The decision of the government of Israel in 7.7.2002 - to support a racist legislation, prohibiting the sale of lands to Arabs at the so called "Community Residences" and areas that the Government intends to "Judaize", allegedly for reasons of "national security" - marks a further stage in the process of adopting an open outright anti Arab racism as an official Government policy. The proposal was supported by an overwhelming majority of 17 Ministers, with two dissenting and one abstaining. Labour's members of the coalition Government, excluding one who opposed the proposal, made themselves scarce at the time when they were called upon to cast their vote.

It is with full appreciation that we greet the many people who took a stand in opposition to this despicable decision. We call upon every decent human being to join and reinforce the campaign, waged in order to make the Knesset to abort this obscenity, when it will be presented to it for approval.

This hideous decision is only a recent one to the series of racist discriminating measures taken by this Government against Israel's Arab citizens. Among the more notoriously infamous of these was the decision to diminish the payment of social security benefits for children to those families that are not "Army draft liable". The obvious intention of that was to deprive Arab families of those benefits. To these we must add a whole series of bills, passed recently by the Knesset, the sole purpose of which is to exclude the Arab citizens from the political arena in Israel. Should this tendency subsist, Israel's becoming an Apartheid country will be assured!

The discrimination against Arab citizens (consisting approximately 20% of the population in Israel) in all spheres of life is, and was, a policy deeply rooted in the entire Zionist movement, including all former governments of Israel. In the past, though, Governments shied away from giving an open outright legal and official status to racist policy, concealing it under a variety of pretexts ("land expropriations for development sakes," etc.). But this government unashamedly declares in open its racist policy and supporting an official legislation accordingly.

The Israeli Government took these, above mentioned, racist measures also on pretexts pertaining to the state of national security. It's continuing assault on the Palestinian Authority - the areas under its jurisdiction having been reoccupied almost entirely without any intention to retreat in the foreseeable future - being in the background.

The most formidable and lasting assault on the Palestinian People since the occupation on June 1967 is launched these days. One of the reasons for it being carried out already for such a long time, is an open unequivocal support, more than ever before, which it gains from the U.S., which stopped even to pretend to have any balanced attitude in its policy.

We are especially expressing our denounciation of President George W. Bush's recent assailment on the Palestinian Authority and on the Palestinian President - Yassir Arafat. We condemn his demands to replace the Palestinian leadership, as a precondition for the forwarding of peace talks. The U.S. has no right, what so ever, to dictate to the Palestinian People, or to any other People, who should be their leaders or what kind of changes they should make.

In conditions of extensive occupation of almost all of the Palestinian areas, of daily killings, of repression, humiliations, curfews and blockades - U.S. does not demand any thing from the occupier and oppressor. Only from the Palestinians... The hypocrisy in US's demands for the "democratization" of the Palestinian Authority is only emphasized by its steady and mighty support, given to all of the Arab dictatorships. Egypt, Jordan, and of course Saudi Arabia and Gulf Emirates, all of them are, as everybody is aware, renown for their democratic regimes.

The present American policy exhorts Israel, more than ever, to subsist in it's extensive and unprecedented military activities, sinking our region in bloodshed. In addition to the many victims, this causes considerable socio-economic damages. The Palestinian People in the occupied territories, of whom many lodge under inhuman conditions, suffering from unemployment and terrible poverty, those who got hurt most by these. The People of Israel pay an economic price too. Recently there was considerable rise in the prices of a series of elementary consumer goods. There were also unprecedented cuts in the payments of unemployment benefits, minimum income insurance benefits and of all the welfare benefits.