The New York Times · New York, New York · 3 May 1998

CP-1998-021

Still Not Full Citizens

Hilda B. Silverman

Scan 602 × 832 pixels

Transcribed from the clipping

To the Editor: As to whether the 160,000 Palestinian Arabs who remained within the new state of Israel in 1948 were “internal refugees” (front page, April 23) or “full citizens” (letter, April 28), some facts might prove helpful. Until 1966 those who remained lived under harsh military rule.

In addition, 81,000 were designated “present absentees” and permanently denied the right to return to their homes. While they were granted citizenship, their land (750,000 acres) was confiscated by the state, along with their houses, shops, furniture and bank deposits. Today, Palestinian-Israelis represent almost 20 percent of Israel’s population.

Some still live in dozens of unrecognized villages, where they are granted identity cards but no further recognition and no services. HILDA B.

How this transcription was made

Read from the scan by a machine looking at the image of the page, not by optical character recognition and not by a person. The clipping carries no masthead or date line, so its date and newspaper rest on the record it arrived with, not on anything visible in the scan.

Context added by this archive

Date check: No masthead or page date line is visible; the scan is cropped to this single letter. The letter is dated at the foot “Cambridge, Mass., April 30, 1998”, which is consistent with publication on 1998-05-03, but the printed publication date could not be read.

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