Haifa University student Rabae Eid’s interruption of US President Barack Obama’s speech in Jerusalem was more than just an act of a radical heckler. The 24-year-old’s rejection of Obama’s demand that Palestinians must recognize Israel as a Jewish state echoed the feelings of more than 20% of the population of today’s Israel who are not Jewish.
The story of Palestinians who are citizens of the state of Israel is one of the untold stories of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Palestinians who stayed put in their homes and lands as the state of Israel was being established have been either forgotten or, worse yet, wrongly accused by fellow Arabs of being traitors and a sort of fifth column.