◆ SpookStack

Re: Report of XIV Congress of the Communist Party of Israel, May 31 ~ June 3, 1961; Summary Of Speech of Comrade Tawfik Tubi What is this policy when translated into facts! | In the economic field it means strangulation. In agriculture it may take the form of actual plunder through mass Geportations or the keal form of expropriation. Between 1949 and 1953, Arab peasants were robbed through the sow called expropriations of 1,250,000 dunams of land. The result ¢ this unmerciful plunder is that the average size of the Arab agricultural unit fell from 67 dunams in the days before the establishment of the State of Israel to 4, dunams in 1951 and 34 dunams in 1960. In 1953, the Land Acquisition Law was enacted to legalize this shameful robbery a posteriori. This is not the only form of exploitation. Grazing land, on which the peasants’ flocks depend for théir existence, are declared "afforestation zones." Practically no credits are granted to Arab peasants for taxation imposed upon them is among the heaviest. The price for thelr produce is not less discriminatory against the peasants themselves. Urban areas fare no better. Arab villages and towns are fenced in and strict regulations forbid building outside tightly fixed limits. Inside the towns, economic growth and industrial and commercial development are stifled as much as possible and public services are kept at a shameful low. Only eight out of 100 villages are connected to the electrical network, and these at an exhorbitant cost. The health service extended to the Arab villages is the worst in the country. In almost all the clinics the one and only doctor must examine 100 patients a day; moreover, the patient simply will not find the prescribed medicine in the clinic. In such conditions, it is a wonder how the Arab peasants hold on to their land, or to the right to their land from which they have been driven. For those who have been forced to search for new ways of livelihood, Ben-Gurion's nolicy has found new forms ot oppression. The worst luck is,of course, that of the 30,000 deportees who are forbidden to return to their homes.