Summary
Al-Ard (The Land), in Lahav’s account: the Palestinian nationalist movement formed from 1958 by young Arab intellectuals in Israel, against both the Communist Party and the local Arab leadership, which the Israeli government campaigned against until its electoral list was banned in Yeredor (1965) (Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century, lines 2102-2271).
Details
- Its founders broke with the Communists as insensitive to Arab nationalist aspirations and with local leaders as feudal, corrupt and meek; moved by pan-Arab nationalism and Nasser’s rhetoric, they took the 1958 Egyptian–Syrian unification as a sign the future was theirs (Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century, lines 2102-2200).
- The government convicted its members of unlicensed publishing, placed leaders under house arrest, administrative detention and exile to Jewish-populated towns, declared it illegal under the Defense (Emergency) Regulations of 1945, and in 1964 obtained a unanimous court holding upholding the refusal to register it as an association (Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century, lines 2102-2200).
- In Qardosh (1960) Simon Agranat invalidated the refusal to let it incorporate as a publishing company; on further hearing a 3–2 majority sustained him (Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century, lines 2146-2205).
- Its constitution vowed to “raise the [social] level of its members” and “establish full equality and social justice among all social groups in Israel”, and in article 3 called for “finding a just solution to the Palestinian problem—viewing it as an indivisible unit—in accordance with the will of the Arab Palestinian people … which restores its political existence … and [which] sees it as holding the first right to determine its destiny by itself, within the framework of the superior aspirations of the Arab nation” — a text the military authorities decoded for the Court as a rejection of partition and of Israel itself (Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century, lines 2160-2271).
- Renamed the Arab Socialist Party, it fulfilled all the elections law’s technical requirements for the 1965 elections; the Central Elections Committee banned its list as the outlawed Al-Ard in another garb — the first party ever forbidden to participate in an Israeli election (Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century, lines 2102-2200).
Related pages
Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century, Yeredor Case, Qardosh Case, British Emergency Regulations