A Palestinian carpenter stands in his workshop in the town of Nazareth, one of the largest Palestinian cities in Israel. (Charlotte de Bellabre, Maan Images)

Last week, the Israeli attorney general ruled against reopening the investigation into how 13 Palestinians (all but one of them Israeli citizens) were shot dead by police during unrest in October 2000. The decision did not come as much of a surprise, given the seven-year long refusal to bring charges against either police or senior officials.

These deaths - and indeed, the subsequent lack of accountability - have served as a reminder of the difficult relationship between "Israeli Arabs" and the Jewish state.

With the creation of Israel 60 years ago, four-fifths of the Palestinians inside the new state's borders were expelled; the others remained (albeit with a quarter becoming "internally displaced").

In recent months, attention has been concentrated principally on the settlement "outposts" in the West Bank, Israel's collective punishment of Gaza and Palestinian rocket fire, and of course, the Annapolis peace process. The concept behind this Bush/Quartet-driven initiative is nothing new; through mutual confidence-building measures and thrashing out compromises on "final status issues" there can be a final two state settlement.

This consensus, however, sidelines or completely ignores two Palestinian constituencies with a significant stake in any eventual peace agreement: the Palestinians in Israel and the refugees. Together, in fact, they represent around 60% of the total Palestinian population, a reality obscured by the sometimes exclusive focus on the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.

While the West Bank-based Fatah leadership negotiates with the Israeli government, Palestinians in Israel are becoming increasingly assertive about how they see a future solution.

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In little over 12 months, leading Arab organisations have published four documents that examine everything from land distribution and economics, to concepts of citizenship and how to challenge Israeli laws that discriminate against the country's Arabs.

The different proposals have shared fundamental values. In the words of Mada Al-Carmel's Haifa Declaration, "our vision ... is to create a democratic state founded on equality between the two national groups," a solution that "would require a change in the constitutional structure and a change in the definition of the State of Israel from a Jewish state to a democratic state established on national and civil equality between the two national groups, and enshrining the principles of banning discrimination and of equality between all of its citizens and residents."

Adalah (The Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel), the same group that has been campaigning for justice for those killed in October 2000, is also working on a "democratic constitution", a draft of which was released last year.

This was greeted with outrage by many for its redefinition of the Israeli state "not as Jewish but as 'democratic, bilingual and multicultural'," objectives - according to the Jerusalem Post - that are "both enticing and deceptive". Even the internationally respected political scientist Professor Shlomo Avineri felt able to slam the draft Constitution as a plan "'for Israel's annihilation as a Jewish state'" coated "'in the outward trappings of human rights and justice'".

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