The other Israelis
Emboldened by the Palestinian struggle, an emerging movement in Israel wants full equality for the country's Arab citizens. But that would mean redefining the nature of the Jewish state.
JERUSALEM -- When you think of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, what's likely to come to mind are the intifada, Hamas and Fatah, the West Bank and Gaza, road maps and roadblocks, and a story that seems to have no end. But there is another Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one just as old and as vexing, and no less a "time bomb" if not addressed: that between Israel and its own Arab citizens.
The establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 left some 700,000 Palestinian Arabs refugees, but another 160,000 stayed put and became Israeli citizens. Today, Israel's Arab community numbers 1.2 million, constituting nearly a fifth of the country's population. By all material measures -- income, education level, unemployment -- they lag far behind the Jewish population, but they are also denied certain privileges guaranteed by law to the Jews. The Law of Return, for example, gives Jews from anywhere in the world, or their descendants or spouses, the right to show up and claim Israeli citizenship.
Israel's Declaration of Independence promises "complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex." But the reality, as the Palestinian-Israeli historian Adel Mana'a told me, is that "I'm a 'subtenant' here, even though I was the 'owner' before the Jews came."
Members of the Arab population have clashed violently with authorities in the past, most notably in October 2000, when angry demonstrations within Arab communities in the Galilee resulted in the deaths of 12 Arab citizens and one Palestinian from the territories -- all but one, who was killed by Jewish rioters, were shot by the police.
Overall, however, relations between the Jewish majority and Arab minority have been peaceful, if tense, over the state's 59-year history. Israeli-Arab involvement in Palestinian terrorist activity, for example, or espionage against the state, has been minimal. This may explain why the situation has received little attention, even in Israel.
But that is changing. With a growing boldness and facility with the language and tools of human-rights activism, a new generation of Israeli Palestinian jurists and intellectuals, in the past few months alone, have come out with several formal proposals that would redefine their status within Israeli society -- that would, in fact, redefine the nature of the "Jewish state" itself.
The most prominent of these, a document titled "The Future Vision of Palestinian Arabs in Israel," was published jointly in November by the Supreme Arab Monitoring Committee, the umbrella group for the country's various Arab political and religious organizations, together with the committee representing the heads of the country's Arab local governments. In addition, two proposals for an egalitarian Israeli constitution have emerged from Arab human-rights groups, and a new book published by the Israel Democracy Institute, a liberal Jewish think tank, documents the discussions in 1999-2001 between a group of Arab and Jewish intellectuals and activists attempting to draft a paper that could serve as the basis for a new status quo. (They failed, disbanding a few months after the October 2000 violence.)
The common denominator of all the initiatives is a demand that Israel eliminate all systemic preferences given to Jews, and that all citizens have complete equality before the law. For the most nationalistic among the Jewish majority, the proposals are nonstarters from the get-go. But even members of Israel's Zionist left -- those, for example, who always were in favor of a Palestinian state, and who see themselves as naturally sympathetic to the grievances of the country's Arabs -- have a hard time with the latest recommendations.
Jewish history, they are convinced, particularly in the 20th century, has provided adequate proof that the Jews need a refuge, and one where Jews are in control. Even a cursory examination of political culture among Israel's neighbors, including in the Palestinian Authority, convinces them that Israel must take measures to guarantee its Jewish majority. Yes, Israel's resources must be distributed with greater equality, these Israeli liberals say, but Palestinian national aspirations can only be realized in the Palestinian state -- to them, that is the meaning of the "two-state solution."
Otherwise, such Israelis contend, it is not only the nature of the Jewish state but its very survival that is at issue. Whether their positions leave the sides with any room to negotiate, and whether they will choose to, remains to be seen.
"Future Vision" describes Israel as a state with two classes of citizens, and the remedy it envisions would reconstitute the country as a "consensual democracy" that would serve as a "joint homeland" for both Jews and Palestinians.
If enacted, the proposals of the "Future Vision" document would end the Law of Return -- or extend a similar right to Palestinians. If land in Israel has been distributed unevenly -- the paper points to the fact that only 3.5 percent is in the hands of the 20 percent of its "indigenous" population -- "Future Vision" calls for the return of property that has been appropriated from Arabs by the state, or failing that, compensation, and for Arab involvement in all future planning decisions.
"Future Vision" also calls for Arabs to be given control over their own autonomous school system, and for the Arabic language to have equal status with Hebrew. It demands that Muslim religious authorities be given control of assets such as cemeteries that are now in the hands of the state. And symbols, such as the Israeli flag (with its blue Star of David) and the national anthem, Hatikvah, which speaks of "the Jewish spirit yearning deep in the heart," would have to be replaced or augmented by parallel symbols that have meaning for the minority.
Professor Asad Ghanem, one of the principal drafters of "Future Vision," notes that all of Israel's discriminatory laws and practices have been effected democratically, making the system here "a 'tyranny of the majority.'" The solution, says Ghanem, who chairs the department of government and political theory at the University of Haifa, "is not to abolish" the state, "but to change it." He calls "ridiculous" Jewish critics who have termed the "Vision" separatist, claiming that the opposite is true: "We want to be integrated, but we want our share."
Separatist, however, is just one of the negative criticisms directed at "Future Vision" by Jewish intellectuals, columnists, and politicians, even many identified with the peace camp. The normally judicious law professor Amnon Rubinstein, a former Knesset member from the left-wing Meretz Party, writing in the daily Ma'ariv, called the document "shameless," and claimed, somewhat hysterically, that it "demands rights for the Palestinian minority that have no foundation in international law -- and demands to put an end to Israel as a Jewish state."
Similarly, in an open letter to the authors of the document for the Arabic weekly Al-Sinara, professor Shimon Shamir, a member of the commission that examined the causes of the October 2000 riots and deaths (and which made a wide range of recommendations to the Israeli government for improving the status of its Arab citizens, few of which have been implemented), noted, "not only does your document fail to create a foundation for dialogue, it evokes a sense of threat for Jewish readers, even those who are sympathetic to your cause."
Yet dialogue is what supporters of "Future Vision" say they had in mind. "We're saying that we take our [Israeli] citizenship seriously," says Mana'a, "and we're inviting the Jews to a dialogue, to attempt to build something that's acceptable to both sides."
Danny Rothschild, a retired general and president of the Council for Peace and Security, a left-leaning group of former officers in the Israel Defense Forces who speak out on security-related issues, says he finds the paper "completely unacceptable." But he is nonetheless willing to carry on a dialogue. His fear, however, is that it and similar "radical" political actions may encourage a right-wing Jewish backlash against the Arabs.
Indeed, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert recently appointed Avigdor Lieberman, the head of Yisrael Beitenu, a right-wing political party that advocates "transferring" parts of the Galilee that are predominantly Arab to a future Palestinian state, as minister of strategic affairs. And the Knesset recently extended a temporary law that prevents Palestinian residents of the West Bank or Gaza who marry Israeli citizens from joining their spouses in Israel -- or becoming naturalized citizens, the way any other non-Jews who marry Israelis can do. Seen as an effort to limit the growth of the Arab population, it may reflect Israeli Jews' abiding anxiety that if the Arabs don't vanquish them on the battlefield they will do so by means of higher birth rates.
Even among Jewish Israelis who are sympathetic to the call for equal distribution of resources and the improvement of the civil rights of Arab Israelis as individuals, it is commonly argued that the national aspirations of the Palestinians must be realized in a future Palestinian state. Sammy Smooha, the dean of the University of Haifa's faculty of social sciences, has been surveying Arab and Jewish opinion on these and other issues in Israel for several decades. He says that the state should be the "vehicle for preserving a heritage, language, culture." Israel's Arabs, he says, "have to adjust to life as a minority."
Those behind the current initiatives don't accept the suggestion that their national aspirations can only be fulfilled by the Palestinian state. They may view themselves as part of the Palestinian nation and people, but, as Adel Mana'a puts it, "I want my rights in my land, without connection to the Palestinian state." At the same time, he and others suggest ominously that if that state isn't realized, the Palestinian people, on both sides of the Green Line, "will demand -- in another 10 years -- a binational state all the way from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River."
Such statements don't exactly allay Jewish fears. Nor does it help that "Future Vision" describes Israel with terminology that can only grate on Jewish sensibilities, to say the least, referring to the state as "the result of a settlement process initiated by the Zionist-Jewish elite in Europe and the West and realized by colonial countries." Even after its establishment, they argue, Israel "executed colonial policies against its Arab Palestinian population," and a policy of "Judaization" of the land.
While such strident language represents the coming of age of a new generation of Israeli Arabs who have been emboldened by the Palestinians' struggle, and have the tools to undertake their own peaceful campaign, it's not clear how representative "Future Vision" is of the country's Arabs. Although the Supreme Arab Monitoring Committee, which published it, is made up of representatives from organizations that range from Islamist to Communist, leaders of the country's small but vocal Islamic Movement have already said they do not endorse the document, which speaks the language of Western democracies, not traditional Islam. A recent survey showed that fewer than 20 percent of the Arab public had even heard of the document -- although large majorities agreed with most of the basic principles behind it.
Shalom Dichter, the Jewish co-executive director of Sikkuy: The Association for the Advancement of Civic Equality in Israel, says he's convinced that change has to be advanced on both philosophical and practical levels. Even as Jews and Arabs continue to discuss the definition of the state, the government has an obligation to eliminate discrimination and to improve physical conditions in the Arab sector.
Dichter says his organization estimates that some $7 billion would be required to bring the standard of living in the Arab sector up to the Jewish level. And he points to surveys suggesting that just under half of the Jews would, in his words, "support sharing the state's resources." He also points to his organization's success in eliciting a commitment from the Prime Minister's Office last fall to distribute funds equally between Jewish and Arab communities for the reconstruction of parts of Northern Israel damaged during the second Lebanon war. "It's the first plan based on equality," he says.
Though Dichter sees "Future Vision" as an important basis for dialogue, he rejects its characterization of Israel as a colonialist enterprise. "It's not true," he says, and suggests that the language is guaranteed to alienate most Jewish readers. "It's hard," he says, "for a Jewish Zionist like myself to overcome a barrier like that, especially in the beginning of the document. A statement like that reveals a lack of understanding of what the essence of Jewish existence is here."
Israeli Arabs get a little tired of Jews telling them they have to "understand" their situation and their fears. A recent documentary film, "October's Cry," examines the efforts of the family of a teenage boy from the Galilee town of Arabeh to achieve justice after he was shot and killed by Israeli police during the 2000 civil disturbances. At one point, a young Arab tells the filmmaker, Julie Gal, "Sometimes you, as an Arab, hear the Jews talk about their fear and their anxiety [and] you feel like you're the Jews' psychiatrist."
Adel Mana'a complains that, "the Jews say, 'Because of our history, because of the Holocaust and what happened to us, it's valid for us to want a state . . . but one controlled by the Jewish majority.' But that's not acceptable. It's not democratic and it's not normal."
For his part, Mana'a is convinced that if Israel's Jews can do right by their Arab neighbors, it "can help make peace in the Middle East." Fully enfranchised, Israel's Arabs will be able to testify to the honorable intentions of the Jewish majority to the rest of the Muslim world. "You see, we'll say, they're not Crusaders, they're not colonialists. And they will be able to live with themselves in peace, being comfortable knowing that they are a fair nation."
David B. Green, former deputy editor of The Jerusalem Report, is on the editorial staff of Haaretz. 