SubscribeArab citizens of Israel[2] is a phrase used to refer to the legal Israeli citizens or residents whose cultural and linguistic heritage or ethnic identity is Arab.[3]
The traditional and current vernacular of Arab citizens, irrespective of religion, is the Arabic language, or more precisely, the Palestinian dialect of Arabic. Most Arab citizens of Israel are functionally bilingual, their second language being Modern Hebrew. By religious affiliation, most are Muslim, particularly of the Sunni branch of Islam. There is a significant Arab Christian minority from various denominations, as well as Druze, among other religious communities. Jews of Arab extraction are not considered to form part of this population.
As of 2008, Arab citizens of Israel comprise just over 20% of the country's total population. The majority of these identify themselves as Arab or Palestinian by nationality and Israeli by citizenship.[3][4][5] Many have family ties to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as to Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. Negev Bedouins tend to identify more as Israelis than other Arab citizens of Israel.[6] Unlike other Arabs, the Druze are conscripted into the Israel Defense Forces.[7][8]
Special cases include Arabs living in East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights, administered by Israel since the Six-Day War of 1967. The residents of East Jerusalem became permanent residents of Israel shortly after the war. Only a few of them accepted Israeli citizenship, and most of them keep close ties with the West Bank. They are allowed to vote for municipal services.[9] The mostly Druze residents of the Golan Heights are considered permanent residents under the Golan Heights Law of 1981. The vast majority have refused to accept full Israeli citizenship, choosing to retain their Syrian citizenship and identity.[10]
1948 Arab-Israeli War
Most Israelis refer to the 1948 Arab-Israeli War as the War of Independence, while most Arab citizens refer to it as the Nakba (catastrophe), a reflection of differences in perception of the purpose and outcomes of the war.[15][16]In the aftermath of the 1948 war, British Mandate of Palestine was de facto divided into three parts: the State of Israel, the Jordanian-held West Bank, and the Egyptian-held Gaza Strip. (Jordan had been separated from the mandatory area several years earlier.) Of the estimated 950,000 Arabs that lived in the territory that became Israel before the war,[11] over 80% left. While it is disputed how many fled or were expelled; some 156,000 remained.[17] Benny Morris says
Most of Palestine's 700,000 "refugees" fled their homes because of the flail of war (and in the expectation that they would shortly return to their homes on the backs of victorious Arab invaders). But it is also true that there were several dozen sites, including Lydda and Ramla, from which Arab communities were expelled by Jewish troops.[18]Arab citizens of Israel are largely composed of these people and their descendants. Others include some from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank who procured Israeli citizenship under family-unification provisions that were recently made significantly more stringent.[19]
Arabs who left their homes during the period of armed conflict, but remained in what had become Israeli territory, were considered to be "present absentees". In some cases, they were refused permission to return to their homes, which were expropriated and turned over to state ownership, as was the property of other Palestinian refugees.[20][21] Some 274,000, or 1 of every 4 Arab citizens of Israel are "present absentees" or internally displaced Palestinians.[22][23] Notable cases of "present absentees" include the residents of Saffuriyya and the Galilee villages of Kafr Bir'im and Iqrit.[24]
[edit] 1949–1966
Arabs that held Israeli citizenship were entitled to vote for the Israeli Knesset. Arabic Knesset members have served in office since the First Knesset. The first Arab Knesset members were Amin-Salim Jarjora and Seif el-Din el-Zoubi which were members of the Democratic List of Nazareth party and Tawfik Toubi member of the Maki party.
In 1965 a radical independent Arab group called al-Ard forming the Arab Socialist List tried to run for Knesset elections. The list was banned by the Israeli Central Elections Committee.[28]
In 1966, martial law was lifted completely, and the government set about dismantling most of the discriminatory laws, while Arab citizens were granted the same rights as Jewish citizens under law.[29]
[edit] 1967–2000
In 1974, a committee of Arab mayors and municipal councilmen was established which played an important role in representing the community and pressuring the Israeli government.[32] This was followed in 1975 by the formation of the Committee for the Defense of the Land, which sought to prevent continuing land expropriations.[33] That same year, a political breakthrough took place with the election of Arab poet Tawfiq Ziad, a Maki member, as mayor of Nazareth, accompanied by a strong communist presence in the town council.[34] In 1976, six Arab citizens of Israel were killed by Israeli security forces at a protest against land expropriations and house demolitions. The date of the protest, 30 March, has since been commemorated annually as Land Day.
The 1980s saw the birth of the Islamic Movement. As part of a larger trend in the Arab World, the Islamic Movement emphasized moving Islam into the political realm. The Islamic movement built schools, provided other essential social services, constructed mosques, and encouraged prayer and conservative Islamic dress. The Islamic Movement began to have an impact on electoral politics particularly at the local level.[35]
Many Arab citizens supported the First Intifada and assisted Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, providing them with money, food, and clothes. A number of strikes were also held by Arab citizens in solidarity with Palestinians in the occupied territories.[35]
The years leading up to the Oslo Accords were a time of optimism for Arab citizens. During the administration of Yitzhak Rabin, Arab parties played an important role in the formation of a governing coalition. Increased participation of Arab citizens was also seen at the civil society level. However, tension continued to exist with many Arabs calling for Israel to become a "state of all its citizens", thereby challenging the state's Jewish identity. During the 1999 elections for Prime Minister, 94% of the Arab electorate voted for Ehud Barak. However, Barak formed a broad left-right-center government without consulting the Arab parties, disappointing the Arab community.[30]
[edit] 2000–present
Tensions between Arabs and the state rose in October 2000 when 12 Arab citizens and one man from Gaza were killed while protesting the government's response to the Second Intifada. In response to this incident, the government established the Or Commission. The events of October 2000 caused many Arabs to question the nature of their Israeli citizenship. To a large extent, they boycotted the 2001 Israeli Elections as a means of protest.[30] Ironically, this boycott helped Ariel Sharon defeat Ehud Barak. In 1999 elections, more than 90 percent of Israel's Arab minority had voted for Ehud Barak.[36] IDF enlistment by Bedouin citizens of Israel dropped significantly.[37]During the 2006 Lebanon War, Arab advocacy organizations complained that the Israeli government had invested time and effort to protect Jewish citizens from Hezbollah attacks, but had neglected Arab citizens. They pointed to a dearth of bomb shelters in Arab towns and villages and a lack of basic emergency information in Arabic.[38] Many Israeli Jews viewed the Arab opposition to government policy and sympathy with the Lebanese as a sign of disloyalty.[39]
In October 2006, tensions rose when Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert invited a right-wing political party Yisrael Beiteinu, to join his coalition government. The party leader, Avigdor Lieberman, advocated the transfer of heavily populated Arab areas (such as Umm al-Fahm) to the Palestinian Authority as part of a peace proposal.[40]
In January 2007 the first non-Druze Arab minister in Israel's history, Raleb Majadele, was appointed minister without portfolio (Salah Tarif, a Druze, had been appointed a minister without portfolio in 2001). The appointment was criticized by the left, which felt it was an attempt to cover up the Labor Party's decision to sit with Yisrael Beiteinu in the government, and by the right, who saw it as a threat to Israel's status as a Jewish state.[41][42]
[edit] Ethnic and religious groupings
In 2006, the official number of Arab residents in Israel - including East Jerusalem permanent residents many of whom are not citizens - was 1,413,500 people, about 20% of Israel’s population.[43] According to the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics (May 2003), Muslims, including Bedouins, make up 82% of the entire Arab population in Israel, with around 9% Druze, and 9% Christians.[44]The national language and mother tongue of Arab citizens, including the Druze, is Arabic and the colloquial spoken language is of the Palestinian Arabic dialect. Knowledge and command of Modern Standard Arabic varies.[45]
[edit] Muslims
Outside of the Bedouin population, traditionally settled communities of Muslim Arabs comprise about 70% of the Arab population in Israel.Muslims in Israel have the highest birthrate of any group: 4.0 children per woman, as opposed to 2.7 for Jewish Israelis, a natural reproduction rate of 3% compared to 1.5%.[46] Around 25% of the children in Israel today were born to Muslim parents. The Muslim population is mostly young: 42% of Muslims are children under the age of 15, compared with 26% of the Jewish population. The median age of Muslim Israelis is 18, while the median age of Jewish Israelis is 30. The percentage of people over 65 is less than 3% for Muslims, compared with 12% for the Jewish population.[44] According to forecasts, the Muslim population will grow to over 2,000,000 people, or 24-26% of the population within the next 15 years. They will also comprise 85% of the Arab population in Israeli in 2020 (up 3% from 2005).[47] See the section on Demographics for more on this issue.
[edit] Bedouin
The term "Bedouin" ("Badawi" or "Baddu" in Arabic) defines a range of nomadic desert-dwelling ethnic groups spanning from the western Sahara desert to the Nejd desert including one of its arms, the Negev ("Naqab" in Arabic). Through the latter half of the 19th century, the traditionally pastoral nomadic Bedouin in Palestine began transitioning to a semi-nomadic pastoral agricultural community, with an emphasis on agricultural production and the privatization of tribal lands.[49] Although the Bedouin in Israel continue to be perceived as nomads, today all of them are fully sedentarized, and about half are urbanites.[50]
Prior to the establishment of Israel in 1948, there were an estimated 65,000-90,000 Bedouin living in the Negev.[49] The 11,000 who remained were relocated by the Israeli government in the 1950s and 1960s to an area called the siyag ("enclosure" or, "fence") made up of relatively infertile land in the northeastern Negev comprising 10% of the Negev desert.[49] Negev Bedouins, like the rest of the Arab population in Israel, lived under military rule up to 1966, after which restrictions were lifted and they were free to move outside the siyag as well. However, even after 1966 they were not free to reside outside of the siyag; they came to reside within 2% of the Negev[51] and never returned to their former range.
The Israeli government encourages Bedouin to settle as permanent residents in these development towns. Around half the Bedouin population lives in seven towns built for them by the Israeli government between 1979 and 1982. The largest Bedouin locality in Israel is the city of Rahat. Other towns include Ar'arat an-Naqab (Ar'ara BaNegev), Bir Hadaj, Hura, Kuseife, Lakiya, Shaqib al-Salam (Segev Shalom) and Tel as-Sabi (Tel Sheva).
Approximately 40%-50% of Bedouin citizens of Israel live in 39-45 Unrecognized bedouin villages.[52][53] The unrecognised villages are ineligible for municipal services such as connection to the electrical grid, water mains or trash-pickup.[52] The unrecognized villages are not precisely marked on commercial maps.
[edit] Druze
Main article: Israeli Druze
It is in keeping with Druze religious practice to always serve the country in which they live.[54] So while the Druze population in Israel are Arabic speakers like their counterparts in Syria and Lebanon, they often consider themselves Israeli and unlike the Arab Muslims and Arab Christians in Israel they rarely identify themselves as Palestinians.[55] As early as 1939, the leadership of one Druze village formally allied itself with pre-Israeli militias, like the Haganah.[7] A separate "Israeli Druze" identity was encouraged by the Israeli government who formally recognized the Druze religious community as independent of the Muslim religious community in Israeli law as early as 1957.[56]
The Druze are defined as a distinct ethnic group in the Israeli Ministry of Interior's census registration. While the Israeli education system is basically divided into Hebrew and Arabic speaking schools, the Druze have autonomy within the Arabic speaking branch.[56]
The Druze of British Mandate of Palestine showed little interest in Arab nationalism that was on the rise in the 20th century, and did not take part in the early Arab-Jewish skirmishes of the era either. By 1948, many young Druze volunteered for the Israeli army and actively fought on their side. Unlike their Christian and Muslim counterparts, no Druze villages were destroyed in the 1948 war and no Druze left their settlements permanently.[23] Unlike most other Arab citizens of Israel, right-wing Israeli political parties have appealed to many Druze. Ayoob Kara, for example, represented the conservative Likud in the Knesset, and other parties such as Shas and Yisrael Beiteinu have likewise attracted Druze voters.[citation needed] Currently, a Druze MK, Majalli Wahabi of the centrist Kadima, as Deputy Speaker of the Knesset, is next in line to the acting presidency.[57]
[edit] Christians
See also: Palestinian Christians
Christian Arabs comprise about 9% of the Arab population in Israel, and approximately 70% reside in the North District (Israel) in the towns of Jish, Eilabun, Kafr Yasif, Kafr Kanna, I'billin, and Shefa-'Amr while many reside in Nazareth. Several other villages, including a number of Druze villages such as Hurfeish and Maghar, are inhabited by Christian Arabs.[44] Nazareth has the largest Christian Arab population. There are 117,000 or more Christian Arabs in Israel.[58] Christian Arabs have been prominent in Arab political parties in Israel and these leaders have included Archbishop George Hakim, Emile Toma, Tawfik Toubi, Emile Habibi, and Azmi Bishara.Notable Christian religious figures in Israel include the Melkite Archbishops of the Galilee Elias Chacour and Boutros Mouallem, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Michel Sabbah, and Bishop Munib Younan of the Lutheran Church of Jordan and the Holy Land.
The only non-Jewish Arab judge to receive a permanent appointment to preside over Israel's Supreme Court is a Christian Arab, Salim Joubran.
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