This article was originally published by Maan News and is republished with permission.

Palestinian children waiting around a water pump in the Khan Younis refugee camp in Gaza. Only two pumps are working in all of southern Gaza following the destruction of the power plant by Israel. (Maan Images)

Despite all the attention given to the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, very few people are aware that there are Palestinians living within the state of Israel. There are 1.2 million Palestinians who are Israeli citizens (also known as the "Arabs of '48" or "Israeli Arabs"), and they constitute 20% of the general population. The Palestinians living in Israel today are descendants of the Palestinians who were not expelled from their homes in 1948. They now live in cities and villages all over Israel, especially in the Galilee in northern Israel.

I am 19 years old and I live in Jaffa, which is a small city next to Tel-Aviv. Before 1948, Jaffa was a cultural center in the Middle East. Artists, professors, movies, and oranges -- everything came from and to Jaffa. Unfortunately all this was erased after the 1948 war. After the war only 3,000 Arab citizens were left in Jaffa from a pre-war population of more than 120,000 residents. These 3,000 lived under martial law until the mid-1960's in a small neighborhood called "Al-Ajami." Today, there are 60,000 citizens in Jaffa, 40,000 Jews and 20,000 Palestinians. While Jaffa is hailed as a place where Palestinians and Jews live together in peace, in reality the city is almost completely segregated and there are serious crime and drug problems.

Palestinians living in Israel face both formal and informal discrimination. One way this is seen is through Israeli laws which seek to limit the growth of the Palestinian population within Israel. By law any Jew all over the world can claim citizenship in Israel, while Palestinians that were driven from their homes in 1948 are not allowed to return to their houses and families. In addition, Israeli Palestinians who marry Palestinians living in the occupied Palestinian territories are not able to legally live with their spouse in Israel.

Palestinians living within Israel are also discriminated against when it comes to the issue of land. Ninety three percent of Israel's land is controlled to the "Jewish National Fund" and the "Israel Land Administration". In most cases this land is available only for Jewish development and purchase. In addition, many different Palestinian villages in northern Israel have not been officially recognized as villages by the Israeli government, and for this reason they do not get basic services from the government like running water, electricity and schools. Also, since the beginning of the Israeli state there have been no plans for building new Palestinian cities and villages while dozens and dozens of Jewish cities have been developed and built.

There are also many ways that Palestinians experience discrimination informally in Israel. Most of the discrimination in Israel is "under the surface" but very real. Surveys in recent years show that more than 70% of the Jewish population sees the Palestinian population as a security threat (as reported by The Mossawa Center, The Advocacy Center for Arab Citizens in Israel). This "fear" of the Palestinians is seen in many different ways. One of the major ways is the relationship between Israeli Palestinians and the Israeli military. Unlike Israeli Jews, military service is not mandatory for Israeli Palestinians. This may seem like an advantage, but it hurts many Palestinians especially when it comes to applying for jobs. In Israel, it is very common to be asked about your military service when applying for any job. Many jobs require "military service" as a basic prerequisite regardless of the job itself, and since Palestinians don't serve in the army they can not apply for many jobs.

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One of the ways I have most directly felt this discrimination is through the education system. Today, most Palestinian public schools are failing. The Palestinian education system is mostly conducted in Arabic, but the text books are written by Jewish people. History is one of the biggest problems in this school system. Because the books are primarily written by Jews they tend to teach the Jewish perspective on history and the Palestinian voice is silenced. In Jaffa, my hometown, there is only one Arabic public high school (for more than 20,000 Palestinians in the city) and is mostly known for its infamous 52% drop-out rate.

For high school I attended a Jewish school in the north of Tel Aviv. I was told that the school was very liberal and that it would be easy for me as a Palestinian to fit in. I was one of five Palestinian students in a school of over 1,000 students. I soon found out that people had never met a Palestinian person before, and they had many stereotypes about me and my community. I could barely handle the level of racism that was directed at me.

I remember that during my first year at the school, I had a big quarrel with my teachers and principal about whether or not I should attend certain memorial days concerning the Holocaust and Israeli soldiers that died in the wars. We agreed that I would come to the Holocaust memorial ceremonies, but not to the assemblies that were memorials for soldiers. One year I fell asleep during one Holocaust memorial (I was very sick that day). The following day I was summoned to the principal's office and I was lectured by the principal and several teachers for an hour. Although everybody else fell asleep, my fellow Jewish friends and classmates were allowed to while I, an Arab, was supposed stay awake and listen to every word. This scenario happened every year and was very traumatic and frustrating for me, but it is a very good example of how Arabs are always "put to the test" in the general population. We always have to prove how good we are, how grateful we are to Jews and most importantly, how loyal we are to the State.

After this and many more traumatic incidents that I had in this school, I decided to join an Arab-Jewish youth leadership group. The group had two objectives: the first, to strengthen and empower each and every member of the group with different leadership skills, such as public speaking. The other goal of the group was to conduct different projects in Jaffa that address Arab-Jewish relations in the city. Soon enough we were doing amazing things for the community. We facilitated conferences, seminars and activities for Palestinian and Jewish teenagers from across the city. I spent most of my high-school time in this group.

After finishing high school, I left the group and volunteered in an organization called Sadaka-Reut, which is an Arab/Jewish youth movement which works all over the country. I helped form a group that works in Jaffa alone. One of the first things we did in Jaffa was to conduct meetings for the general public about different issues in the city such as crime, poverty and the general segregation between the Arab and Jewish communities. The highlight of our work in Jaffa has been a bi-monthly newspaper called Jaffa Ana that we publish in Arabic and Hebrew. The title of the paper holds different meanings in Arabic and Hebrew--in Arabic it means "I am Jaffa," and in Hebrew it translates as "Jaffa to where?" or "What is Jaffa's future?" Jaffa Ana serves as the only newspaper for the city, and is one of very few newspapers in Israel published in both Arabic and Hebrew. The newspaper serves Jaffa's community in general by supporting local artists, writers and poets, but more importantly the newspaper is also a tool to bring Jaffa's Palestinian and Jewish communities together in dialogue.

Today I continue my work in Jaffa; especially with the newspaper. I have postponed my education for this work, but I'm enjoying every second of it. When I see young children calling to me from across the street asking me when is the newspaper coming out again, or when are we going to open up a new computer class, I take that as a reminder of how important our work is. I can honestly say that so far I cannot see a big difference in the relations between Jews and Palestinians in Jaffa, but I also know the situation will not get better unless people are willing to work to change it. In general, I believe that the only possible way of ending the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is through dialogue. I think we can only ask all Israelis and Palestinians to work for peace in the region once we show that people in the same city learn to live with each other.

Lisa Hananiya, 19, is Palestinian and lives in Jaffa, Israel. Lisa volunteers with Sadaka Reut, an Arab-Jewish youth movement for peace and co-existence in Israel. Among her work with the movement, she is the editor of Jaffa Ana, a one-of-a-kind Arabic and Hebrew youth newspaper.