DURHAM -- The second day of a national Palestine Solidarity Movement conference came and went at Duke University on Saturday without any disruptive protests, but with plenty of calls for Israel to end what panelists blasted as racist and discriminatory tactics in the Middle East.

"If Israel continues to define itself as a state exclusively for Jews, Palestinians will continue to challenge its existence," said one panelist, Nasser Abufarha, a doctoral candidate in anthropology at the University of Wisconsin.

"The concept of a Jewish state in a land also inhabited by non-Jews would necessitate discriminatory measures against the non-Jews ...," Abufarha argued. "Israeli prejudices and injustices do not end even if Israeli tanks were to pull back. We Palestinians do not compromise our right to live in Palestine with dignity and freedom. ... It is Israel, the nature of a Jewish state in a non-Jewish homeland, that generates all racist and discriminatory practices."

Others called Zionism a "disease" and claimed that Israel was imposing apartheid on the Middle East.

"If apartheid was a problem in South Africa, why do we consider it a solution in Palestine and Israel?" asked Yale University professor Mazin Qumsiyeh.

One aim of the much-discussed conference is to urge universities to sell their stock in companies with Israeli ties.

"Divest From Israel" was the slogan on T-shirts offered for sale during Saturday's session.

However, Duke President Richard Brodhead recently rejected calls for divestiture by the local university. He said no community consensus had formed on the issue.

In addition to an abundance of anti-Israeli T-shirts, plenty of posters were scattered around the conference buildings on Saturday. "END THE OCCUPATION NOW!!!" said some.

Outside, a few well-behaved protesters were outnumbered by sheriff's deputies and police officers from Duke and the city, on duty to guard against potential disruptions or violence.

The protesters had small signs proclaiming that there was no justification for terror.

Conference organizers urged an estimated 300 participants not to interact with the dissenters.

Across campus, a teach-in was held at The Freeman Center for Jewish Life as a counterpoint to the conference.

'Goal' or 'fabrication'?

An Internet dust storm erupted in the summer when it became known that the national conference, the fourth of its kind, might be held at Duke. More than 3,400 people from Israel to Durham signed an online petition asking the university to refuse it.

Diana Appelbaum, an activist with the Boston Israel Action Committee and creator of the petition, claimed the Palestine Solidarity Movement "supports violence and suicide bombing."

"The avowed goal of the Solidarity Movement is the destruction of the State of Israel by any means necessary," Appelbaum wrote in the petition.

But Fayyad Shaihat, a spokesman for the movement, said the organization's guiding principles did not mention the destruction of Israel.

"That is a complete fabrication," he told The Herald-Sun in July. "We use peaceful and economic methods to exert pressure on the Israeli government."

In deciding to allow the conference, Duke officials said it would promote free speech on campus.

Yale professor Qumsiyeh argued Saturday that Israel has pushed many native Palestinians out of their historical homes and into "reservations and ghettoes."

"We ought to stop talking about a two-state solution," he said. "It does not work. There was never really a two-state solution for this. Zionism is incompatible with that ideal."

When Middle East violence is discussed, Palestinians usually are identified as the perpetrators, according to Qumsiyeh.

"We don't hear about the violence of oppression, the violence of ethnic cleansing, the violence of removing people from their homes [by Israel]," he said.

A photograph of a young Palestinian girl with a 2-inch bullet wound in her head was flashed onto a large projection screen.

"That's the violence," said Qumsiyeh.

Rebecca Stein, associate professor of cultural anthropology at Duke and a founding member of Jews for Justice in Israel and Palestine, said detractors of this weekend's conference "have couched their attacks in rhetoric stripped of history."

For example, the detractors fail to note that many Palestinians were displaced from their homes and now live as second-class citizens, she said.

"In the absence of history, it becomes possible to disregard the grotesquely uneven field of power in that region,' said Stein.

Conference participants voted late Saturday afternoon on various resolutions to ease the Mideast tension. The results will be made public today.

A press packet distributed on Saturday included statistics indicating that Israeli security forces killed 2,778 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza from September 2000 through the middle of last month, plus 49 more inside Israel. An additional 32 Palestinians were killed by Israeli citizens, according to the statistics.

By comparison, 916 Israelis were killed by Palestinians during the same period, the statistics indicated.