Israeli Arabs in landmark protests two days after polls

The largest of the protests was held Thursday in the largely Jewish town of Lod, close to Ben Gurion international airport, with demonstrators bussed in from Arab communities around Israel carrying flags in Islamic green and communist red.

Demonstrators, including many women and children, also carried Palestinian flags and banners, one reading "Terrorism made in Israel" in English.

Police controlled movement in and out of the old city, where the Arab population lives, manned numerous roadblocks but kept largely away from the peaceful demonstration.

Smaller rallies were held in the northern town of Sakhnin, and the villages of Kfar Kanna and Arraba in Galilee, where the original 1976 protests against confiscations of Arab land were held and six demonstrators killed.

Lod was the scene of the notorious Plan Dalet operation led by later defence minister Moshe Dayan in the 1948 Arab Israeli war in which some 80 Palestinian civilians were killed, prompting most of the rest of the town's Arab residents to flee.

Thursday's demonstrations come just two days after Israel's election in which the potential demographic and security threat posed by Arabs to the Jewish state was a major campaign issue.

Ultranationlist Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beitenu party outpolled the main right-wing Likud party on a platform of transferring two overwhelmingly Arab districts of Israel to the West Bank and subjecting all remaining Arab citizens to loyalty tests.

One demonstrator carried a banner reading "Stop the transfer", in reference to Lieberman's ambitions.

"It's not just Lieberman, it's the so-called moderate parties too," said Qadri Wasal of the Arab Israeli extra-parliamentary political movement Sons of the Land. "This was all our land in 1948 and they took it away."

Yisrael Beitenu's campaign helped Israel's three Arab-led lists to boost their representation in parliament from eight to 10. Several newly elected Israeli Arab MPs were at the demonstration.

"The land issue is always important for the Arab national minority," said Issam Makhoul, leader of the Israeli communist party, which organized the original Land Day protests.

"We feel it is more important than ever this year because the dangers are so much greater," he told AFP, referring to talk of maintaining the Jewish nature of Israel which he said came from the mainstream Kadima and Labour parties as much as the far-right.

Arabs now account for some 20 percent of Lod's 66,100 residents, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics, roughly the same proportion as Israel's 1.2 million Arabs comprise in the overall population.

According to the town's Arab advocacy group, Arab residents still face discrimination in securing planning permission for their homes. Some 3,500 houses have no authorisation and 800 face demolition orders from the right-wing municipality. Ten such orders have been carried out in the past three months.

Police in annexed east Jerusalem used stun grenades to break up a similar demonstration, detaining one protestor after they used batons to break up what police called "an unauthorized protest" by dozens of Palestinians.

Land Day demonstrations were also being held in large parts of the West Bank, with the giant barrier that Israel is building across the territory serving as the focus for the protestors.

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