Problems of Arab Israelis

...Yitzchak Reiter, a professor of modern Middle Eastern history at Hebrew University, believes Israel's Arabs "have felt like a national minority" since the 1970s...

...This year, too, some Israeli Arabs joined their Palestinian brethren in marking "al-Nakba," the anniversary of the "Catastrophe" that was the creation of the modern Jewish state...

...We said, 'Okay, you want to talk about civil society, let's talk about civil society...

...Until 1992 they were three times larger for Jewish than for Arab families...

...My friend Fathi is one of the most moderate people I know...

...Actually, most Israeli Arabs would be happy with separate, as long as it was equal...

...But instead we fell between the cracks...

...Which brings us to a fundamental reality: However strong Israel's military and economy may be, most Jews still feel insecure in their environment...

...Previously there were the Communist Left, allied with the USSR, and the Islamic movement...

...After saying he disapproves of burning the Israeli flag, Bishara adds that Jews have no need to feel threatened by the waving of the Palestinian flag: "Israelis think it's the PLO flag, but it isn't for us and it never was...

...In press interviews the Qadans, an attractive middle-class couple (he is a nurse, she is a former teacher), said they wanted a better life for their children than Baka al-Garbiya could offer...

...Different but Equal" was the theme that united them...

...If you go to live in a place where people don't respect you, the Supreme Court isn't going to be of much help...

...Observing dissent among the Jewish population, they also can't help noticing that the government responds when discontent is expressed loudly or even violently...

...Its Declaration of Independence notwithstanding, their citizenship may be "Israeli" but under "nationality" their blue identity cards designate them as "Arab...

...Last March the Court issued an astounding decision...

...Issa, although Los Angeles-born, is the daughter of two refugees from the Arab town of Biram, on part of whose ruins the kibbutz' apple orchard now stands...

...There wasn't a political movement that talked to the Israeli establishment in its own language...

...Whenever you have a minority like this," he submits, "it's acceptable to have federal or autonomous solutions...

...Playing by the Israeli rules means playing to the media, and it always lusts for ever more extreme expressions...

...In 1951 the Supreme Court ruled that the citizens of both villages, most of whom remained in Israel, were entitled to go back to their homes...

...Thus there is growing confusion among Israeli Arabs about their connection to the country...

...It may be hard to understand that Jews and Arabs are basically content to live apart, even in cities like Jerusalem and Haifa that have mixed populations...

...Then, following his attention-grabbing run for Prime Minister, "they began to imitate us...

...Of 604 senior positions in governmentowned companies, one is held by an Arab...

...In his town, demonstrations against land expropriations have led to the type of police violence that would never be employed against Jewish demonstrators...

...Shahar is from Kibbutz Bararci, near the Northern border...

...What is the price...

...For one thing, he himself recently drew fire when he offered congratulations to Hezbollah for its "victory" over the Israeli troops withdrawing unilaterally from Lebanon...

...That is why pairing Daniela Issa with Ziv Shahar under the "Different but Equal" rubric seemed painfully ironic...

...Another Arab, who spoke on condition of anonymity (I will call him Fathi), notes that expectations were always low when the Likud was in power: "They said explicitly, 'You're not part of us...

...A sophisticated man who shuttles deftly between the Northern Arab town where he lives with his family and ajob plus a variety of public activities that bring him into regular contact with the Jewish sector, he was unenthusiastic...

...Personally, I prefer to have Jews and Arabs live separately...

...But if the imitation is limited to the rhetorical level, they can only become more extreme...

...of 7,000 senior faculty in the universities, fewer than 50 are Arabs...

...Responding to a 1995 petition by Adel and Iman Qadan, an Arab couple from the Northern town of Baka alGarbiya, it ruled that they could not be denied the right to buy a plot of land in the nearby settlement of Katzir...

...In the past, their principals and teachers alone had to be vetted by the Shin Bet, the domestic security agency...

...Abu-Rayya explains this from the Arab perspective in Catch-22 terms: "You only pay attention to us if we're violent, but if we're violent, you say we're a fifth column and can't be trusted...

...And so on...

...What more can you do to him...

...sit and be quiet.'" Barak made lots of promises, he continues, yet unlike his political mentor Yitzchak Rabin, whose administration funneled large amounts of money to the Arab sector, the new Prime Minister has to date paid little more attention to the Arabs than Netanyahu...

...Most Israeli Jews are unlikely to find comfort in Bishara's words...

...He says he is worried...

...About separation of church and state, and the entire democratic manifesto.' That shocked the Israeli establishment, but it enchanted the Arab population formerly represented by the Communists...

...When a person is humiliated, or a situation is allowed to develop where a father doesn't have money to feed his family, you bring him to a state of complete despair...

...One of Rabin's most significant moves was gradually ending the discrepancy in Social Security allowances for children...

...Bishara sees the Barak administration as similar to that of Rabin and his caretaker successor Shimon Peres, in that all have been "governments of containment...

...In part, he concedes, that is because they identify culturally with Israel's Arab neighbors, but he adds: "Over the years, most Jews began to think they could discriminate against Arabs...

...The Army then invoked emergency powers, preventing this from happening, and eventually Biram and Ikrit were razed...

...We were supposed to be the bridge between Jews and Palestinians...

...The Israeli flag doesn't really represent us, and we need a flag that does...

...Their goal was better schools, not to foment a social revolution...

...For a brief period following the announcement of the Oslo Accords, many Israeli Arabs thought they could soon be proud Israelis and proud Palestinians...

...Rights," answers Bishara...

...In fairness to Barak, he has ignored practically every domestic issue to concentrate fully— by his own admission—on advancing the peace process...

...Not a single new Arab community has been built since Independence, even though their number has grown seven-fold...

...Fathi and his family did not celebrate Independence Day and they did not mark al-Nakba this year...

...One of the most articulate spokesmen for minority rights, who goes further than Reiter, is Azmi Bishara, one of 13 Arab Knesset members...

...A major source of discontent is their living conditions...

...As the sun sets and official mourning gives way to official joy, fireworks are set off and each year a giant candelabra is lit by a different group of honorees...

...He makes it clear that he is not simply speaking of the special privileges afforded to Jews, such as the Law of Return...

...He calls on Israel to become a "state of all its citizens...

...Since Rabin's assassination, all teachers in state schools, both Jews and Arabs, have to undergo a security check of sorts, so in that respect the discrimination has ended...

...This despite the fact that the bylaws of Katzir, which had been allocated its land by the Jewish Agency for Israel, limited membership in the middle-class community to Jews...

...Several commentators compared the ruling to the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision in the U.S., where the High Court declared that "separate but equal" was not good enough...

...In the New Post-Zionist Era Problems of Arab Israelis By David B. Green Jerusalem In Israel, where the end of Memorial Day is the beginning of Independence Day, both occasions are celebrated with a moving ceremony at the military cemetery on Jerusalem's Mt...

...I stand whether or not people see me," he said, "I respect those no longer here, no matter where they died or why they died...

...But he quit the race 24 hours before election day, and thereby helped to insure Ehud Barak's victory over Benjamin Netanyahu in a single round...

...When an Arab woman died at Sachnin, in the Galilee, at the end of March, apparently after inhaling tear gas at a demonstration against ongoing land confiscations, violent protests spread to the university campuses...

...One of the flames was lit by two girls, Daniela Nadim Issa, 12, and Ziv Shahar, 13...

...Infant mortality among the Arabs is twice that of the Jewish population, and nearly a third of them live below the country's poverty line...

...Israel's Declaration of Independence, declaimed by Prime Minister David BenGurion on the first Independence Day, says the state will "ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex...

...As soon as the power becomes threatening," warns Fathi, "you lose respect for it, you're no longer scared of the threat...

...they had to apply to their local military governor for permission to travel around the country...

...Until 1966, the majority of Israeli Arabs lived under military government...

...Jews felt so threatened by the idea of a separate national identity for Israeli Arabs, even on the formal level...

...I want to be respected when I die...

...Then the power loses its effect...

...And that, in turn, is bound to intensify their tendency to embrace radicalism...

...The same fate befell the Greek Catholic town of Ikrit, some 12 miles to the west...

...Although that sounds innocent enough, he wants to eliminate the Jewish character of the state, including the Law of Return...

...The villagers were asked to leave their homes temporarily while the Army "cleaned up" more hostile towns along the Lebanese border...

...A creative and daring politician, Bishara ran for prime minister last year...

...This past May, when Israel turned 52, the kindlers of the flames included a Holocaust survivor, immigrants from Ethiopia and Russia, and an Arab Army officer...

...As long as that is true—and there is little reason to expect the atmosphere to change soon—there simply will not be much sympathy available for the plight of Israeli Arabs...

...They look at their Palestinian counterparts and see that the intifada led to the peace process, and to the state in the making...

...By containment, I mean co-option...

...I don't wantthe Supreme Court to solve such problems," he responded...

...Today that period belongs more to history than personal memory, for over half of Israel's Arabs are under the age of 20...

...By now feelings have gone well beyond identity ambivalence...

...Herzl...

...But I believe people should have the right to decide for themselves...

...The institution that has emerged as the guardian of civil rights in Israel is the Supreme Court, led by activist Chief Justice Aharon Barak (no relative to the PM...

...It's an Arab flag from the start of the 20th century, from the Arab Revolt against the Turks...

...Consequently, their freedom of movement was carefully monitored...

...Increasingly, therefore, particularly younger Israeli Arabs identify themselves nationally with the Palestinians...

...In 1995, 19 per cent of Arab high school students received the matriculation certificates needed to attend a university, compared with 44 per cent for Jewish students...

...Since the 1970s, successive governments have promised to right the wrong, but nothing has been done...

...Before the last election the Communists and Islamists cooperated with each other to attack Balad, Bishara maintains...

...We became a bridge all right, for everyone to walk over...

...What frustrates most Arabs, though, is not that schools aren't integrated, but that they don't control their own curriculum or staffing...

...Bishara's gesture, and Arab support for Barak that exceeded 90 per cent, accounts for at least some of today's anger...

...He got better support from the Arabs than [Egypt's President Gamal Abdel] Nasser did," says Abu-Rayya, exaggerating a bit...

...We feel like it's the same woman, only she changed clothes," says Fathi...

...The story of Biram haunts Israel, for its 1,000 Christian Maronite residents welcomed the nascent Jewish state's Army during the War of Independence in October 1948...

...David B. Green, a previous contributor, is an editor of the Jerusalem Report...

...his concern, rather, is institutionalized administrative discrimination...

...I asked Fathi whether he found the Katzir ruling encouraging...

...Few Jews here perceive Hezbollah as anything other than a terrorist group, and an expression of sympathy for it is considered inexcusable...

...The one difference, he says, is that Barak, unlike Rabin, "is not ready to pay the price, because the Arab minority in Israel is very low on the agenda...

...For Israel's 1.2 million Arabs (about a fifth of the country's population), however, there is no equality...

...That way you can preserve the identity of the state...

...In fact, Israel has regularly expropriated Arab land—for military use, for roads, for new Jewish towns: Where some 75 per cent of Israel proper was Arab-owned or controlled before 1948, today that figure is 3.4 per cent...

...He points out that his party, Balad (Democratic National Alliance), "was the first to combine an Arab national identity with a liberal one...

...Similarly, a pre-Independence Day reception traditionally held by the mayors of Arab towns for the Interior Minister turned violent and Natan Sharansky had to be spirited away from a rock-throwing crowd by bodyguards...

...Azmi Bishara takes credit for this, albeit with some regret...

...In any case, Reiter says he has never understood why...

...The Court's decision said that neither the state nor its agents, in this case the Jewish Agency, could discriminate against individuals on the basis of ethnicity...

...Land expropriation continues...

...The blue-andwhite Star of David flag was burned on Israel's university campuses, and Palestinian flags were waved in their place, amid expressions of support for Hezbollah guerrilla attacks on Israeli forces in Lebanon...

...A second factor contributing to the radicalization of university-age Arabs is the competition for their votes...

...Because their homes were near the borders that refugees frequently tried to cross, they were seen as a collective security risk...

...But his policy has only made things worse...

...The cold peace with Egypt, Syrian intransigence and, most important, the continued threat by Palestinians (both the PLO's Yasir Arafat and the rejectionists) to resume the armed struggle are a cause for existential worry...

...Issam Abu-Rayya, an Arab doctoral student at Hebrew University, told me: "We were sure everything was going to change for us...

...Yet they still have not been permitted to return, and much of their town's 3,000 acres have been parceled out to neighboring Jewish settlements like Baram...

...When a siren went off for victims of the Holocaust, and a week later another siren sounded for fallen soldiers on Memorial Day, he was at work in Jerusalem and he stood at attention...