after the failure of its military rule imposed upon ‘these citizens’ until 1966 and the failure of peaceful coexistence between Arabs and Jews in Israel as a result of the Zionist perception that only a Jew is entitled to full rights in ‘the Jewish state’. Towards achieving that, the ‘civic service’ project is another attempt to solicit Palestinian loyalty to the Zionist state, but this time not by the brutality of force, but by bribery of rewards. Spending two years in the ‘civic service’, serving the Zionist state, will promote it and make it acceptable in the long run as the means of obtaining favours from the state, the only way for survival, thus creating an enslaved Palestinian population serving Israel and succumbing to its racist agenda.
The significance of the ongoing apparent civic service concept separates it from the military service. Its various forms include volunteerism and engagement in and service of non-military public issues, especially if such activities claim to be directed towards finding jobs for Palestinian women of whom only 19 per cent find employment, while more than 40 per cent of the educated ones have no jobs. This is why the present Israeli form of civic service is deceptive, aiming to break down the Palestinian mental barrier against Zionism. Turning civic service into a draft to force Palestinians to serve as guards protecting hospitals and other public buildings is turning the project into a security agency, thus, negating its voluntary aspects. When it includes lectures “to reform and modernise Arab Palestinian thinking”, the civic service is thus being transformed into a vehicle for brain-washing in the name of modernisation.
The Arab Palestinians of 1948 have not rushed to join the ‘civic service’ as they did not volunteer in the military service because the very essence of the Zionist state negates the very existence of Palestinians as a people and as the original natives of Palestine. Annexing Palestinian lands, establishing a racist/apartheid Israeli state, using the force of brutality, erecting a wall separating Palestinians from their farms and neighbours, creating a huge prison with countless checkpoints of utter humiliation, destruction of homes and places of Muslim worship and finally presenting the Palestinians with the poisonous carrot of the ‘civic service’ to force them to recognise the legitimacy of the ‘Jewish state’ shall be an act of absolute futility. Such a sinister agenda should be confronted by one and all with Palestinian unity, steadfastness and enlightenment through educational rallies and political meetings covering all of historical Palestine.
Professor As’ad Abdul Rahman is the Chairman of the Palestinian Encyclopaedia.
