Thousands of Israeli Arabs, many waving Palestinian flags, demonstrated in the town of Baqa al-Gharbiyye over the weekend to voice their fear that US President Donald Trump's peace plan could see them stripped of their rights as Israeli citizens.
Trump's proposal, disclosed last week, would see Israel keep its settlements in Judea and Samaria.
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But it also raised the possibility that 11 Arab border towns abutting the territory would become part of a new Palestinian state – alarming Israel's 21% Arab minority.
"Israel wants to get rid of these people – their land, their history and their space," said Mohammed Barakeh, a protester and former Arab member of Knesset.
Like their Palestinian brethren in Judea and Samaria and Gaza, Arabs in Israel have criticized Trump's plan, which proposes a "two-state" solution with land swaps for the decades-long conflict.
Some critics say that allowing Israel to annex Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria and keeping Palestinians under Israeli security control, renders a viable independent Palestinian state impossible.
On Monday, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas dismissed the land swap idea.
"We do not agree at all, in any way, to swap land and residents from Israel to [a future Palestinian state]," he said.
Ayman Odeh, who heads the Joint Arab List faction in the Knesset, said Trump's proposal was "a green light to revoke the citizenship of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arab citizens who live in northern Israel."
Feelings also ran high over the weekend in Umm al-Fahm, a town on a hill that looks down into Judea and Samaria.
"I am a Palestinian Arab and a citizen of Israel," said Umm Mahmoud, 42, a housewife from Umm al-Fahm, as she shopped for home supplies.
"I cannot accept being transferred to the West Bank. Although we are the same, we cannot leave our land, lives and traditions. Although they [West Bank Palestinians] are our family, it is not possible," she said.
The Trump plan said land swaps could include both populated and unpopulated areas and redrawing the borders of Israel so that the so-called "Triangle Communities" in Wadi Ara become part of a future Palestinian state.
David Friedman, the Trump-appointed US Ambassador to Israel who was closely involved in the framing of the plan, denied that residents of Arab towns in Israel would lose citizenship if they eventually fell under Palestinian jurisdiction.
"No one is being stripped of citizenship. We don't propose that," he told reporters last Wednesday.
Some Israeli government officials have privately voiced reservations about the idea.
"I regard this as a hypothetical matter. This is something the sides can weigh as an option after the plan is implemented," said former IDF chief Gabi Ashkenazi, a senior member of the opposition Blue and White Party.
"We unequivocally regard the [Arab] citizens of Israel as equal citizens," Ashkenazi said.
