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On Tuesday, crowds of Israel's Arab citizens—they number 650,000—staged marches and demonstrations marking Land Day. On the first Land Day, in 1976, six Arabs were killed by Israeli soldiers. This year nobody was killed, mainly because Israeli troops avoided the Arab areas. In northern Galilee, Palestinian youths poured gasoline on tires and set them aflame, a cheap way to block a road and create the billow of menacing black smoke that has become a symbol of protest. Demonstrators chanted again and again: "In blood and in spirit, we will sacrifice for you, O Galilee." Another slogan: "Qiryat Shemona, you will hear the Katyushas," a reference to the P.L.O. rocket attacks from Lebanon against targets in northern Israel before the cease-fire went into effect in July. In the afternoon, 5,000 people marched to the beat of a bugle, cymbal and drum. A group of Arab youths, their faces concealed by scarves, committed an act that to many Israelis was unthinkable: they hoisted a Palestinian flag on Israeli territory.
On the West Bank, however, the Israelis were ruling with increasing firmness. Last month they deposed three mayors whom they believed to be too sympathetic to the P.L.O. Last week they tightened censorship over Jerusalem's Arabic-language newspapers. The harassment of Arab authorities often was not only arbitrary but bewildering: in Bethlehem, for example, Israeli authorities refused to register a new ambulance that was given to the town by a West German charitable organization. No explanation was offered.
The West Bank civil administration of Menachem Milson, operating under the guidance of Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, clearly is turning away from Israel's former policy of making limited democracy available to the people of the West Bank on the local level. The theory of Israel's former Labor governments was that if the West Bank were allowed to develop its own leadership, as it did in the elections of 1972 and 1976, there might be a gradual erosion of support for hard-line P.L.O. policies. But it now appears that the Israelis will tolerate no position that is even vaguely sympathetic to the P.L.O.
That view was strongly emphasized by Israeli leaders last week during a two-day visit by Lord Carrington, the British Foreign Secretary. Carrington defended the European Community's opinion that the P.L.O., once it accepts Israel's right to live in peace and security, should be allowed to take a role in the peace process. Said he: "We believe the Palestinians are entitled to self-determination." Israeli Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir replied that Israel would never accept "a partition of this small and sacred land." Added an aide to Begin: "If a Palestinian state came into existence, Israel would have no choice but to destroy it."