In his article on this page, Prof. Asher Maoz conditions his willingness to listen to the opinions of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) concerning democracy on the organization distancing itself from the opinions of the president of the organization, Sami Michael. It is important to deal with Maoz's comments on the position of the president of ACRI, which courageously placed a price tag on the significance of 40 years of control over people who have no democracy.

ACRI is a human rights organization and not a political entity. Therefore, the position paper it has distributed has no pretension of presenting a diplomatic plan of action. Questions about the Palestinian government, as well as concerning desirable diplomatic agreements, should be directed at the government.

What the ACRI position paper tries to do is to make people open their eyes to the reality in which the essential substance of democracy is denied to millions of people under Israel's sovereign rule. After all, democracy, of which one of the basic principles is equality for all, cannot be selective. It is impossible to rule over a population of about four million people for more than 40 years without democratic rights and continue to be called a democracy. This is like a country that calls itself a democracy granting the rights that stem from this definition only to men or only to whites. This, quite simply, is ACRI's argument.

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The fundamental question that ACRI is posing is whether Israel still deserves to be called a democracy. Maoz notes, rightly, that ACRI states that occupation is a situation of control over a foreign people by military force. He does not mention that such a situation is recognized as legitimate in international law only if it's a temporary situation, that is when a territory is administered for the benefit of its inhabitants without changing its character or settling citizens of the occupying state there. Thus, by no criteria is it possible to call these 40 years a temporary situation.

Israel is paying a high price for the continued control of another people. Understanding the implications of it is hard and threatening, but a fair discussion demands that it be acknowledged. After 40 years it is appropriate that we open our eyes and not let the sense of the built-in threat block every opening to debate. There is scope for self-examination, for understanding the price that Israeli society is paying in terms of its values, its morality and its existence as a democracy, because of the occupation of another people for 40 years.

Everyone who holds democracy dear should be losing sleep over these questions. In the position paper that ACRI has distributed, it is holding a mirror up to reality and is directing the light.

The writer is the director of the public outreach department at the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.