Obstacles to Peace? Arab citizens of Israel

An article I read recently made me again mourn the loss of complex thinking when it comes to Israel-Palestine. The article, which I read in Ynet Israeli news a couple weeks ago, is titled An Obstacle to Peace: Israeli Arabs, Palestinians have opposite interests in respect to a peace deal.  The article claims that the Arab population of Israel, who are Palestinians, do not support a peace deal and are in fact working against it.  Citing responses by some Arab MKs in the Israeli Knesset to remarks and moves made by the PA, the article claims that the Arab minority in Israel is “more radical” than Palestinian leadership.  The reasons given for this are that Arab Israelis ‘have something to prove’ to the rest of the Arab world since they live inside Israel, and that they are afraid that the thousands of Jewish settlers now located in the West Bank would be re-settled into Arab areas inside the Green Line in the event of a peace deal.

First of all, the couple of examples cited by the article of one particular Arab MK in Israel do not represent the whole of the Arab minority, which make up a huge number (20%) of the Israeli population.  Second, the ways that Arab Palestinians in Israel feel about any kind of peace deal are very complicated, not simplistic as the article suggests.

Arabs in Israel are worried about a peace agreement, just as Jewish Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are.  However, Arab Israelis are caught in the middle and are one of the groups with almost no voice during the negotiations.  They speak Hebrew as a second language, go to Israeli universities, and have Jewish friends and colleagues at work. They watch Israeli news and know the country inside and out. They know the realities of discrimination and racism in the Israeli public.  They cannot get the jobs they want or buy the land they want because they are Arab. They are called “security risks”.  And they see every advertisement about children in Gaza and hear every Israeli comment on the news justifying violence against innocent Palestinians every day.

Arabs in Israel worry about a peace agreement for so many reasons, but it doesn’t mean that they don’t support justice.  If a peace agreement happens, their reality would change. If there was a Palestinian state, their existence in Israel suddenly becomes one of choice. Choose to stay or choose to start a new life under a Palestinian government, leaving everything behind.  If you choose to stay, deal with thousands of settlers being moved back inside the Green Line, likely at your expense.  Find your children continuously fighting for equal rights and representation in a state that is increasingly controlled by an ultra-religious minority of Jews.  Or take your chances in a new and less stable state of Palestine, with years of re-building ahead.  Be prepared to suffer at the whims of new regulations on visas, travel, citizenship, etc. due to the new 2 state solution. It’s just such an unknown for them.

So for now, Arab Israelis want justice, not only for their Palestinian relatives and friends in the Occupied Territories, but also for themselves as rightful citizens of Israel. 

Instead of calling them obstacles to peace, Arab Israelis are key to the process. If anyone knows the meaning of coexistence, it’s them. They know what it is to be caught in the middle of this conflict. When I lived in Kufr Qara, an Arab village in Israel, I discovered nuances of opinion and more complex views on the conflict than I had ever heard before. I believe that nuance and complexity could save us, if people on all sides were willing to think less in black and white. Particularly in this conflict, a little bit more creativity is needed. I wish some of these nuanced voices of Arabs in Israel could be heard more, and their stories heard.   And I’ll argue with anyone who calls them obstacles to peace.