In recent years, motions supporting the Zionist state of Israel have been passed with very little trouble. Very little is known of the internal nature of Israel especially concerning the status and rights of its Palestinian citizens.

In this article, Salient attempts to examine some of the lesser known features of this war-torn and controversial country. It relates to events which happened 2 months ago and yet received no coverage in our press or media.

In the past months a mass uprising has taken place among Palestinian Arabs in the Israel-occupied West Bank and Galilee. Nearly 700,000 Palestinians have joined in this struggle, the most powerful and sustained protest against the occupation of their land since the Zionist victory in 1948.

The leading force of the mobilisation has been young Arabs who have rejected the collaboration of the traditional, conservative Palestinian leadership with Israel. In January, Arab students at the Bir Zeit college, near Allamah, went on strike in support of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO). Teachers at the college backed the students and issued a statement demanding the release of West Bank Arabs imprisoned in Israeli jails without being charged or tried.

Militant mass demonstrations then spread throughout the West Bank region and into areas inside Israel's pre-1967 borders. The explosion of Palestinian dissent was touched off by the US veto of a pro-Palestinian resolution in the UN Security Council. On January 27, thousands of Palestinian students and workers marched in Jerusalem raising slogans supporting the PLO and condemning the US veto and the continuing Zionist colonisation. Israeli police attacked the demonstrators with clubs and rubber bullets and dozens of Palestinian youths were arrested.

The same day in Nablus, hundreds of students from the city's three high schools protested in the streets and were joined by many Palestinian workers. When Israeli police attempted to disperse them with fire hoses and swinging batons, the demonstrators broke into small groups and fought back with stones. In Ramallah, students did a mass leafleting with Fateh material, urging Palestinians to intensify their [unclear: resistence] to Israeli occupation, and in Hebron angry demonstrators burned a military car in the public square.

Following that, demonstrations became almost a daily feature, erupting in every major town on the West Bank, including Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nablus, Jericho, Jenin, Bir Zeit, Hebron, Al Bira, Halhoul, Tulkarn and Beit Sahur.

On February 25 and 26, hundreds of Palestinian students were arrested in Nablus. The student strikes closed schools in the city and surrounding areas and all business activity was brought to a halt. Political prisoners, meanwhile, throughout Israel, began a hunger strike to protest the inhuman treatment they receive in Israeli jails. The prisoners demanded an end to administrative detention under which Palestinian activists are often held for as long as a year or more without charges or a trial.