THE OTHER ISRAELIS

...3) Arab...

...As he was leaving the Nazareth municipality, young men assembled and shouted anti-occupation slogans...

...In that gentle truism lies a fundamental challenge to the implications of a Jewish state today...

...Israeli Jews who have been sharply critical of Israeli discrimination against Arabs have published several recent books, much of them documentation: Israel Shahak (ed...

...The conclusion is obvious...

...o/Palestine Students, Spring 1975) These three incidents in November and December, which provoked widespread comment and soul-searching in the press and elsewhere within Israel, were followed a year later by the shocking results of the elections in Nazareth...

...About 70 percent of the labor force in the Arab villages, men and women, work outside their villages...

...The Israel press in several cases called for a revaluation of policy towards the Arab minority...

...Sobol concluded this sympathetic account with this appeal: "Stop this insanity, save the country from a dangerous and unnecessary confrontation...

...and Peled explicitly presumes an average annual Jewish immigration of 50,000, which is far higher than the reality in the last few years...

...New Outlook, an Israeli monthly in English, explored (for October/November 1975) the issue "The Struggle in Equality: Israel's Arab Citizens...

...Thus, the trade union federation newspaper Davar said that the Communist incitement and the land expropriation policy were only "catalysts in a situation of unrest that was built up over years...

...Listening to them, Sobol explained, you grasp the very simplicity of the whole affair: "Before you there stand Israeli citizens who have no sense of inferiority towards any other Israeli (and there is no reason why they s h o u l d . . . ) . They simply demand that the same law which protects the agricultural land of the collective farmers should protect their farms as well...

...Many could not see that the expropriation issue was really so important...

...This process of intensification of national feeling among the Arabs in Israel is taking place concurrently with a stunning population trend...

...THE OTHER ISRAELIS JOSEPH L. RYAN Arabs in Israel are becoming more numerous and more Po.lesKnian Abotrt a month before the March 30 general strike by Arabs within Israel, an Israel Jew, Yehushuah Sobol, writing in the Israeli newspaper, Hamishmar (Supplement, Feb...

...2) Isradi Arab...

...On another occasion at the same University, Arab students applauded loudly a fellow student who appeared wearing a kaliiya "like Arafat...

...The last three are all published by Frances Pinter, London, 1975...

...Davis and Mezvinsky (eds...

...More than that, he says, we must assume that this growing Arab population will not continue to restrict itself to the geographic isolation it has .had up to now, nor will it continue to abstain from playing a role in the management of affairs of state...

...Three days after the strike, at the weekly Cabinet meeting, most Cabinet members who spoke said that the government policy towards the Arab community required no revision...

...There are more signs, he wrote, of a firm decision in many Arab villages to resist by force the imposition of these laws in the state of Israel...

...In Stage II (1967-1973) one million more Palestinians--of the West Bank and Gaza--came under Israeli control...

...He received a flood of accusatory and embarrassing questions from Arab pupils, and was constantly interrupted in his speech by expressions of disapproval for Israel and support for the PLO...

...The Prime Minister's words were drowned out by violent applause every time he mentioned the name of the PLO...

...Italics added...

...and 4) Palestinian...

...A lerusalem Post writer, Yosef Goelt, concluded that the Israeli establishment's policy of using "tame" Arab politicians for its own internal political purposes could no longer go on, and called for a greater--and riskier ---degree of independence for Arab leaders...

...The Non-Jew in the lewish State (Jerusalem, 2 Bartenura Street, 1975...

...Eli Eyal, Maariv, June 21, 1974...

...More than 90 percent of those of school age go to school (although under conditions far poorer than for Jewish children), they learn Hebrew and become aware of the system and its peculiarities...

...There was a tendency to blame the Communists-as happened in the emergency Knesset debate the day after the strike--or outside influences...

...Although, as one Israeli Jewish commentator on the elections admitted, the administration in Nazareth for the previous 28 years was so indescribably bad that an upset was inevitable, still that upset when it came proved stunning...

...A senior Cabinet member told The Jerusalem Post: "Everyone recognized the need for speedier implementation to give the Arab citizen a wider role in the life of the state...

...On April 12 the elections in the West Bank brought to power new nationalistic elements, sweeping away older, more traditional and more docile "notables...

...But they admitted that its implementation had been faulty and laggard...

...Peled (in his August 1 article), predicting that Arabs within Israel will no longer behave with the "obedience and submissiveness to which we have become accustomed," asked whether Israeli Jews will accept this new state of affairs or oppose it...

...The Jewish population will be 4ý89 million...

...In an insightful article that appeared in Maariv, one of Israel's largest newspapers (August 1, 1975), Reserve General Mattityahu Peled, who holds a doctorate from the University of California and now heads 7 January 1977:14 the Faculty of Arabic Studies at the University of Tel Aviv, dwells not only on the increasing political consciousness of Israeli Arabs but also on the implications of their population growth...

...It includes Kook and Merlin's "Proposal for a National Debate" which urges fundmental changes in Israel as a state, changes which would significantly improve the condition of Israeli Arabs...

...What makes these developments within Israel even more profoundly disturbing to Israeli Jews today is that they have been paralleled by a variety of eruptions in Commonweal: 13 the West Bank...

...his question was greeted with tumultuous cheers and applause from the Arab students...

...When the Minister of Education and Culture Aharon Yaldin, in replying to a question from the floor, denied that Israeli intelligence interferes in the appointment of Arab teachers (by rejecting those with unsatisfactory political tendencies), dozens of Arabs left the hall, according to the account in Davar, "in a manner calculated to emphasize their feelings...

...and Felicia Langer, With My Own Eyes (on Israeli mistreatment of Arabs in .the occupied territories...

...The proposal to outlaw Rakah drew no support...

...One of the most disturbing examples occurred in November 1974 during Prime Minister Rabin's visit to a secondary school in Nazag...

...An Israeli writer, discussing the topic "Israeli Arabs Become Palestinian Arabs," summed up the contrast: "Fifty thousand young Israeli Arabs work daily in Jewish cities...

...Each of these two developments, growth in identity and in population, would be significant in itself...

...He concluded: "Equality, when accompanied by limitation or discrimination of any kind, is not equality...

...But the city lights blaze only for Jews and not for them...

...Not all the following data are from Peled...

...They brought to power a Communist mayor and, as councillors, 11 out of 17 members of the Communist-led Democratic Front...

...shocked Jews...

...He cited the case of the village of Kafr Qassim not far from Tel Aviv, where 500 men and women prevented the fencing off of their lands and were ready to be killed to prevent expropriation...

...What is happening...

...According to a survey at the be~nning of 1970, two-thirds of the Israeli Jews believed that the Palestinian people did not really exist, or were not sure...

...eh points out, the Palestinian Arab segment of the population under Israeli control was dominated by a majority, about two-thirds of which did not believe (or were not sure) this minority existed...

...The notables who impressed this writer were adult, politically mature Israeli Arabs, a type of person generally considered more, rather than less, favorable to the Israeli government...

...After 1948, Peled wrote, Arabs within Israel remained a "dumb, silent and obedient majority...

...1975) in which he analyzed a three-stage growth in the identity of Arabs within Israel from 1948 to the present...

...They are no longer...

...The book, To Be an Arab in Israel (London, Frances Pinter, 1975), by Fouzi EI-Asmar, a Palestinian writer and poet, has proved a challenge...

...In Stage III (1973 to the present), Arabs within Israel and in the occupied territories have been deeply affected by a torrent of powerful influences, e.g., direct PLO interaction with the Palestinians under Israeli control, the establishment of the Palestine National Front (a coalition in the occupied territories favorable to the PLO), the Rabat Summit recognition of the PLO, the UN resolutions of November 1974 and thereafter...

...Kafr Qassim is the unfortunate village where, on the eve of the 1956 Israeli attack on Egypt, Israeli police a~tached to the Army brutally mowed down 49 Arab villagers for violating a curfew suddenly imposed on them without their knowing it...

...In Stage I (1948-67), the Arab minority, says Nakhleh, having practically no contact with other Palestinians, remained politically and culturally leaderless, more Arab than Palestinian...

...Except for dress and language, they showed no specific cultural traits...

...While a visiting professor at Haifa University, he wrote an article in New Outlook (Oct./Nov...

...If we try to ignore the character and significance of these changes, he said, we are bound to find ourselves soon in a confrontation situation with a public made up of citizens of the state who will fight for their rights as citizens within the framework ol the law...

...Thus, Paled argues, the proportion of the Arab population will reach 20 or 22 percent...

...Since the October 1973 war, several incidents, in which young Israeli Arabs expressed their strong political consciousness, have astonished and I FATHER JOSEPX .L...

...They live predominantly in the traditional areas, of the Triangle (in the middle of the country), in Galilee and in the mixed cities, but they have been going out far beyond their own living area in order to work...

...Thus the Israeli Arab minority now had contact with Palestinians three times its own number and shared with them similar experiences...

...At it a student from Rakah (the more Arab of the two Communist parties within lsrael) raised the issue of "the Palestine Liberation Organization as the legitimate and accredRed representative of the Palestinian people...

...In December 1974 a discussion took place at Haifa University on the idea of a Palestinian state...

...Furthermore, the suppression in the '60s by the Israeli government of the nationalist al-Ard (the Land) movement produced even greater demoralization and fragmentation of their collective Arab identity...

...Thus, in spite of the total and apparently irrevocable Arab defeat of 1967, a new Palestinian militancy and a growing hostility to Israel was developing...

...The developing Arab nationalist feeling, as manifested in the March 30 general strike, along with the rapid increase in the Israeli Arab population that can clearly be foreseen constitute together an unmistakable warning of danger ahead unless Israeli Jews attend...

...These invalid conclusions, Nakhleh says, have become facts...

...Khalil Nakhleh is a Palestinian sociologist teaching at St...

...Davis, Mack and Yuval-Davis, lsrael and the Palestinians...

...Yehuda Ariel, Haaretz, Feb...

...The increase rate is striking: for Muslims 43.7 per thousand, for Christians 19.6, for Druze 36.1, and for Jews 17.2...

...Thus, Nakhlch says, those Palestinians, both in Israel and scattered around the world, who referred to themselves until now as Arabs (with whatever qualifier they chose), now for the first time, call themselves Palestinians...

...For many, the March 30 general strike sounded the alarm...

...At the same time all of them together interacted with a wider Arab world context...

...Commonweal: 15...

...As evidence of this, studies showed that during Stage I Arabs within Israel identified themselves in the following order: 1) Israeli...

...Hamishmar, organ of the left-wing Mapan faction of the Labor Party, called for a "reappraisal of policy" towards the Arab minority "in order to deal with the roots of the discontent and bitterness exploited by the Israeli Communist Party...

...This analysis, he believes, is all the more necessary because of the established but misleading Israeli view that Arabs in Israel are dissimilar to their counterparts in the Arab countries...

...When you talk with them, Sobol said, and hear their precise explanations and hard facts, it becomes clear to you that the background to the strong resistance and the rebellion that might break out at this time, as a result of attempts to expropriate lands, is complex, mighty and deep---and, hence, essentially simple...

...All this was taking place while Israeli Jews were caught up in their extraordinary post-June euphoria...

...Young Israeli Arabs, in this view, because they speak fluent Hebrew, wear western clothes and conduct themselves "just like any other Israelis," are more like their Israeli Jewish counterparts than like Arabs of Kuwait, Egypt, or even the West Bank...

...When he said that Israel would never submit to force, the students replied with cries of disapproval...

...Educated Arab citizens . . . have to be integrated into the national endeavor, and advanced more rapidly in the Civil Service...

...Two recent articles, one by a Palestinian, the other by an Israeli Jew, focus on two of the many factors involved in the transformation of the Israeli Arab: the Palestinian identity of Israeli Arabs and their population growth...

...Especially since January 1976, numerous and violent protests have taken place in connection with Jewish incursions at the Patriarch's Tomb in Hebron and the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem...

...About 50 percent of the Israeli Arabs today are under 14 years of age, and 75 percent are under 30...

...in Israeli Mirror, July 31, 1974...

...Others give somewhat lower figures...

...Peled hopes that, just as Prime Minister Levi Eshkol in a historic and far-sighted decision abolished in 1966 the military government--Arabs would say not "abolished but changed"--that was so oppressive to Arabs, so the Israeli government and the whole public will today decide to institute more equality in daily life as a guarantee for harmonious coexistence between the two sectors of the population...

...All these events raise serious questions about the Arabs within Israel...

...loseph's University in Beirut...

...for those in the 15-25 age bracket, the figure is 90 percent...

...Against this sort of background, the March 30, 1976 general strike was clearly not an isolated phenomenon...

...John's University in Minnesota...

...In other words, Nakhl...

...and they did approve a proposal made by three members to hold a full-dress debate on future trends in policy...

...Documents ]rom Israel J967-1973...

...A number of recent writings testifying to the soul-searching...

...Of the one-half million Arabs in Israel today, 74 percent are Muslims, 17 percent Christians, 9 percent Druze...

...In their shock Israeli Jews are putting forward some serious questions...

...Among the younger generation of Arabs within Israel there exists a parallel, if much deeper, ferment...

...27, 1976), vividly described the impact on himself of a meeting with some art.icutate Israeli Arab spokesmen, mayors and notables about the land expropriation issue...

...RYAN, S.J., /ormerly Dean at AI-Hikma University, has been, since 1971, a member o/ the Center /or the Study o/ the Modern Arab World at St...

...In the 1980s, says Peled, the Arab population within Israel, that is, within the pre-June 1967 borders, will reach one million...

...lsraleft, March 17, 1976...

...What are the reasons...

...Where is all this leading...

...29 and March 1; in Isralelt, March 17, 1976...

...together they constitute a formidable combination...

...While rising in absolute numbers, from about 180,000 in 1948 to 500,000 in 1975, the Arab percentage has, in fact, dropped, from 20 to 15 percent, because of the concurrent extensive growth of the Jewish population, especially through emigration...