The Arabs Of
Israel: Citizens
Without Citizenship
By Am Johal
24 November, 2004
Countercurrents.org
On
the corner of Balfour and Arlozoroff in Haifa, there's a pizza joint
around the corner where the deliveries are done on Vespa scooters. This
part of Haifa, midway up the Carmel Mountain, gets wealthier as you
go higher up the slopes. This neighbourhood, together with Massada and
Hillel streets further down, and other streets like Ben Gurion at the
footsteps of the Bahai Gardens, are a model of Jewish and Arab co-existence
- coffee shops, bars and young families, far away from the conflict
and a five minute sherut ride away from the Mediterranean beach front.
Places like Cafe
Elika, Cafe Kitan, Hagar and Beneinu are where are all the beautiful
people go. Not far from here, you can catch the French built Carmelit
up or down the mountain.
This is the Israel
nobody sees or hears about - one in which Jews and Arabs can live together
as equals.
This is perhaps
painting too idyllic a picture. Just last year on October 4, 2003, the
Maxim restaurant was hit with a suicide bombing by 29-year-old Palestinian
female Hanadi Jaradat. Twenty one Israelis, both Jews and Arabs, were
killed, and fifty one others were wounded. Among the victims were two
families and four children, including a two-month-old baby. Earlier,
in March of 2003, seventeen people were killed and fifty three wounded
in a suicide bombing of a bus in the Carmel section of Haifa, en route
to Haifa University. This is also the city where Saddam Hussein sent
one of his errant scud missiles during the first Gulf War. Haifa is
far from isolated from Israel's troubles.
The irony is that
the Arab citizens of Israel sometimes also find themselves as the unintended
victims of Palestinian violence. They have the unique ability to see
many perspectives.
On some days, Israel
could just as easily be 1960's Alabama because the language of the debate
here is about equal rights. And 1948 is not a distant memory -it is
still the recent past and defines social relations to a large degree.
Here, just like everywhere in Israel, your politics matter.
Israeli President
Moshe Katsav recently said that, "Human rights are basic rights
and should not be based on obligations." In a young nation without
a constitution, there are opportunities and pitfalls for those seeking
an equal playing field. For the Arab citizens, they are not alone in
this fight for recognition - international law is largely on their side.
But since the situation
in the Occupied Territories is more acute and more dire, the situation
for the Arabs within Israel is left off the front pages of the major
international papers and the issues are left off the negotiating table
during the peace processes. The Israeli Arabs see themselves as the
ones who can actually broker a just peace in the region since they consider
themselves to be both Palestinians and Israelis.
Earlier this year,
Bnei Sakhnin, the first Israeli Arab soccer team to win the national
title, competed in the Uefa Cup. As opposing sides shouted 'Allahu Akbar
(God is Great) and 'Death to the Arabs' it highlighted the division
that still exists between Israel and its own Arab citizens. Sakhnin
is the home of the annual Land Day event which still draws thousands
and commemorates the death of six unarmed demonstrators at the hands
of security forces in 1976. The Sakhnin residents were protesting the
state confiscation of their lands in the area known as the 'Iron Triangle.'
While the Palestinians
in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are in the news every day with stories
of the Occupation, the Arab citizens of Israel are mired in a similar
but different struggle. While comprising twenty percent of the population
and holding Israeli citizenship, they are engaged in the much more delicate
struggle to win equal rights, have them enshrined in law and to actually
have them implemented at the governmental level.
This is a different
kind of diplomatic chess game, 'shatranj' as the Arabs call it - one
which is played in the peripheries, in Haifa, in Nazareth, in the Galilee,
in Jerusalem and the Negev. It involves briefings with foreign diplomats,
lobbying at the Knesset, taking cases to the Supreme Court, building
coalitions between Arabs and Jews, Ethiopians and Russians. It means
writing reports, documenting human rights abuses and being in the media
at every opportunity whether Binyamin Netanyahu is calling them a demographic
time bomb or another Cabinet Minister is calling for ethnic transfer
of the Arab citizens of Israel into the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It
means putting internal and international pressure to bear on the state
with just enough pressure so as not to exacerbate tensions with the
powerful forces who oppose their agenda.
Recently, the Arab
citizens of Israel called a General Strike on October 1st after declaring
that the Israeli government had failed to implement the recommendations
of the Or Commission report which had originally been set up to investigate
the systemic failures that resulted in the deaths of 13 Arab citizens
during the riots following Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount
in the months following the collapse of the Camp David Accords. Since
October 2000, Israeli security forces have killed an additional 17 Arab
citizens of Israel.
In the Mossawa Center's
recent report called 'Racism in Israel,' there were reports of 17 acts
of violence and incidents of physical attacks against Arab citizens,
fifteen acts of inciting and verbal violence and nine cases of discrimination
related to entering public places. There have also been ten incidents
of legal discrimination including passage of the "Citizenship Law"
which denies the right of Arab citizens to sponsor the citizenship of
their spouses in to Israel if they live in the Occupied Territories.
There is also a
disturbing trend towards a greater percentage of the Jewish population
supporting the ethnic transfer of Israeli Arabs and 70% which believe
that that Arab citizens pose a threat to state security.
Despite years of
lobbying to address the socio-economic concerns of Arab citizens, the
statistics reveal that there is still a huge gap between Jewish and
Arab citizens in Israel. 60% of Arab children were below the poverty
line in 2003. The income subsidy cuts were disproportionately affecting
women, children and the unemployed.
In the Negev where
much of the Bedouin population lives, the infant mortality rate is 17
out of 1,000 infants in contrast to 4 out of 1,000 in the Jewish community.
The situation is expected to deteriorate following the increase in health
taxes on housewives and the closure of mother and child clinics by the
health ministry.
There continues
to be a housing crisis where selective permitting is resulting in thousands
of homes being built without permission. There are also dozens of home
demolitions occurring annually within Israel.
The per capita income
of Arab citizens is 4,472 NIS, only 60%of the income of Jewish citizens.
The percentage of Arab employees in government is only 6.1%.
In the eyes of Arab
leaders in Israel, budget and resource allocations continue to be unequal,
lack of military service for Arab citizens continues to confer wider
social and economic privilages to those who do serve and the law continues
to be implemented unevenly.
Added to this, the
spectre of new discriminatory legislation such as those limiting international
funding of non-governmental organizations or the Removal of Intruders
Law which streamlines the process to evict citizens from their land
could continue the downward spiral in Arab and Jewish relations in Israel.
History has always
shown that societies built on inequitable foundations will collapse
in on themselves over time. When equality comes, it is not so much a
tidal wave as it is usually the result of constructive dissent waged
on a thousand fronts, in everyday life, the conversations at the coffee
shop, the challenging of opinions and deeply held views on the street,
as much as the Supreme Court victories, the boardroom dramas, the backroom
arm twisting, the subtleties of high diplomacy and the legislative coups.
For the Arabs of
Israel, the citizens without citizenship, there is a large and increasing
base of support in the Jewish community ready to enlist in their struggle.
Time, planning and
persistence have felled greater situations of inequality - the Arabs
of Israel will find a way to get to the place they want and deserve
to be, but their greatest impediment today is the lack of initiative
and empathy from the Israeli leadership for their struggle.