Israel’s Arab citizens, who make up just over one-fifth of Israel’s total population, have the same rights under the law as Israeli Jews. They are distinct from most Palestinians in the West Bank, who are ruled by the Palestinian Authority, and Palestinians in Gaza, who live under Hamas rule, as well as most Arab citizens in East Jerusalem, who have more limited rights. But many of them are second-class citizens, and some observers fear that the unrest that has rocked the Holy Land in recent months does not bode well for long-term relations between Israel’s Jewish majority and its predominantly Muslim Arab minority.
An escalation of violence in 2021 has led to rising tensions between Israel’s Jewish majority and its largely Muslim Arab minority. However, soon after, an Arab party entered the country’s government for the first time. More than a year later, political gains will be put to the test in the country’s 5th election, scheduled for November, in less than 4 years.
The Israeli government calls them “Israeli Arabs,” and the Israeli and world media use similar wording. Some members of this network identify themselves as “Palestinian citizens of Israel” or simply Palestinians to imply their rejection of Israeli identity. Others prefer to be called Arab citizens of Israel because they seek rights equivalent to those of Israeli citizens. The term is used in this background paper because it represents the existing political and legal reality.
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Israel’s Arab citizens are descended from those left over after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, which led to Israel’s creation from the British Mandate over Palestine, which was then home to around 1. 2 million Arabs. After more than 700,000 of them were expelled or abandoned in Israel, in what they call the Nakba, or catastrophe, some 150,000 people were left [PDF] and automatically became citizens, forming part of the country’s population. But unlike Jewish citizens, those other people were subject to army rule until 1966. Today, 21% of Israel’s population is Arab (about two million more people). Most are Sunni Muslims, there are also many Christians.
Most Israeli cities have predominantly Jewish or predominantly Arab populations. The cities of Galilee, the so-called little triangle along the 1949 armistice line that delineated Israel’s borders, and the Negev region have mostly Arab populations. This continued separation is due to points such as the legacy of restrictions imposed at the time of Israel’s founding, which imply where non-Jewish Israelis can live; separate schools; and discriminatory legislation on hard work against Arabs, as well as prevailing prejudices against Arab citizens living in Jewish neighborhoods.
“Technically, you don’t have red lines, technically you don’t have formal Jim Crow-style segregation. In practice, yes,” says Palestinian American historian Rashid Khalidi. However, this casual separation doesn’t triumph everywhere, Khalidi says. one-tenth of Israel’s Arab citizens live in what are officially called “mixed” cities, where populations are intertwined, such as Haifa and Lod (the so-called Hebrew for the city Arabs call al-Lyd).
Officially, Israel’s Arab citizens have had equivalent rights since Israel’s creation. The main difference is that, unlike Israeli Jews, Arab citizens of Israel do not have to serve in the Israel Defense Forces, the country’s army. They can still enlist, and some do, especially Druze and Circassians, but in some of their communities there would possibly be a stigma against doing so. However, not enlisting can contribute to economic inequality, as veterans are entitled to many benefits, such as cash assistance for education. and discounted building permits.
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In addition to not enjoying these benefits, Israel’s Arab citizens face discrimination that contributes to poverty; limited access to education, work and facilities; and underrepresentation in politics. More than a fraction of the country’s Arab families were considered deficient in 2020, compared to 40% of Jewish families. Socioeconomic disparities between Israel’s Jewish and Arab citizens are less pronounced in mixed cities, a July 2022 government audit found significant gaps in the provision of municipal facilities in those cities.
Concerns about inequality increased after Israel passed the geographic region law in 2018. Among other provisions, the law eliminated Arabic as an official language but granted it a “special status,” declared Israel the geographical region of the Jewish people, and declared that other Jews have a “unique right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel. “The language made many Arab citizens of Israel feel that their rights as citizens had been violated.
In 2021, the government approved a five-year plan to boost employment, improve fitness facilities and housing, and expand infrastructure, among other goals, for the so-called Arab sector. The plan, which is expected to charge more than $9 billion, follows a similar move by former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who allocated more budget to the sector than any of his predecessors, even though it has provoked anger toward the Arab community.
After annexing East Jerusalem after the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel presented the thousands of Palestinians living there with Israeli citizenship. Most refused, but were granted permanent resident status. Today, about 362,000 Palestinians in East Jerusalem, the vast majority of its Arab population, have this status. Permanent residency allows them to live, work and freely in Israel, as well as access their health insurance and social services. However, they do not download Israeli passports (many have Jordanian passports) and cannot vote. in national elections.
They may lose their residency status if the Interior Ministry determines that East Jerusalem is no longer their number one residence. Since 1967, more than fourteen thousand Palestinians have had their residency revoked, according to a compilation of knowledge from various government agencies through the Israeli human network. human rights organization B’Tselem.
At first, its main representation in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, came from the Arab-Jewish Communist Party. Independent Arab parties failed to gain ground for decades and were banned or shut down. While there are still efforts to restrict their political power, Arab parties have lately held 10 of the 120 seats in the Knesset. With little acceptance of elected officials restricting voter turnout in their communities, Israel’s Arab citizens have never held more than 15 seats. Arab citizens of Israel have served on the Supreme Court and worked in the foreign service, with a handful of ambassadors since 1995. Many have been mayors, judges in lower courts and in civil service positions.
Historically, Arab citizens have had little influence on Israeli politics. Complaints from their municipalities, such as those related to rampant crime and lack of building permits, were ignored and, until mid-2021, their independent parties were never welcomed into a governing coalition. That replaced when the Joint List (UAL), also known as Ra’am, joined an ideologically varied combination of parties that ousted Prime Minister Netanyahu in a close vote. However, none of the ministers of the new government came from the UAL. , a concession the party allegedly made in exchange for several reforms that benefited Arab communities.
For several years, the main parties (Balad, Hadash, Ta’al and the UAL) united to form a coalition called the Joint List. But the UAL split in 2021 and Balad in 2022, before parliamentary elections. Discord between the parties contributed to declining Arab voter turnout. In addition, Jewish parties have increasingly courted Arab voters. Some experts hope those adjustments could simply claim seats for Arab parties in the November vote and, in the end, help bring Netanyahu back to power.
Arab and Jewish citizens of Israel have a confusing relationship, although they coexist peacefully in some areas. For example, Israel’s fitness formula has long hired Arab and Jewish medical professionals on an aspect-by-look basis. Their cooperation was visual as the country faced the COVID-19 pandemic. , as fitness staff treated patients from each other’s communities. However, fitness facilities are more difficult to access for Arab citizens of Israel, who live farther from hospitals than Jewish citizens.
Mistrust between communities is inseparable from the broader confrontation between Israelis and Palestinians in the Holy Land. However, there are other factors, such as systemic discrimination against Israel’s Arab citizens and high crime rates in their communities, which have fewer resources for development. Far-right leaders have gained influence in recent years, attempting to paint Israel’s Arab citizens as a security threat, linking them to extremist groups, such as Hamas, that reject Israel’s legitimacy. Dahlia Scheindlin of the Century Foundation wrote that Netanyahu’s government racist rhetoric and policies toward Israel’s Arab citizens helped lay the groundwork for increased violence in 2021.
The unrest included: threats to evict Palestinians in an East Jerusalem suburb, police raids on Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa Mosque during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, the outbreak of war between Hamas and Israel and Arab attacks on Jews. The discord temporarily reverberated in Israel, especially in Lod and other cities combined. Arab protesters burned synagogues and Jewish-owned businesses, while Jewish ultranationalists chanted “death to Arabs” and vandalized Arab-owned stores. In several cases, citizens of either community were seriously injured in mob attacks.
According to a study [PDF] by the Israel Democracy Institute, the resulting violence and repression against the majority of Arab citizens undermined Arabs’ view of the status and willingness of Jews to live alongside them. Eli Gottlieb, a George researcher at Israel Washington University, wrote of the tensions: “Where the Israeli right sees the violent betrayal of Israeli Jews through Arab citizens with whom they have coexisted for decades, the Israeli left sees a Jewish majority that has not done enough for the equivalent rights of its Arab minority. “.
Arab citizens of Israel share history, culture, and family ties with Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Solidarity between them seemed to grow in the aftermath of the 2021 Jewish-Palestinian tensions, but they still have one end to differ in their long-standing. lead the Palestinian state. Arab citizens of Israel creating separate Israeli and Palestinian states at a higher rate than Jewish Israelis or Palestinians in the territories, though that has slowed, according to a 2020 poll via the Palestinian Center for Policy Research and Surveys. Plans for a two-state solution, such as those proposed by Transportation Minister Avigdor Lieberman in 2004 and US President Donald Trump in 2020, would give some of Israel’s Arab townships a Palestinian state to long term, which could cause some Arab citizens of Israel to lose their citizenship. However, top experts agree that the Israeli-Palestinian clash is unlikely to end anytime soon, meaning that Arab citizenship in Israel is unlikely to replace it in the foreseeable long term.
The Israel Democracy Institute assesses the damage [PDF] of the 2021 outbreak of violence between Jews and Arabs in Israel.
On The President’s Inbox podcast, Steven A. Cook and James M. CFR’s Lindsay talk about the reasons for the 2021 riots in Jerusalem.
This briefing paper explains the U. S. view. on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Ben Sales of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency examines the de facto segregation of Jews and Arabs in Israel.
In this article for Bloomberg, Hussein Ibish’s Gulf Arab States Institute in Washington argues that the marginalization of Israel’s Arabs will push them toward the Palestinian national movement.
Michael Bricknell and Will Merrow created the graphics for this article.