Israel's Arab minority not celebrating Independence Day

Associated Press

Israeli Arabs, who make up one-fifth of Israel's population of 7.25 million, aren't celebrating. Six decades after the founding of the Jewish state, they still feel like outsiders. They mix their Arabic with Hebrew and actively participate in Israel's democracy. But for the most part, they define themselves as Palestinians who live in Israel, and remain a distinct and largely disadvantaged minority.


"It doesn't mean anything to me," Umm Ziad, owner of a small bookshop in Kufr Qassem, said of the festivities in the neighboring Jewish community of Rosh Haayin, just a few hundred meters (yards) away. "It's not our party," added the 32-year-old mother of three, dressed in a dark maroon robe and white veil.

Many Israeli Arabs are torn between two loyalties. They have more freedoms than most in the Middle East - even though they spent the first 18 years of Israel's history under military rule - and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza tend to resent them for their more comfortable lives. Yet Israeli Arabs are distrusted by the Jewish majority and have been subjected to decades of official discrimination.

"We are ready to build bridges with parts of the Jewish community, but coexistence can only happen when there are equal rights," said Ahmed Tibi, an Arab member of Israel's parliament and a long-time adviser to the late Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat.

Tibi said Israeli Arabs face unequal treatment in all walks of life, from land allocation to education, and noted that only 4 percent of Israel's development budget is spent in Arab communities.

Kufr Qassem, with a population of 20,000, doesn't have an allocated industrial zone, although the mayor, Sami Issa, said he's lobbied for years for the Israeli government to invest in one.

'People here don't have hope'
That would help earn tax money to fix the town's bumpy roads and shabby buildings, adorned with garish Arabic and Hebrew signs. Nearby Rosh Haayin, with 50,000 people, has smooth roads, chic coffee shops, a large industrial zone and gleaming buildings there host international companies. Over the past 60 years, Israel's Arab and Jewish communities have largely remained separate. Intermarriage is still taboo, and only a few towns, such as Haifa, Jaffa and Ramle, have mixed populations.

Israeli Arabs are less educated, on average, and earn less than their Jewish counterparts. Arab women tend to be homemakers and in general, Arab families are larger than Jewish ones

Fueling the fears of Israeli Jews, government statistics show that Israeli Arabs have one of the highest birth rates in the region, ahead of neighboring Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon.

Kufr Qassem, a conservative Muslim town, is considered well off because of its proximity to Tel Aviv, Israel's business capital, which offers plenty of jobs. Residents freely admit that economic opportunity is one reason they want to stay in Israel.

They don't like recent talk by hard-line Israeli politicians who want Arab towns in Israel to become part of a future Palestine, in a swap for Jewish West Bank settlements....

more...
http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-3540821,00.html

jesus is odd man out in the lands of Abraham...

but like the better economic advantages offered to them in Israel, and don't want to live in a future Palestinian state.

Talk about a lot of double talk.

If this question was to see if I supported transfer of Palestinians, you are wrong.

However, there isn't a question that Israeli Arabs do not identify with Israel in nationalism, and that their core beliefs are Palestinian rather than Israeli.

And yet, they want the benefits and rewards of Israeli citizenship.

I read that as Israel is preparing for future wars (which will come, sure as the sun comes up), they are also planning for the possibility that the Israeli Arabs will rise up against the Jewish Israelis, in collaboration with Hamas, or other Palestinan militant factions.

What do you think should be done about this?

the current status quo can not be maintained indefinitely any more than "Jim Crow" could have been in the US.

so why would this start to happen now?

which is more an ethnic than national classification. Another poll showed that a majority of Israeli Jews see themselves as Jews (rather than Israelis) first, so it may be a similar sort of thing.

Only 24% described themselves as predominantly Palestinian.

Ethnic/national identity is a complicated thing; and many people everywhere have mixed identities (For instance: I am British, English, ethnically Jewish, an atheist, a second-generation immigrant, and a dual Canadian citizen, and which of these identities comes out most strongly at a particular time depends on all sorts of circumstances.)

to make if a poll quoted in a NYT article yesterday is true then a majority of Israeli Jews want the Israeli Arabs expelled, the poll I saw was from 04/07 and then it was 40% of Israeli Jews approaching a majority but not quite there. When this is coupled with the recent push to make sure the entire world does not forget that Arab countries expelled Jews, one wonders if there is not some sort of "moral equivalence" propaganda campaign in the works.

However there was some clarification of poll results much touted here by the "proIsraeli" set those being that Israeli Arabs would rather live in Israel than a Palestinian state, as usual the devil is in the details,which as usual were conveniently left out. The question was really do you want to live in Israel or an isolated Bantustan, most likely subject to the same kinds "security measures" as the West Bank and Gaza.

They were not talking about "isolated Buntastans" but Israel vs. a new Palestinian state. And they were very clear about their reasons for wanting to stay in Israel (and yet reviling the state).

Two polls released last week, from Keevoon Research, Strategy & Communications and the Arabic-language newspaper As-Sennara, survey representative samples of adult Israeli Arabs on the issue of joining the PA, and they corroborate what Gheit says. Asked, "Would you prefer to be a citizen of Israel or of a new Palestinian state?" 62 percent want to remain Israeli citizens and 14 percent want to join a future Palestinian state. Asked, "Do you support transferring the Triangle to the Palestinian Authority?" 78 percent oppose the idea and 18 percent support it.

IGNORING THE don't-knows/refused, the ratios of respondents are nearly identical preferring to stay within Israel - 82 percent and 81 percent, respectively. Gheit exaggerates that "no one" wants to live in the PA, but not by much. Thousands of Palestinian residents in Jerusalem who, fearful of the PA, have applied for Israeli citizenship since Olmert's statement further corroborate his point.

Why such affection for the state that Palestinians famously revile in the media, in scholarship, classrooms, mosques, and international bodies, that they terrorize on a daily basis? Best to let them explain their motivations in direct quotations.

Financial considerations: "I don't want to have any part in the PA. I want the health insurance, the schools, all the things we get by living here," says Ranya Mohammed. "I'll go and live in Israel before I'll stay here and live under the PA, even if it means taking an Israeli passport. I have seen their suffering in the PA. We have a lot of privileges I'm not ready to give up."

Law and order: Gazans, note Israeli-Arab journalists Faiz Abbas and Muhammad Awwad, now "miss the Israelis, since Israel is more merciful than who do not even know why they are fighting and killing one another. It's like organized crime."

Raising children: "I want to live in peace and to raise my children in an orderly school," says Jamil Sanduqa. "I don't want to raise my child on throwing stones, or on Hamas."

A more predictable future: "I want to keep living here with my wife and child without having to worry about our future. That's why I want Israeli citizenship. I don't know what the future holds," says Samar Qassam, 33.

Unless Israeli Arabs are unaware of the land swap idea, not to mention that the state of the Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank is dire when compared to that of Israeli Arabs,so in part the question becomes also "how bad do you want your life?"

compare this statement from the OP here-

Israeli Arabs, who make up one-fifth of Israel's population of 7.25 million, aren't celebrating. Six decades after the founding of the Jewish state, they still feel like outsiders. They mix their Arabic with Hebrew and actively participate in Israel's democracy. But for the most part, they define themselves as Palestinians who live in Israel, and remain a distinct and largely disadvantaged minority.

to this one from an op on another thread-

As for the Arab sector, the polling data showed that the majority of Israeli Arab see themselves as Palestinian or as Arab, and only a minor percentage of the sector see themselves as Israeli: Forty-five percent said they were Arab, 24% think of themselves as Palestinians, 19% define themselves by their religious affiliation and only 12% said they were Israelis.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3540049,00.html

Since when is 24% most?