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.

Bans and Oaths

The Israeli legislature, the Knesset, is scaring me lately. Last year, when I was living in Kufr Qara and first heard of the proposal for a “loyalty oath” in Israel, I largely dismissed it as the remarks of one extremely nationalist politician.  It was no great surprise coming from Avigdor Lieberman, the newly elected Foreign Minister and head of the Yisrael Beiteinu party.  The oath he proposed would require all citizens to swear loyalty to Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.   I never honestly thought that I would be seeing Prime Minister Netanyahu pushing it through his Cabinet this year and handing it to the Knesset. With the number of Israeli academics and journalist who have written impassioned, reasonable, and historically-sound arguments against such an oath, I also thought that reason could not fail to reach Netanyahu’s government.  Evidently I was wrong.

There is still hope that the loyalty oath will fail to gain the votes need to pass in the Knesset.  Reported today by Ha’aretz, there are so many disagreements about wording the bill (should only non-Jews have to swear the oath? Should all new immigrants? Does it apply mostly to Arabs?) that many Knesset members even of parties like Yisrael Beiteinu are reluctant to approve it.  Read the article here.  Why is there such a debate over it? Because “loyalty oaths” are scary. Because they sound authoritarian. And because a lot of people are threatened by it, most of all the 20% of Israel’s population who are Arab Palestinians.

I believe that no state can declare its identity to be one religion and hope to keep the true principles of democracy and equality intact.  I also think that Israel can still be the homeland for the Jewish people without declaring itself a Jewish State.  It’s a subtle but crucial distinction in my mind.

Not that these distinctions are escaping Israeli politicians. They know well what these phrases mean to non-Jews in Israel. Efforts to keep control the narrative of ‘what Israel is’ are ongoing. These are also getting scarier. Today I also read that another Knesset MK, Gideon Ezra from Kadima, sponsored a bill that would ban Arabs from working as tour guides in Jerusalem (of which there are at least 300 currently).  Yes, that’s right. Ban Arabs from working as tour guides.  I cannot believe these things are even being publicly discussed! Mr. Ezra’s reason? Arab tour guides do not present the “national Israel viewpoint,” and “do not represent Israel’s interests in the appropriate manner.” Read the article here.  Do I need to even explain what I think about this? Believing that a state has, or should have, one ‘national viewpoint’ is to deny the values of democracy, pluralism, and individual freedoms.  I hope that the Knesset will come out against state-sponsored tour guides based on ethnicity.  I truly hope so, or I will know that Israel has completely lost its way.

Loyalty oaths and bans on certain ethnic groups scare me, because they remind me of so many cases in history where countries have gone down similar paths, only to be haunted by their own creations.  Yes, the Israel-Palestine conflict might make some think that this is a special case, where extraordinary measures are needed. That has also been said before.  Extraordinary measures are needed, but not in this direction. Instead of increasing the distrust, hatred and fear between ‘the loyal ones’ and the ‘disloyal ones’ – the politicians of Israel should be working to resolving this conflict. If only that were apparent. Instead of efforts to make peace, what’s grabbing the headlines are loyalty oaths and further discrimination against Arabs.