In mid-July, we could no longer continue working in our Haifa office and were forced to meet south of the city. About half of Sikkuy's employees live in northern Israel and were under constant stress, between the warning sirens and the rockets landing nearby. (Fortunately, none of us were personally injured.)

Arab citizens were exposed to horrible pictures from Lebanon showing the destruction the IDF sowed there, which heightened their concerns about family members and fellow Arabs across the border.

Jewish citizen heard day after day the lists of soldiers brought to burial, recognizing names and acquaintances among them. Both Jews and Arabs lost family and friends killed in shellings in Israel, and many were injured. In addition, Jews and Arabs suffered property damage and trauma.

The public discourse in Israel was heated. The Arab leadership and a large part of the Arab public argued that this war was not just and firmly demanded that the Israeli government put an immediate halt to it. The reaction of the media in Israel, that were totally supportive of the war, was to push them into the corner, demanding again and again for the Arabs to declare their loyalty to Israel. From the perspective of the Jewish population, opposition to the war was perceived as a declaration against the state and they expected the Arab public to disassociate themselves from their brothers across the border.

Jewish politicians and public officials from the right exploited this opportunity to express racist and far-reaching statements against the Arab citizenry. In the state of war, both populations developed far-reaching, mutual expectations and opposite perceptions of each other, which generated considerable tension.

The deployment of the government in northern Israel was no different than in routine times: It became apparent that Arab communities lack infrastructure for protecting citizens, such as bomb shelters, sirens, and so on. Most of the assistance packages that reached the Galilee skipped over the Arab communities until we lobbied the Prime Minister's Office, together with other civil society organizations, to change this situation. The JDC and other organizations also insisted on including Arab communities in this distribution. Even so, the disparity between the assistance to Jewish and Arab communities remained very large.

(Our letter to the Prime Minister and Interior Minister can be seen on our web site)

We are now working hard to ensure that Arab citizens receive a fair and appropriate share of the rehabilitation funding in the Galilee and northern Israel. We are engaged in intensive contacts with the government, on one hand, and with the leaders of the Arab local authorities, on the other hand.

During the coming months, we will be active in three areas aimed at promoting equal development in the Galilee:

1. Pressuring government ministries to include the Arab residents of the north in all rehabilitation and development plans.

2. Assisting the council of Arab local authority leaders in identifying needs and arranging for the transfer of resources.

3. Mounting an intensive media effort for implementing equality in Galilee development plans and, in particular, mobilizing public opinion for supporting equality as a joint interest of the two populations in Israel, in general, and in the Galilee and north, in particular.

In our meetings with the government ministries and the countrywide Arab mayor's committee, we have succeeded in securing agreement to hold a conference in which the directors-general of the government ministries will present their development plans for the Galilee in the coming year and their impact on the Arab communities to the 46 Arab mayors in the Galilee and their senior staff.

The director-general of the Prime Minister's Office will chair the meeting scheduled for October 19.

We look forward to your comments and, of course, your continued support.

Within the range of Katyusha rockets, a socio-economic border meanders between Jewish and Arab communities in the Galilee. Since the establishment of the state, the map of physical and organizational infrastructure of the Galilee's economy has benefited the Jewish communities, while skipping over the Arab communities. The same is true for the Arab communities in the Triangle and Negev. The Israeli economy has yet to include Arab citizens in all the spheres of economic activity.

In 2005, per capita GDP in Israel was $18,800, while the GDP figure for Arab citizens was just $7,700. More than 60% of the Arab citizens in Israel live in the Galilee and this undoubtedly helps to explain the fact that the Galilee contributes just 14% of Israel's GDP. About half of the Galilee's residents are Arabs and their sparse participation in Israel's economy lowers the share of the entire Galilee.

There must be a realization in Jerusalem that the Galilee is not only a home front for the war in Lebanon, but also a body and muscles and a producer of part of the blood flowing through the state's economy. Half of the citizenry living in the Galilee are Jews and half are Arabs, and the strength of Israeli citizenship in the Galilee is primarily dependent on the basic equality between these two parts of the population. Government ministries should regard the economic development of the Arab communities and closing the gaps vis-a-vis Jewish communities as a catalyst for national economic development and boosting Israel's GDP - and not just as a social welfare activity.

One can assume that direct and indirect compensation for the war will go first of all to those who control the Galilee's economic infrastructure in the first place - that is, mainly the Jewish population - in order to help revitalize businesses. But even now, as the 2007 budget is being prepared, a wider circle of anticipated rehabilitation should be initiated. Indeed, after the war, the Galilee's economy will be able to grow, leveraging the programs that already exist in the framework of the "Negev-Galilee" project. This can be done with special funding by the state and also from international sources, who will now be interested in rehabilitating both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border.

In the coming years, the compensation and rehabilitation budget for the Galilee's economy should be used to help raise the Galilee's share of GDP from 14% to at least about 20%, commensurate with its proportion of the population. To achieve this, the communities of Arab citizens must be included, as a central player in the Galilee, in the circle of development in the fields of industry, tourism, higher education, and more.

The post-war period will be an opportunity that should not be missed for overall rehabilitation of the socio-economic infrastructure of the Galilee. One can assume that there will be those in government and in the public who will again say "It's not the time" for equality between Jews and Arabs, and will try to defer this "political" issue to a later date "when things are better." For these people, the strengthening of the Galilee does not include the strengthening of the Arab citizens living there because as a rule there is no need to strengthen Arabs, even if they are citizens of the state.

But those who focus on what is best for the state, its stability and economic strength will understand that the path toward this must include erasing the socio-economic border that separates, in a discriminatory way, the Arab and Jewish citizens of the Galilee. This is not only due to the need to strengthen the home front, but also to strengthen all systems of life, to inject new blood in the arteries of the economy, and to bolster the civic spirit in the state.